When you need to address Jenny McCarthy's ideas, you really need to consult one of her equals: a puppet with rags and styrofoam for a brain.
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More articles by PZ Myers can be found on Freethoughtblogs at the new Pharyngula!
Peer-evaluation of Jenny McCarthy
Category: Humor • Kooks
Posted on: November 28, 2008 5:11 PM, by PZ Myers
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Comments
Posted by: Matt7895 | November 28, 2008 5:17 PM
How do you think the whole 'MMR vaccine causes autism' thing started? I mean, I know Chinese whispers and how the smallest things get spun out of all proportion, but there must have been a start to this whole thing. Some nutjob must have said something and then for some wacky reason he or she was taken seriously by the general public.
Posted by: Citizen Z | November 28, 2008 5:25 PM
How do you think the whole 'MMR vaccine causes autism' thing started?
A researcher named Andrew Wakefield published a study showing a possible connection between the MMR vaccine and autism spectrum disorders. The other researchers involved in the study asked to be removed as authors due to shoddy methodology, and Wakefield neglected to reveal conflicts of interest, namely the wad of cash he got from trial lawyers who want to sue people since "the vaccine causes autism". (Anyone feel free to correct me where I'm wrong.)
Posted by: black wolf | November 28, 2008 5:40 PM
IIrc, the shoddy conclusion of the study was published in a British tabloid and spread from there. Later investigations revealed that the 'research' was based on a sample of something like eight (8) patients.
Posted by: Christopher | November 28, 2008 5:40 PM
Nasty cause and effect:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7753210.stm
Posted by: dreamstretch | November 28, 2008 5:46 PM
I surfed onto this earlier:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article4837798.ece
The number of anti-vaccine comments for a generally reputable publication is pretty scary.
Posted by: Peridragon | November 28, 2008 6:15 PM
There were 12 subjects in the Wakefield study, all selected based on the fact that they already had autism symptoms. I read that study for a report about a month ago and it practically screamed "confirmation bias", "sampling bias", and "insufficient sample size". No wonder none of the other scientists involved wanted to be associated with it.
Posted by: Rose Colored Glasses | November 28, 2008 6:18 PM
Two points.
1. If Jenny McCarthy caught polio, I would laugh my ass off. Yeah, I know that's unkind, but see it in context.
2. I'd personally rather she'd keep her clothes on.
Posted by: clinteas | November 28, 2008 6:44 PM
Ohhhh no PZ,not that can of worms......
Posted by: Mike | November 28, 2008 6:57 PM
I think Jenny & her ilk need to start paying for the spread of disease formerly controlled by regular vaccination.
I watched her say (paraphrasing), with a straight face, that her child was perfect, had to be perfect, so that any illness he got had to be caused by some outside sinister force. Her lunacy is easy to see, clearly easy to spread, but difficult to correct.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead | November 28, 2008 7:02 PM
PZ, here you go making fun of styrofoam by comparing it to Jenny McCarthy's brain. Styrofoam has many noble uses, including home insulation. The same cannot be said for that her brain.
Posted by: Shamar | November 28, 2008 7:03 PM
Okay....yeah..........let it be said...............since MCarthy wants to consider scientific research to be completly irrelevant....
wait....
wait....
wait....
wait for it....
FUCK JENNY MCARTHY
(yeah, I said it)
RAmen!
Posted by: T. Bruce McNeely | November 28, 2008 7:08 PM
No thanks, I might catch teh stoopid.
Posted by: Chris H. | November 28, 2008 7:43 PM
Matt7895 said "How do you think the whole 'MMR vaccine causes autism' thing started?"
All explained in this book:
http://scienceblogs.com/bookclub/autisms_false_prophets/
Really good book. The author was on a recent Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast (I posted the link on the above blog last week).
Short version here:
http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-summary.htm
Also, to add what Peridragon said, the dozen kids were provided by the lawyer. In getting the samples from the gut, one child had his intestines perforated in several places and is now even more severely disabled.
Posted by: Jadehawk | November 28, 2008 8:00 PM
how do you know? have you ever tried insulating with the brains of idiots...? Because as far as I can tell, Teh Stupid insulates pretty well :-p
This whole situation is certainly not helped by the Hannah Poling story. Anyone knows a good source for the facts of the story? because google only throws up anti-vaxxer sites...
Posted by: Michael | November 28, 2008 8:08 PM
That is the most fantastic thing I've seen all day. Thanks for posting.
-Michael
www.stopjenny.com
Posted by: HCN | November 28, 2008 8:10 PM
Jadehawk said "This whole situation is certainly not helped by the Hannah Poling story. Anyone knows a good source for the facts of the story?"
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=341
and
http://neurodiversity.com/weblog/article/176/ (follow the links)
Posted by: Jadehawk | November 28, 2008 8:30 PM
thanks
Posted by: Last Hussar | November 28, 2008 8:48 PM
Dreamstretch- to be fair, those comments are not the fault of the Times- that would like blaming PZ for the Creationist comments here.
Posted by: Doug the Primate | November 28, 2008 9:59 PM
Uh, just got in from Titan ... who the heck is this Jenny McCarthy that anyone is paying attention to a nutter? There's a difference between genuinely ignorant (me) and genuinely stoopid (she).
DP
Posted by: _Arthur | November 28, 2008 10:57 PM
Doug, Jenny McCarthy was informed that her baby, who she tought was an "indigo child", was autistic, and there was no pills to un-autisuc him. So she rushed on The Google, and found very pleasnat doctors willing to CURE her son with natural herbal supplements and chelation agents.
She sometimes say that her son is cured, and sometimes that he's about to start a new quack treatment.
Oh, and her mommy sense told her it was the nasty vaccines that got her child that way.
Posted by: Orac | November 29, 2008 12:03 AM
You forgot:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/03/the_hannah_poling_case_and_the_rebrandin.php
But, damn it, why are people sending links like this to PZ before they send them to me? After all, trashing Jenny McCarthy over her antivaccine loony tune views is what I do best on ScienceBlogs...
:-)
Posted by: Stanton | November 29, 2008 12:23 AM
That's only if you're trying to keep reason and intelligent thinking out. Teh Stupid lets heat and stupidity leak out into the environment. It's like asbestos, but stupider.Posted by: Samantha Vimes | November 29, 2008 12:49 AM
Stupid brains also feed bacteria and cause a major stink in the attic.* Not good insulation material.
*Not that I've tried, but I do know someone who had dead squirrels in his walls, and that's about McCarthy's brain level.
Posted by: Heather Kuhn | November 29, 2008 1:57 AM
Samantha @ 23:
Naaah, squirrels are much smarter than she is.
Posted by: shonny | November 29, 2008 3:01 AM
Posted by: Heather Kuhn | November 29, 2008 1:57 AM
Samantha @ 23:
Naaah, squirrels are much smarter than she is.
----
Notice she says DEAD squirrels, Heather :^)
Posted by: Richard Wolford | November 29, 2008 3:39 AM
Her point still stands :)
Posted by: John Phillips, FCD | November 29, 2008 7:03 AM
FTW, LOL
Posted by: AJS | November 29, 2008 9:23 AM
I say, let the unvaccinated die.
As a taxpayer, I know that I will ultimately end up footing the bill for drugs being used to treat these cases of measles -- and the inevitable, rare-but-expensive long-term effects of the disease, which they would never even have caught in the first place if they had only been vaccinated. That will end up costing many times more than what a jab would have cost -- and meanwhile, the authorities will have even less money to spend on more important things.
Don't these people have parents and grandparents, who actually remember the days before vaccines -- when childhood diseases such as measles were occasionally fatal? Have they never seen the devastation that can be caused by measles in the third world?
Posted by: Lester | November 29, 2008 9:30 AM
Who is Jenny McCarthy?
Posted by: BobbyEarle | November 29, 2008 9:35 AM
You really don't want to know. Really.
Posted by: Zeekster | November 29, 2008 10:06 AM
Jenny McCarthy started her "career" as a Playboy centerfold in 1993 and then moved on to hosting a show on MTV. My most vivid memory of her was a perfume ad she "modeled" for where she is sitting on a toilet with her draws dropped. Curiously enough, Wikipedia tells me that "In 1996, McCarthy landed a small part in the comedy The Stupids."
Posted by: PRK | November 29, 2008 12:46 PM
As the parent of a regularly vaccinated autistic son, it's nice to see that there are some rational people not swayed by any of her anti-vac crap and not taken in by any of her cure crap, either. She's not helping her own kid or mine with this drivel. I also can't even begin to tell you how nauseating it is when the Godbots pipe in with: "God gives special kids to special parents, blah, blah, blah..." Jenny McLunatic certainly is special, isn't she...
Posted by: bluescat48 | November 29, 2008 3:14 PM
Maybe if the "brainless" idiots had styrofoam in place of the garbage there now, they might not be so idiotic.
Posted by: kev_s | November 29, 2008 3:19 PM
I strongly recommend' Bad Science' by Ben Goldacre for background to the MMR scare started by Andrew Wakefield. See the chapter 'The Media's MMR Hoax'. If you like Pat Condell you will appreciate Ben Goldacre too. He tells it straight.
Posted by: Bubba Sixpack | November 29, 2008 4:00 PM
Someone send Jenny McCarthy's resume to Faux News. With that great-looking but inanely vacuous personality, she would fit in perfectly.
Posted by: HadasS | November 29, 2008 4:45 PM
kev_s, I was just reading Ben Goldacre the other day - he does an excellent job of describing the entire mess.
Posted by: HCN | November 29, 2008 6:50 PM
Orac said "You forgot"...
Oops, and yes I did. Thanks.
AJS said "I say, let the unvaccinated die."
Having a child who depended on herd immunity for pertussis due to his history of neonatal seizures, I find your sentiment appalling. There are those who depend on herd immunity, and I am disgusted at those whose idiocy is at the heart of eroding herd immunity.
Explain to me very carefully why these two boys deserved their fate:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1055533.ece
Posted by: cheeb | November 30, 2008 5:35 PM
Hey, would you prefer your child be paralyzed from polio, or autistic?
It absolutely sickens me to know that some parents would not have an immediate answer to this.
Fuck their objections, vaccination should be mandatory. Jenny McCarthy is a child abuser.
Posted by: Dave Wisker | November 30, 2008 6:13 PM
This quote from Jenny McCarthy pretty much says it all:
Posted by: Bureaucratus Minimis | December 1, 2008 1:31 PM
Myers, this posting was contemptible for its immaturity. Name-calling doesn't help anything, and only paints you, and the others who piled-on, as jerks.
Nobody on the planet is under any delusions about McCarthy's intelligence. However, slamming a grieving mother, however far-fetched her beliefs, is shameful.
You people are not helping the cause of rationalism. Next time you wonder why more people don't jump on your bandwagon, re-read this post.
Posted by: William Miller | December 1, 2008 5:13 PM
Cheeb, if the nastier kinds of autism (not Asperger's or high-functioning, which can actually be advantages in some situations) were really caused by vaccines, they'd have a point. But they're not.
I'd much rather end up in a wheelchair but still be able to use my mind than to lose my mental abilities but be able to walk and run.
The point isn't that autism is any less serious than infectious diseases - it's simply that vaccines DON'T have ANY relationship to autism.
Posted by: HCN | December 1, 2008 6:04 PM
Bureaucratus Minimis said "Nobody on the planet is under any delusions about McCarthy's intelligence. However, slamming a grieving mother, however far-fetched her beliefs, is shameful."
Where did Myers call her any names?
One: Jenny McCarthy is not a grieving mother, her son is very much alive. If anything, she has used her son's seizure disorder to help her career by keeping herself in the celebrity spotlight.
Two: No one is slamming her for having a disabled child, we are slamming her for her statements that contradict science and could cause harm to other children (like seeking unnecessary and possible harmful treatments, and withholding vaccines from children). She even had the temerity to shout down doctors claiming her Google education and being a mommy was sufficient.
Oh, by the way... if you are concerned: I have a son with a seizure disorder and related speech/language and learning disabilities. He also has some other health issues that make him vulnerable to the erosion of herd immunity that Ms. McCarthy is helping to create.
Posted by: beerinacan | December 1, 2008 8:05 PM
Huffington post is apparently anti-vax :
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/autism
blech.
Posted by: Bureaucratus Minimis | December 2, 2008 10:08 AM
HCN:
Myers wrote: "...one of her [McCarthy's] equals: a puppet with rags and styrofoam for a brain." Sure, you can weasel and pretend that because Myers didn't directly call her styrofoam-brained that he didn't name call, but you're straining over gnats. My original contention about name-calling stands.
Grieving is not necessarily limited to bereavement. I'm well aware that her son is very much alive, though impaired. Granted, distraught would have been a more precise descriptor, but again you're straining at gnats.
I never claimed that she was being slammed for being the mother of a disabled child. Don't see how a reasonable person could have concluded that from my post. Again, you're trying to muddle the issue.
You and your son have my sympathy, of course, as do McCarthy and her child.
I agree that McCarthy's actions are unhelpful, but a more mature response would have been along the order of: "McCarthy is just plain wrong about this. She fails to understand the difference between actual science and conclusions drawn by non-impartial observers..."
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead | December 2, 2008 10:17 AM
BM
Posted by: Steve_C | December 2, 2008 10:19 AM
I don't read the Huffington just for the fact it's a little too California new age woo-ee for me. Plus Deepak posts there... and probably Andrew Weil too.
Posted by: Bureaucratus Minimis | December 2, 2008 11:44 AM
Nerd of Redhead: ???
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead | December 2, 2008 11:46 AM
Whoa, I messed up that post.
I was just thanking you for your concern, and rejecting it.
Posted by: SC | December 2, 2008 11:57 AM
Orac points to this frequently.
I thought you were calling his/her comments shitty. :)
Posted by: Bureacratus Minimis | December 2, 2008 12:37 PM
NoR:
I thought that's what you meant, but I was giving you the benefit of doubt. Your response only reinforces the point I made in the second sentence of my post #40.
Calling concern trolling here is simply a dodge to avoid serious discussion of the issue.
There is something very sick about a political movement that cannot tolerate the mildest of criticisms from within. Andrew Sullivan, 10/1/2008
Posted by: darkseraphina | December 6, 2008 6:23 AM
Bureacratus minimis:
blah, blah, blah.
I put a lot more stock in #32 PRK: she knows of which she speaks AND (unlike McCarthy) can say it coherently, succinctly, and without misusing the words 'anecdotal' or 'science'. And yes, i brought an insult into rational criticism...sometimes, when people act fundamentally stupid, and drag others down with them, there is not better way to illustrate the point than with a clear, firm:
"Stop being an asshat and let the adults talk now."
Posted by: AJS | December 6, 2008 6:58 AM
HCN@37,
Such corner cases only go to show why it's important for as many people as possible to be vaccinated against diseases -- because anyone who could and should have been vaccinated but hasn't, is presenting a risk to those who, for legitimate reasons, could not.
I am not, absit omen, a parent of an unvaccinable child. But I'm damned sure that if I was, and a vaccinable child in the same class as mine caught the disease because someone refused the jab, I'd have a few choice words for that kid's parents.
Posted by: Eric | December 11, 2008 8:34 AM
I think people here should take this problem a lot more seriously. It's easy to pooh-pooh Jenny McCarthy as just another blond bimbo. But she's more than that. She's a very outraged mother - a political force that can't be under estimated in America. The problem is her accusations are a little more complex than "vaccinations cause autism". She questions why children require 36 nowdays rather than 10 in years past and why the vaccinations contain mercury. The last accusation is especially alarming (if true) because everyone knows mercury is not a healthy metal to have in one's system. The undertone to these arguments is the phamaceutical industry is striving to maximize profits at consumer expense. This may sound alarmist as well, except that any skeptic who says big pharma really looks out for Joe Citizen may as well admit to believing in ghosts the same breath.
I'm NOT saying she's correct or intelligent. I am saying she shouldn't be ignored. She's backed by a very earnest organization and their full arguments can be found here: http://www.generationrescue.org/survey.html
These accusations need to be addressed seriously and in detail to reassure the public. If they're true this is a serious health care issue that must be addressed immediately. If they're not it's STILL a serious health care issue. If parents stop vaccinating their children many diseases nearly forgotten will return to everyone's detriment. For those who just hate blonds, take comfort in the fact that McCarthy could be sued by anyone who takes her advice and has a child die or get crippled.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | December 11, 2008 8:40 AM
fixed
They have been ad nauseum. There is no shown link what so ever between vaccinations, vaccination schedules, Thiomersal or aluminum (and a host of other things) and Autism.
To claim they haven't been seriously addressed exposes your ignorance on the subject.