Adventures of a science-based mole at an antivaccine crankfest (conclusion)
Respectful Insolence:
Adventures of a science-based mole at an antivaccine crankfest (conclusion)
https://respectfulinsolence.com/201...-mole-at-an-antivaccine-crankfest-conclusion/
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Adventures of a science-based mole at an antivaccine crankfest (conclusion)
Orac October 19, 2018 91 Comments
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Orac note: Welcome back, my friends, to the antivaccine show that never ends. We’re so glad you could attend. Come inside, come inside. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.) Earlier this week, I published a rare guest post by a mole whose services were loaned to me by our great imperious leader Lord Draconis Zeneca (All hail!), to report on the activity of One Conversation, an event whose organizers tried to ensnare Orac himself into participating in a “balanced” (translation: false balance) discussion of vaccines and vaccine injury. ) Orac, of course, was too savvy to fall for that trap.) Ultimately, as the provaccine doctors and scientists initially attracted by the unctuously polite patter of One Conversation organizers Shannon Kroner and Britney Valas dropped out, what was left was an antivaccine quackfest, that became an even quackier antivaccine quackfest with two late additions to the panel.
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So, welcome to part two of the One Conversation report. The video begins at 2/21:40 if you are interested in jumping right in and avoiding the dead space. Orac asked me to include some features that only an attendee would have observed. The audience was primarily female and older; I got the impression that most were grandmothers and, as I stated in the previous post, about half identified as vaccine-injured or know someone vaccine-injured. There were just a handful of younger, parent-aged attendees.
There were also some attendees who appeared to be from the Nation of Islam, which has a very large presence in the metro Atlanta area and has been the focus of a sustained anti-vaccine campaign by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Tony Muhammad. The vast majority of the audience was clearly anti-vaccine. Unsurprisingly, the panelists appeared to pick up on this and over time became increasingly provocative, “playing to their base” so to speak, as the discussion went on.
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