The Creeping Danger of Conspiracy Theorists

You're mixing two issues here. Further you also answer your own question "until it affects other folx."

Having an abortion isn't a communicable disease. One might not agree with abortions but even accepting the position that a fetus is a person then at most two people are affected.

Abortion is an important issue but different. This is exactly the type of confusion though of issues that allow conspiracy and frankly ignorance to persists.

Also just to add I suspect that many of the anti-vaccine crowd are probably pro-choice. This is an issue that seems to cross the political spectrum and given that some of the areas with the most unvaccinated are in California likely many of these people are on the left side of the spectrum.

 

That is what makes it a creeping danger. You have people who can make a very compelling sounding argument, relying up anecdotes, cherry picked science and psuedo-science and then you have people who can play upon political and cultural biases while also being presented by people who are attractive and used to being in the popular culture. For people who haven't looked into these claims and when presented through the power of unscrupulous media on shows like Dr. Oz they can be very compelling.

Many people will put more credence into something presented by telegenic people like Dr. Oz and Jenny McCarthy than they will into a dull presentation from the CDC or NIH.

 

Sounds like an interesting film. It also brings up something that many have pointed out. That the same types of tactics that the tobacco companies used to argue against the science that linked smoking to lung cancer are used in regard to global warming and other issues where science is in conflict with entrenched business interests.

http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-03-06/merchants-doubt-looks-experts-peddling-junk-science-public

'Merchants of doubt' looks at 'experts' peddling junk science to the public

We see them all the time on the news, on talk shows and on seemingly informative televised debates: The scientists and experts who help us to better understand the big issues facing society — everything from consumer safety to climate change.

ut many of these so-called experts are also firmly in the pockets of the corporations and special interest groups who benefit from their research findings. An expert working for tobacco company R.J. Reynolds, for example, may tell us that there are doubts about the long term health effects of smoking. Similarly, an expert working for Exxon may tell us there are doubts about climate change being a real threat to the planet.

What's more surprising is the incredible sway these so-called experts have over policy, laws, what we buy in stores and how the public perceives different issues. And now a new film called "Merchants of Doubt" delves into the work of the corporate-paid experts in our world, and why so many of us are willing to believe them.

“We see this [doubt movement] growing out of tobacco — for 50 years, people were able to create doubt where there was no doubt,” says Robert Kenner, the film’s director. “They were kind of masterful at it.”

Many of the scientific experts originally hired by big tobacco have since shifted their focus toward other industries as public awareness and acceptance of the risks of smoking have been cemented in American culture.

“They’ve ultimately gone on to the biggest payday, which is now climate change,” says Kenner. “It’s not one group — many of these [businesses] are just looking to delay, like the tobacco guys did, for as long as possible. And they’re really good.”

Kenner says all of today’s “doubtmeisters” learned at the feet of the old masters from the Marlboro days.

“I spoke to Peter Sparber, who was masterful at working for tobacco,” says Kenner. “He helped slow down legislation on a slow burning cigarette. He was able to convince people it was not cigarettes that cause house fires, it was couches. He was able to make a law that [requires] chemicals to be put in these couches. It turned out it didn’t prevent fires and it also caused cancer.”

Sparber, who was interviewed for the film, told Kenner that if a person can successfully create doubt around tobacco products, they can do it with just about anything.

“He said, ‘You could take James Hansen, the leading climate scientist, and I could take a garbage man and I could get America to believe that the garbage man knows more about climate change than Hansen does,’” says Kenner. “[Sparber] is a very talented man.”

Kenner says that these so-called “merchants of doubt” have been able to thrive due to the media. Many news outlets and talk shows allow these scientists to go unchallenged. When coupled with shrinking newsrooms and fewer reporters and investigative journalists, evaluating these claims can at times be a Herculean task.

“They’re ready to pervert truth to create delay,” says Kenner. “When they knew their tobacco caused cancer, they weren’t going to go out and say that it doesn’t cause cancer. They say, ‘We need more studies.’ They’ll figure out language that allows them to continue that doubt and delay, but they’ll try not to be libelous about it. They are able to fool and ultimately confuse the public.”

These masters of doubt walk a fine line to ensure that the law is on their side, making sure to create enough skepticism without outwardly stating their claims, says Kenner. But there have been some small victories for the public: In 2012, a federal judge forced cigarette companies to spend their own money on public advertising campaigns admitting that they lied to the public about the dangers of smoking.

“It’s a shame it takes so long,” says Kenner. “I spoke to the Winston man and he said he was on the set one day and asked the executives, ‘Do you guys smoke?’ They said, ‘No, that’s for poor people, black people, and stupid people — we wouldn’t touch the stuff.’”

Instead of our health, Kenner says that the masters of doubt are now playing with our climate.

“But it also goes beyond climate,” says Kenner. “It could be any product; it’s about inconvenient science. We love science, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of profit.”

“Merchants of Doubt” opens in theaters March 6.