This article was updated on December 20, to clarify the retraction of the Lancet study.
Some things are just wrong. Two plus two, no matter how you figure it, does not equal cheese. So why then do journalists insist upon giving equal weight to people whose opinions are just as wrong?
Here’s an example: I could state, for the record, that George Bridges has a bow tie he made with the pelt of a mink that he killed himself. I honestly doubt that he does. What the president’s office would probably do in that case is release a statement stating unequivocally and emphatically that the president does not own such a bow tie.
Now, if The Pioneer was to run a story based upon the two statements and gave them equal space on the page (following what some call the “equal time doctrine”), it’s possible to construe that as meaning the two statements have equal merit, which is not the case, since I made mine up.
When it comes to reporting on factual questions, there should be no room for error. Of course, on the grand scale of things, a mink bow tie isn’t that big a deal. Where we start to run into problems is when the equal time doctrine gets applied to matters of national importance. Here’s what I mean: if a certain politician from Alaska says that a healthcare bill contains provisions that create “death panels”, it’s our job, as journalists to figure out whether or not they do. The bill, as it stood then, did not contain any such provisions.
As members of the media, we’re responsible for providing the world with what is factually accurate. Reporting what people (especially politicians) say without determining the truth of their statements is a disservice to the public we hope to serve.
Here’s another important case study: the evolution “debate.” In the scientific community, there’s no question as to whether or not the theory of evolution by natural selection is factually correct. Let me say that again: among people who actually know what they’re talking about, there is no question as to whether or not species evolve over time.
The media, by giving credence to people who would rather deny the factual accuracy of a scientific theory that has been proven and re-proven hundreds of times over, is tacitly helping to promote the fallacies these ignoramuses are peddling. This epidemic of journalistic spinelessness has been caused, at least in part, by those who consume news, as well as those of us who report on it. Journalism is, most of the time, a for-profit enterprise, and there has been increasing pressure not to seem “partisan” in reporting stories. Thus, the equal time doctrine. That comes at a cost, sometimes to public well-being.
Consider the idea that vaccines cause autism, as first proposed in a rather shoddily done study published by the British medical journal “Lancet.” That study has since been discredited based on its research methods, as well as years of research that has failed to corroborate the findings of the original study. Furthermore, both “Lancet” and 10 out of 13 of the study’s authors have retracted it. However, that unfortunately has not stopped people from continuing to push that particular explanation.
The reduction in vaccination has, in turn, caused some major public health problems. Vaccines are really good at protecting people, especially kids, from getting nasty, potentially deadly diseases. San Diego is facing a near-epidemic of pertussis (better known as whooping cough) in children because of a lack of vaccination.
Whooping cough is a horrible, highly contagious disease, and the outbreak in San Diego has led to the deaths of at least five infants. That brings me to my bottom line: journalists need to stop pulling punches. If someone is factually wrong, they need to get called on it. It’s a simple solution that will help save lives and our public discourse.
Ginger Taylor • Dec 10, 2010 at 1:47 pm
“When it comes to reporting on factual questions, there should be no room for error.”
So happy that you feel this way. Because your column has a few error that need to be corrected. For example:
“Consider the idea that vaccines cause autism, as first proposed in a rather shoddily done study published by the British medical journal “Lancet.—
The theory that vaccine can cause autism was not first proposed in the Lancet. The first record of vaccine autism regression was actually one of the first 11 cases of autism ever found and presented by Leo Kanner at Johns Hopkins when he wrote the paper defining the disorder in the 1940’s. He reported that one of the children became autistic following a small pox vaccination. Vaccine/autism cases were being tried in the US at least since the 1970s, I heard about the vaccine connection to autism in my undergrad psych program at George Mason University in 1989, and the HHS Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (established in 1986), has been paying children with autism at least since 1991. Wakefield was not the first to propose this by a long shot. His hospital was just the first to call a press conference on it.
“That study has since been discredited based on its research methods, as well as years of research that has failed to corroborate the findings of the original study.”
The paper has not been discredited. In fact even the editor of the Lancet, Richard Horton who retracted the study, testified in hearings under oath that the science in the study WAS sound, only a few months before telling the media that the science WAS NOT sound, presumably at the behest of his employer, Sir Crispin Davis, who is on the board of Glaxo Smith Klein who makes the MMR vaccine in question. While some studies have failed to support the paper, others have, but those studies don’t get publicized by the media. Probably because journalists like you encourage the silencing of opposing views, as you are doing here.
“Furthermore, both “Lancet†and the study’s author have retracted it.”
The study, which was not a “study” but a case series of children with autism and GI disorders, did not have 1 author… it had 13. Under political pressure, ten of the authors removed their names. They all stood by the paper and its methods and results, but didn’t want to take the heat in the controversy. The three men who stood by the paper were professionally attacked and had their licenses to practice medicine revoked in a show trial that actually proved, for those who followed the trial, that they had done nothing wrong.
But since, again, you are encouraging only reporting the establishment line, unless you dig for the information, you probably didn’t know any of that.
“The media, by giving credence to people who would rather deny the factual accuracy of a scientific theory that has been proven and re-proven hundreds of times over, is tacitly helping to promote the fallacies these ignoramuses are peddling.”
You suggest that the theory that vaccines do not cause autism has been proven over and over. This is not true. In fact there is much evidence that shows that vaccines do cause autism. For example:
Giving a boy the Hepatitis B series starting in the first month of life (most get it before they leave the hospital) TRIPLES his chance of having autism:
Hepatitis B triple series vaccine and developmental disability in US children aged 1-9 years
Carolyn Gallagher a; Melody Goodman, Graduate Program in Public Health, Stony Brook University Medical Center, Health Sciences Center, New York, USA
Journal Toxicological & Environmental Chemistry, Volume 90, Issue 5 September 2008 , pages 997 – 1008
74% of the research on whether or not the mercury containing compound Thimerosal and other metal vaccine ingredients can cause autism finds that there IS a link between these ingredients and autism:
Sorting out the spinning of autism: heavy metals and the question of incidence
Acta Neurobiol Exp 2010, 70: 165–176
“To summarize,of the 58 empirical reports on autism and heavy metal toxins, 43 suggest some link may be present, while 13 reports found no link. Even with the tendency for null results not to be reported, it cannot be said there is no evidence for a link between heavy metal toxins and autism: although the question may still be open-in sum, the evidence favors a link.”
I could go on… but for those of you who DO want to read the science supporting a vaccine/autism link, instead of just assuming that anyone espousing it is an “ignoramus”, here are 40 plus more studies that support the theory that vaccines cause autism.
http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2007/06/no-evidence-of-any-link.html
“San Diego is facing a near-epidemic of pertussis (better known as whooping cough) in children because of a lack of vaccination.”
There has been no evidence presented to suggest that the pertussis outbreak is because of the lack of vaccine uptake. Pertussis vaccine is one of the poorest performing vaccines and just plain does not work very well. Many of the people who got pertussis in this outbreak were vaccinated. Public health authorities are allowed to get away with making these causal assumptions with out ever having to back them up with data PRECISELY because of articles like this one that claim that those critical of vaccine safey and who properly point out that vaccines are not as effective as they are billed to be, should not be listened to. That we should leave public health and pharma to debate the safety and efficacy of the products that they make and regulate amongst themselves and their fans, and that people who have researched these questions with a critical eye, and even those who have been vaccine injured or have had loved ones killed by vaccines should be insulted and excluded from the conversation.
That is not scientific discourse. That is PR.
“If someone is factually wrong, they need to get called on it. It’s a simple solution that will help save lives and our public discourse.”
I could not agree more. Are you going to retract your factual errors in this article?
Jerry • Dec 2, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Blair, There have been 2 books recently published about Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the Lancet study and the subsequent witchhunt. They are titled “Callous Disregard” and “Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine and a Man-made Epidemic”. I suggest if you are really looking for facts, you should read these books then do this column again. We have all read the mainstream medical systems talking points over and over. We do not need a college newspaper repeating the same blatant lies.