Open letter to Oprah re: Jenny

As a follow-up to my recent Oprah post, here’s an open letter to Oprah asking her to reconsider giving Jenny McCarthy a voice on her own show. The money quote:

Surely you must realize that McCarthy is neither a medical professional nor a scientist. And yet she acts as a spokesperson for the anti-vaccination movement, a movement that directly impacts people’s health. Claims that vaccines are unsafe and cause autism have been refuted time after time, but their allure persists in part because of high-profile champions for ignorance like McCarthy. In fact, ten of the thirteen authors of the paper that sparked the modern anti-vaccination movement retracted the explosive conclusions they made due to insufficient evidence. Furthermore, it is now clear that the study’s main author, Andrew Wakefield, falsified data to support these shaky conclusions.

Please, Oprah… read this. Childrens’ lives are at stake, without hyperbole. It would be absolutely reprehensible to let her spout her ill-founded beliefs to an audience as huge and as credulous as your own.

Open letter to Oprah re: Jenny
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Open mindedness

This is going viral lately through the rationalists/skeptics blogosphere for some reason, though I recall watching it a few months ago, probably from Pharyngula. Don’t recall if I posted it here or not (and not going to bother digging through the archive right now), so if I did, consider this a repost. It’s worth watching again.

I’m working (slowly) on a post about that link regarding RNA spontaneously self-arranging (which I re-tweeted from Richard Dawkins, over on my Twitter feed), but it’s not likely to be done tonight. I also have a special post scheduled to go up tomorrow, that I’ve already written.

Open mindedness

Church of the Flying Elephants

PZ Myers wrote a wonderful expansion of the old parable about blind men encountering an elephant. It begins:

Once upon a time, four blind men were walking in the forest, and they bumped into an elephant.

Moe was in front, and found himself holding the trunk. “It has a tentacle,” he said. “I think we have found a giant squid!”

Larry bumped into the side of the elephant. “It’s a wall,” he said, “A big, bristly wall.”

Curly, at the back, touched the tail. “It’s nothing to worry about, nothing but a piece of rope dangling in the trail.”

Eagletosh saw the interruption as an opportunity to sit in the shade beneath a tree and relax. “It is my considered opinion,” he said, “that whatever it is has feathers. Beautiful iridescent feathers of many hues.”

Go read the rest. It should hopefully enlighten you on how incorrect assumptions, stubbornness, and a lack of scientific curiosity, can dovetail and snowball into a religion, a meme that blinds people to the truth of the universe.

Church of the Flying Elephants

Wherein I explain how Oprah is quantifiably damaging humankind

If only he had joined a mainstream religion, like Oprahism or Voodoo.
Professor Farnsworth, Futurama

In a previous blog post, I made the assertion that Oprah Winfrey and her current fame is a net negative for society, and that’s not a charge I’m willing to make lightly. I’m going to start this post by describing a number of good deeds that Oprah has performed, because I am anything but an unfair critic. Bear in mind that I reserve the right to temper any praise for any individual point after the fact, because there’s at least one “charitable act” that I can think of, that was poorly thought out and ultimately a waste of money.

Get some popcorn, this is a long one.
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Wherein I explain how Oprah is quantifiably damaging humankind