White Coat Underground

Orac’s money quote of the day

Posted by PalMD on April 23, 2009
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Orac isn’t known for his sound bites. He tends to write pieces which, in the blogosphere, might be considered rather long, and for good reason—he has a lot to say, and he says it well. But sometimes there is a gem of insolence that is so apt, it must be reshared:

But what really makes this analogy so brain dead is that it was the very epidemiological methods that have so consistently failed to find any correlation between vaccines and autism that led scientists to realize that smoking is strongly correlated with cancer. Jim [Carrey], while accepting the epidemiology linking tobacco smoke to cancer, rejects the very same sorts of methodology when it doesn’t produce the results he wants to see.

Yep. And that’s the difference between science and ideology in a nutshell.

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Comments

  1. #1 Dave Gill
    April 23, 2009

    You see the same thing with evolution deniers and climate change deniers. Any yet some of them (the religious fundies) are quick to criticize the so-called “cafeteria Christians” who pick and choose what they will believe. That kind of cognitive dissonance must make it hard to keep your head from exploding.

  2. #2 Michael Simpson
    April 23, 2009

    @Dave Gill

    And AIDS denialists. And….never mind, the list goes on.

    @Orac

    A real scientist would never use that logic. But no real scientist is anti-vaccine, so they need Jim Carrey to do it. And I still am unconvinced he wrote any of that blog.

  3. #3 Chuck
    April 23, 2009

    No true Scotsman right Michael

  4. #4 Matt Springer
    April 23, 2009

    Chuck: Some people are not in fact Scotsmen.

  5. #5 Joe Average
    April 23, 2009

    Since it appears that the Naturopath Challenge has concluded, I want to thank the members of this blog for their time and effort responding to many of my questions.

    The debate was insightful.
    Thanks again,
    Joe Average

  6. #6 Marilyn Mann
    April 24, 2009

    Nice pro-vaccine op-ed in LA Times:

    http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-practice20-2009apr20,0,6718127.story