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alp227

(31,962 posts)
Tue Mar 22, 2016, 04:52 PM Mar 2016

Andrew Wakefield’s antivaccine propaganda film to be screened at the Tribeca Film Festival

Regular readers might remember my mentioning the documentary Andrew Wakefield was working on. It was going to be about the latest conspiracy theory coming out of the fever swamp of antivaccine pseudoscience, the so-called “CDC Whistleblower” William W. Thompson. Thompson, as you recall, is a the CDC scientist who complained to Brian Hooker, a biochemical engineer turned incompetent antivaccine epidemiologist, that the analysis of important study done by his colleagues at the CDC in 2004 and him (DeStefano et al) was manipulated to hide a real positive result correlating MMR vaccination with autism in African-Americans. As I said at the time, Hooker’s “reanalysis” of the DeStefano et al study basically proved Andrew Wakefield wrong in that, other than for a very small subgroup, there wasn’t a hint of a whiff of a whisper of a positive correlation between the MMR vaccine and autism, and the one seemingly positive result was almost certainly spurious. It was only because of Hooker’s utter incompetence at epidemiology and statistics that he foolishly inferred an actual result from his “reanalysis.”

Because this story seemed to confirm what I like to call the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement, namely that the CDC or other government agencies “knew” that vaccines cause autism but hid it from the people. Of course, only antivaccine activists are not “sheeple.” Only they know The Truth. Only they have figured the conspiracy out. Only they are not sheeple. And now Andrew Wakefield has made a movie about it, called Vaxxed: From Cover-up to Catastrophe.

It’s going to premiere in New York on April 24.

full: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2016/03/22/wtf-andrew-wakefields-antivaccine-documentary-to-be-screened-at-the-tribeca-film-festival/

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Andrew Wakefield’s antivaccine propaganda film to be screened at the Tribeca Film Festival (Original Post) alp227 Mar 2016 OP
I read that as former "Doctor Who" at first, and was prepared to be very disappointed... Salviati Mar 2016 #1
Hope it wins Best Comedy KamaAina Mar 2016 #2
Oh for cripes sake. drm604 Mar 2016 #3
The linked post is fascinating. nt msanthrope Mar 2016 #4
I'd say that it's disappointing that people behind the film festival would help to promote Blasphemer Mar 2016 #5
That fucking piece of shit. Odin2005 Mar 2016 #6

Salviati

(6,002 posts)
1. I read that as former "Doctor Who" at first, and was prepared to be very disappointed...
Tue Mar 22, 2016, 04:55 PM
Mar 2016

But I see it's just this fraud again. It's really too bad there are people who still give this guy a voice outside of crank websites.

Blasphemer

(3,261 posts)
5. I'd say that it's disappointing that people behind the film festival would help to promote
Tue Mar 22, 2016, 06:51 PM
Mar 2016

such nonsense, but the reality is that Hollywood is the perfect place for pseudoscience to fester. You have a lot of minimally educated people whose identities are built around a belief in the link between creativity and being unorthodox. For some, that means anything that goes against that which is commonly accepted must have credibility. It's the same reason people like Roman Polanski can remain celebrated in that town.

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