ROFL!

Sean believes vaccines cause autism ([Crusty Dem]
Where did I say that? All I said you bought into Carrey’s nebulous, unsubstantiated “Vaccines may be bad” garbage.

Sean says there has been conflicting evidence [Crusty]
You repeated Carrey’s statements as fact. There is no conflicting evidence. If you have it, present it, I vehemently dispute those “facts”.

And Sean doesn’t understand things people have said (never mind that he’s never heard them before) [Crusty]
Fine, but after learning them, you keep repeating the same garbage. Ignorance is fine, repeated ignorance is a bad sign. Can you learn?

I also see that you have no response to the points I’ve actually made, and are unwilling to address my actual response to what you’ve said (look, I use italics for quotes and everything) but the notable point is:
If Carrey is not acting as an “expert” why are you treating all of his lies as fact?
My assertion is that you, like so many who know little about vaccines and autism, presume that he is an expert. Do you have a better explanation?

Sean, apparently, doesn’t see that.

Perhaps because Sean prefers not to claim to know more than he does, or claim someone says something that he hasn’t seen them actually say.

But, then,
Sean believes vaccines cause autism ([Crusty Dem]
Sean wants to take away your vaccines [Robert]
Sean says there has been conflicting evidence [Crusty]

Except that Sean’s never said any of those things.

But don’t also forget that
Sean is ignoring facts present in articles he’s never read [Dustin]
And Sean doesn’t understand things people have said (never mind that he’s never heard them before) [Crusty]

Seriously! Why can’t Sean see that nobody wants to talk about the point he actually tried to make when they can take him to task for things he never said and knows nothing about? I think we should attack Sean’s opinion of cricket next.

All studies have flaws, and biases come in different forms. The scientific method and peer review are best ways we know to control for and expose flaws and biases. When Carrey and other anti-vaxers call for “unbiased studies”, what they really mean are studies that support the anti-vaccine point of view.

Sean, apparently, doesn’t see that.

“Ah, my mistake. I took “This nonsense at Huffpo ” to mean you were, y’know, referring to the content of the article you actually spoke of and linked to.”

Is there any content in the article that is actually substantial or informative? Do you think it’s not nonsense? I assume you’ll complain that you’re not defending Carrey, but you want to claim that Oliver is wrong nonsense, you need a reason. I hope we’ve thoroughly demonstrated that Carrey’s article is nothing more than fact-free nonsense and scaremongering. You’ve been hung up on Carrey’s claims of not being an expert (while he tells people what to do and think) and that his vaccine fearmongering couldn’t possibly have anything to do with outbreaks (while he’s the lead spokesman for a movement and has argued specifically against the vaccine that stops outbreaks like the one in San Diego Oliver refers to).

I can’t understand your complete inability to go from 1 to 2 to 3, other than plain stubbornness. And where you really offended me was not your criticism of Oliver, but your basic re-expression of Carrey’s lies:

It actually seems a balanced and reasonable request: Vaccines have their benefits but also appear to have a downside. Let’s actually do unbiased studies to get the facts. Surely those scientist who worked so hard on these medicines wouldn’t object to unbiased scientific research.

Except vaccines don’t have a scientifically proven downside, dozens (if not hundreds) of unbiased studies have found no significant ill effects from vaccines, and no scientist working on vaccines has objected to unbiased scientific research on the absence of a link between vaccines and autism. If he’s not acting as an “expert” why are you treating all of these lies as fact?

My rebuttal to Crusty is very simple: I never said I’d seen anything by Carrey prior to this article. My point was and remains, based on the article (the only thing Oliver refers to or links to) Oliver’s characterization of Carrey’s comments is a misrepresentation.

“Ah, my mistake. I took “This nonsense at Huffpo ” to mean you were, y’know, referring to the content of the article you actually spoke of and linked to.”

“The only premise I’m starting from is that OW distorted what Carey was saying. That, in the article OW linked to Carrey doesn’t declare himself an expert and doesn’t express the attitude that OW claims caused a measles outbreak in San Diego.”

Despite that, folks have attributed to me several things and positions I have not said/taken. Again, I get that this is a very sensitive topic for people (And that some are so overly sensitive to it that they interpret the least sign of someone not fully agreeing with their view on every aspect of it as someone vociferously disagreeing with them.) but am nevertheless surprised at the reactions seen. Clearly nothing further to be served by continued attempts to have a conversation so I yield the field.

My rebuttal to Sean is very simple, it’s that he clearly doesn’t understand anything that Carrey has said prior to this article. As I’ve said about 5 times in this thread, the sum total of the scientific data the anti-vaccine community has to base their near-decade crusade on has been proven fraudulent. It was a Lancet article claiming autism caused by the MMR vaccine; and the activity of the anti-vaccine community led MMR rates to drop dramatically, to the point that outbreaks have popped up sporadically. Carrey and McCarthy have repeated singled out the MMR vaccine as the cause of McCarthy’s child’s autism. That last link is amusing, since it’s by the doctor whose fraud was demonstrated just months after the article was written.

Of course, MMR is the only vaccine available for measles, so when Carrey says “We have never argued that people shouldn’t be immunized for the most serious threats including measles and polio”, he is patently full of shit. And you’re giving him full benefit of the doubt because, while he is pointlessly scaremongering, in this article he isn’t scaremongering against a specific vaccine. I’d still like to know which mythical vaccine Carrey thinks is unnecessary, because I look at the chart and can’t find one that won’t save a lot of lives.

Point is, in Oliver’s example above, he is exactly right and you are very nearly perfectly wrong.. But I’ll give you points for being pedantic (What? We’re arguing on a blog comment thread, which pretty much defines pedantic..).

So this would be the “I have a black friend” defense, you think?

No Crusty, I’m in the right place. Carrey is most decidedly anti-vaccine, in the same way my hypothetical bigot is anti-Semitic. Weak praise is no antidote for ignorant fear mongering.

OK, I’m honestly confused by your comments. What did I say that you interpreted to mean I was claiming someone is for something while they attack it?

Carrey does state in the article that he isn’t opposed to vaccines. “We have never argued that people shouldn’t be immunized for the most serious threats including measles and polio”. (Which actually supports the only point that I originally made and have been trying to keep the focus on: OW misrepresented Carrey when he said he (Carrey) had the “attitude [which] caused a measles outbreak in San Diego”.)

No, but a lot of people here pretend to be.

Jim Carrey choose to stand up and put his voice behind a claim in order to give it weight. He acted like he was an expert, even if he claims he is not.

Actions matter more than words.

I think that’s something we can all agree on.

When Carrey tells us vaccines contain anti-freeze (which they don’t), he is anti-vaccine. When he tells us that the US Federal Court of Claims determined vaccines caused Hannah Poling’s autism (not true), he is anti-vaccine. When he repeats demonstrably false slanders against Dr. Offit, he is anti-vaccine. When he assumes an autism epidemic (unlikely), and attributes said epidemic to vaccines (no evidence for that either), he is anti-vaccine.

The only “controversy” regarding vaccines and autism exists on fringe websites and the Huffington Post. Please don’t tell me Arianna has bought into this nonsense. I thought it was the Republicans who subvert science for ideological ends.

You’ve read it, but you don’t seem to understand it (see following).

He has the option to refer to someone who is an expert, but he’s not doing that, is he?
Well, let’s see. (quote from 2000 panel redacted)

This is not citing an expert, this is utilizing the fear and ignorance of 9 years ago to make bogus claims that a threat exists today. Any idea why the only report he’s quoting is a panel from 2000? I made the point earlier, but back then there was only one study available, it connected vaccines and autism, and it was a complete fraud! At the time, panels were convened (like the one Carrey is quoting, note that it’s a panel, not a research paper/epidemiological study), warnings were issued, and much research money was given to further study links between vaccines and autism. None were found and the original study was retracted after reanalysis of the original data found no vaccine/autism link. Carrey is cherry-picking quotes from that time (when, unlike today, there was no data demonstrating the complete absence of a vaccine/autism link), while ignoring the reams of data since then.

Someone can give an opinion and make no claim, express or implied, that they are an expert.

By that standard nearly everyone who comments here is an expert on US History, world politics, group psychology, economics, medicine, constitutional law, media, football, etc. etc. etc.

Nice distraction, but last I saw, no one here, including Oliver or our regular commenter from Dysentery magazine has 1/1000000th the soap box that Jim Carrey has. When you are a celebrity and you utilize your power to make the rounds on TV and print to decry vaccines as dangerous (generally vaguely), citing a variety of incorrect and irrelevant “facts”, you are implying that you are an expert. Carrey also utilizes the “parent of autistic child” to further enhance his status. FWIW, I’d also be irate at any parent of an autistic child getting on TV/print to make similar bogus claims.

I disagree. Someone can give an opinion and make no claim, express or implied, that they are an expert. You, for example, have often commented on economic matters to the point of saying what should and should not be done. Am I to take it then that you then are an expert?

Crusty: As CS says, when you’re telling people what to do and think, you’re portraying yourself as an expert.

By that standard nearly everyone who comments here is an expert on US History, world politics, group psychology, economics, medicine, constitutional law, media, football, etc. etc. etc.

He has the option to refer to someone who is an expert, but he’s not doing that, is he?

Well, let’s see.

On August 21, 2000 a congressional investigation’s report titled, “Conflicts in Vaccine Policy,” stated:
…
For a sample of vaccine injury evidence go to http://www.generationrescue.org/lincolnmemorial.html [which in one further click gets to statements by the CDC's Immunization Safety Office, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a former Chief Scientific Officer at the UK Department of Health...]
…
I think I’d rather listen to the more sensible voice of Dr. Bernadine Healy, former head of the National Institute of Health, who says…

I seem to be the only one who is actually reading what Carey actually wrote in the article OW referenced.

As CS says, when you’re telling people what to do and think, you’re portraying yourself as an expert. It’s authority by celebrity, as Oliver said in the first place, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s accompanied by modesty or not. He has the option to refer to someone who is an expert, but he’s not doing that, is he?

Sean D. Martin: “Ah, so it doesn’t matter what someone says, only what you say they are doing. Suddenly many of the comments in this thread start to make sense.”

If someone says, ‘I’m not an expert, but here’s what you should be doing…’ they are portraying themselves as an expert.

It’s a matter of looking at what they are doing and not just at what they are saying.