Lawyers must love Ben. All he has to do is speak the truth, and wham, the kooks charge in. He recently posted a clip from a radio program in which lunatic anti-vaccination nut Jeni Barnett said many stupid things, so she rushed to silence her own words. Can’t have the fact that she’s spluttering nonsense made public, of course!
It is my view that in this extended broadcast Jeni exemplifies every single canard ever uttered by the antivaccination movement. “It’s a conspiracy by the pharmaceutical industry.” “Science always changes so you can believe what you like.” “It’s a debate and a controversy.” “Measles was never that bad anyway.” “Immune systems are damaged by being understimulated.” “Immune systems are damaged by being overstimulated.” And so on.
The clip has been taken down from Goldacre’s site while the lawyers frolic, but this is the internet: it’s still available elsewhere. I recommend that more of us download a copy and keep it handy. Barnett is only going to succeed in disseminating her own indictment ever further.
Even better: Science Punk and a network of bloggers have partial clips and transcripts of the silly show. Watch the net route around lawyer-induced damage and keep the information flowing!
Haven’t these fools heard of the Streisand Effect?
Hahaha they shake down Ben Goldacre for putting up their embarrassing where people will here and they get linked from boingboing and Pharyngula. The Streisand effect is a beautiful thing
That woman is a dangerious and delusional indevidual who should not be endorsed by a large radio company. Its great to see that the legal threats will only get them more attention from all the right thinking people with blogs and their readers. Well done internet!
You can read some of the transcription on SciencePunk:
http://scienceblogs.com/sciencepunk/2009/02/jeni_barnett_mmr_show_-_full_t.php
…or as much as you can stomach.
Science always changes so you can believe what you like.
This kind of combination of anti-science dogmatism with anti-science nihilism is terrific! There are people complain the lack of absolute truth in Science and champion the Truths of Religions. But there are other people that complain the use of evidence-based medicine and expouse a believe-what-pleased-you medicine. And, finally, there are people combining dogmatism and nihilism: “Vaccines are always bad but you can believe as you want”.
This kind of doublethink (“Immune systems are damaged by being understimulated” – “Immune systems are damaged by being overstimulated”) is a wonderful piece of epistemologics.
Quid pro quo? Anti-vaccination movement rarely demands forbidding vaccines. They usually seek the abolition of compulsory vaccination or the abolition of public vaccination programs.
However, there are also vaccine mongerers that assume that every imagined vaccine is good for everybody.
Part of me wants people to let their kids go un-immunized…if only to weed out the retarded people who don’t immunize their kids.
I know it’s a bit of punishing the kids for the parents idiocy…but a sprog raised by parents of such calibre really doesn’t have much potential to grasp reality.
” You know what else they make that are really cute? Little baby coffins.” House
I’ve had my shots, and so will my kids if I ever decide to have those… go right ahead and dont’ immunise, let’s see what happens.
haate: ignoring the crude Social Darwinism for now, I suggest you google “herd immunity” (unless you also want kids on whom vaccines fail to die).
So…you can get sued for telling the truth when someone doesn’t like it, but telling a pleasant lie everyone seems to believe is just fine?
Is it just me, or do I live in an asylum run by the inmates?
#6; I would agree, but if the portion of unimmunized individuals is sufficiently high, then suddenly those diseases can spread effectively through society. So the real benefit of vaccines is communal and they are sort of screwing everyone…
LBC’s complaint is that Goldacre is depriving them of revenue. They sell recordings Barnett’s broadcasts for £4 each. Goldacre must have screwed them out of at least £8, possibly as much as £12.
Is Jeni telling her lies in the UK or US? If it’s the UK, I would think that her broadcasting company might want to shut her up immediately since the defamation laws there are much more oppressive than around here.
I’m listening to this clip right now. Her first caller is a woman who listened to a HOMEOPATH before deciding not to give her kid the vaccination. A HOMEOPATH!! Then she went onto college to become a homeopath too. This is why pseudoscience CAN BE DANGEROUS. I’m glad I got out of that stupid country when I had the chance.
I’m sure Orac will have a field day with this. That is if he can stomach another post on the subject.
Downloading from WikiLeaks now. . . who’ll be the first to make a remix?
(Because, you know, remixing is OK.)
Makes me glad I live in Texas (Austin) and not England……
#12. In the UK (specifically England – this makes a difference in law stuff) but as Richard Dawkins mentioned in a comment here at Pharyngula, there’s no law against defaming the truth.
Her first caller is a woman who listened to a HOMEOPATH before deciding not to give her kid the vaccination
You’d think homeopaths would love vaccines. After all, vaccination involves giving someone a tiny dose of a weakened or killed pathogen to prevent infection with an overwhelming amount of the same pathogen. Sounds almost homeopathic. And it works and can be demostrated to work. Why don’t they love it? It’s almost like they don’t much believe their own nonsense and are really just attached to the idea of being “mavricks.”
@Matt Heath:
Like I said…part of me ;)
The really bitter and misanthropic part that would gladly push the “end humanity” button if it were available.
The human part of me says “those poor kids, here’s to hoping that they can overcome the ignorance of the parents.
Incidentally, as long as we’re on immunizations, there’s a video posted on “Age of Autism” showing a NY religious exception interview.
From my perspective, the woman’s clearly scamming. She repeatedly tells the school board lawyer that questioning her on her supposed religious beliefs is “invading her spiritual home” (yeah, like 1) you didn’t put your spiritual home on the table in the first place by trying to use it to justify an exception, and 2) what religious twiddle refrains from explaining their religious beliefs?).
But that’s just my opinion. See the video, and see what you think.
Don’t bother commenting on the AoA blog — it’s moderated.
Meant to include the link through ReligionClause blog
http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2009/01/videos-show-questioning-process-in.html
This is mostly off topic, but speaking of the removal of embarrassingly ignorant things being said from the internet, does anyone have a functional link to the interview in which Ben Stein declares that science leads to killing people? The youtube video linked to by PZ Myers the other day has been taken down. I blogged about Stein the other day, but I think it would have been a much more effective post if I could display the video of him speaking instead of just writing out the transcript of what he said. Anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated.
blah… could barley stand listening to that, got about 2 min in and had to stop it… i personally was a very asthmatic child as well i have a heart condition and i have been vaccinated for all the standard diseases and im perfectly fine… and im sure I have a higher IQ then this woman… blah
Sorry. OT, but . . .
Schools seize homes over fees.
– – –
The chief executive of Christian Schools Australia, Stephen O’Doherty, said the need to use debt collectors arose “from time to time”. Parents enrolling a child at any tightly budgeted, independent school had entered a contract, he said. An education was provided in return for a set fee.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/schools-seize-homes-over-fees/2009/02/06/1233423496687.html
Considering that most private schools in Oz are run by catlickers or that other mob of pedophiles (anglicans) . . . just don’t get caught between the religious and the money bag!
I transcribed a couple of minutes pretty much at random and blogged it here.
haate said
Sadly, that’s not entirely true. You’re children’s risk of exposure and contracting of the disease increase — even if they are immunized — if the heard immunity is compromised.
Assume a vaccine offers 90% protection if you are exposed to a pathogen and if you are unimmunized you have 0% protection (not accurate but it keeps the math simple to get the point across). Now, suppose you came into contact with someone with the measles. But that person got it from someone who got it from someone who got it from someone, and on and on. Let’s limit it to just the last three people comprising the vector leading to you. If none of those people were immunized, you’d have a 10% (0.1) chance of contracting the disease. If they were all immunized, you’d have a 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.1 = 0.0001 (which is 1000 times less) chance of contracting the disease. Each of them forms a 90% barrier the disease has to overcome before it can get to you. That’s heard immunity.
Homeopaths hate vaccinations because it interferes with you “aura” or some such crap. It dates back to the time when Hahneman invented homeopathy in 1796. This was well before the germ theory of disease; then it was believed that “miasmas” caused infectious illness. The theory behind it is unchanged.
Although homeopathy is usually regarded as a harmless manifestation of the placebo effect, to the extent that it “works”, there is a considerable danger in that people may go untreated for, lets say malaria or diabetes, but particularly in that its adherents are anti-medicine, particularly when they reject well-proven medicine such as vaccinations. Recent measles outbreaks in the US and the UK have been the results of just such wilful ignorance on the part of otherwise well-educated parents.
Dr Ben Goldacre is a hero here in the UK for his stance against bad science, and deserves our support, which he will of course get.
You could buy his book “Bad Science”, for example.
Unfortunately though, anti-vax campaigners are nastier than gonorrhea and somewhat harder to get rid of. Expect an influx of them on this blog. There’s lots to learn about their “conspiracy” – see Orac for many details.
Good luck, Ben, you will win, yet again!
ghaaaa… HERD immunity. Not heard immunity. Did anybody hear my immunity? It’s around here somewhere.
This recording is like a skit from AbFab, it’d be funny if it weren’t dangerous . . .
Sweetiedahling! Where’s my Bollie? I’m a Buddhist dahling, a homeopahthic Bhuddist dahling. Pats! Pats! Don’t get a JAB Pats, it’s crawling with TOXINS dahling.
Put salt in a sock and heat it. Fuck me, she’s bats.
Um, I beg to differ. My parents were batshit crazy religiots, and I turned out ok…
Well, posting an entire radio show seems like textbook copyright infringement to me. Regardless of how idiotic the person on the show may have been, this goes way past what the fair use exception has typically allowed.
Unfortunately it’s punishing your kids for their idiocy.
Say what you will about lawyers, but I will be damned impressed if someone can point me to the video of Carl Lewis singing the National Anthem!
ESPN $ > teh internets
:(
I feel nice and warm to witness the speed and perspicacity of the scientific community in supporting the B boy in this. Gotta love that Streisand effect.
Meanwhile ….
Sorry about that.
haate@19: Fair enough then.
In related news, Jeni Barnett announced that she’ll be changing her name to Barbra Streisand.
(lol) Classic AV rant, sounds just as scientific as the IdiotDesigners.
There’s a FaceBook group you can join to show support for Ben.
Let’s remind these corporate bullies how many people care about the issues of MMR, science, and suppression of criticism.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=47955872103
Eric@31.
It wasn’t the entire show. It was 44 minutes from a three hour programme. It was posted that way to give people a chance to get the full flavour and avoid any accusation of bias in editing.
He could have just extracted little bits like ‘The Department of Health frightens people’ or the bit where she says vaccines are full of rubbish but she doesn’t know what’s in them.
Or her shouting down callers who were trying to present the facts and accusing her of dangerously misleading people.
Ben Goldacre’s style is to give people the facts and let them reach their own conclusions not lead them into thinking the way he wants them to. It would not have accurred to him to edit the piece nor would he have thought that anyone would be upset.
Sorry to be OT, but what the fuck does a homeopathic college degree syllabus look like?
Well we started with a normal medical syllabus, then diluted it about twenty times, making certain the shook the whole thing vigorously to ensure the vital essence remained intact. As a result, we can now offer you the Doctor of Homeopathic Medicine degree in only two installments of 15 minutes each. It’ll still cost you $200,000, but in terms of lifetime income potential, I’ll sure you’ll agree it is extremely inexpensive.
tony! Quality response, but here in the UK college is different. She probably went to a community college, or night classes, and got some sort of pathetic ‘training’ by a homeopath. But college here is pre-university. Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure there aren’t any homeopathy degrees in the UK!
Eric, as well as not being the whole show, there are other things in BG’s favour.
1) He wasn’t intending to compete with LBC’s podcast as a source of distribution.
2) He was criticising the content of the whole discussion. 3)
LBC’s dangerous misinformation makes it news-reporting and a public interest issue.
There were English lawyers on the thread at Bad Science citing cases that they claimed made it clear that this was fair use in England (before the site got completely Pharynguboinged).
This was amazing. I could only listen to it in short snippets because I found myself alternately stunned by the insane drivel, aghast at the public’s misapprehensions and then ranting at the stereo with the injustice of it all. Definitely not one to listen to whilst driving !
Mr Goldacre, we salute you.
I just wish skeptics got as much air time.
AndySin writes:
Oh but there are, so please do worry. The worst culprit is Greenwich University, and others include Middlesex and the University of Central Lancashire. To their credit, Salford recently announced it was ending its “alternative medicine” degrees. You may have spotted that all of the above are among the lowest ranked universities in the UK.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1900415/Universities-offering-bogus–medical-degrees.html
In fact, it may well be that he isn’t being sued exactly, merely that the radio company is quarreling with his use of their programme. Ben constantly battles with other media outlets in their dissemination of bad pop science. His role is made easier because the UK has fewer traditional newspapers, tv and radio stations to monitor, but of course sciencey stuff is still used as propoganda and to stir up fear in the populace. The anti-vaccine scandal is just one such campaign; scare stories sell newspapers and journalists rarely know enough about science to able to look dispassionately at risks.
If you’d like to see a particularly good example of the smackdown of an anti-vax nut, try this, where a medical student(!) takes on an one such in a particularly calm and reasonable way:
http://healspiel.blogspot.com/2009/01/response-to-anti-vaccination-parent.html
Let’s hope we don’t get the “Age of Autism” nutters on this blog; but if we do…well, I for one won’t be as saintly as miss Dr-to-be.
Ben Goldacre needs to learn a little bit about copyright law and fair use. Nobody would even argue whether it’s appropriate to post 45 minutes of Fellowship of the Ring as a part of a criticism of Peter Jackson’s directing abilities.
Fair use is a gray area almost by definition. But reproducing so much of the show is way, way over the line. Of course he’s exposed to a copyright infringement threat. Sadly, every top-tier blogger has to know about this stuff.
Would his post have been harder to write had he taken the time to make proper excerpts? Yes. Could he have made an equally compelling criticism? Yes, he just would’ve had to work a little harder. This looks to me like self-inflicted martyrdom for ego’s sake.
I think bad science has been pharingulated. Can’t get on line anymore
Coel, That’s incredible! First of all I can’t believe they actually offer these degrees (one being at the University of my home city). And second that they can actually make a whole degree out of diluted water. The mind boggles.
Check out my blog: http://relcotd.blogspot.com/
Religious crime of the day!
Eric:
If it was just criticism I’m sure you’d be right but If people are a giving dangerous misinformation, news-reporting in the public interest becomes a factor. It’s more like if someone posted 40 minutes of an internal corporate video that showed bribes being taken by officials or a video of a public figure at an illegal dog-fight than a section of a movie.
Anyway, as I mentioned English lawyers were citing English legal precedent on Goldacre’s comment thread in support of it being fair use. Other than blatant assertion what do you have supporting the claim that it isn’t?
Also BG is a physician, not a lawyer; even if it is a violation there’s no reason to think it was done knowingly.
Fewer than what?
Andysin:
I wonder if Tim Minchin will sue me if I respond:
Fewer than places with a greater number!
I believe in science and not religion, but I can’t believe that no one here is against at least one vaccine. I am personally against the HPV vaccine for young girls and adults. It is unneccesary as it does not do away with annual pap smear exams and does not protect against every HPV. Why put something in your body that hasn’t been tested and proved not to be harmful?
I believe in science and not religion, but I can’t believe that no one here is against at least one vaccine. I am personally against the HPV vaccine for young girls and adults. It is unnecessary as it does not do away with annual pap smear exams and does not protect against every HPV. Why put something in your body that hasn’t been tested and proved not to be harmful? There are too many drugs found to be harmful after years of use. Just because a drug company says their product is safe for humans doesn’t mean it is true. The FDA does not do its own testing before a product is put on the market. Only when people start getting sick or dying do we find out the truth. I don’t want my children to be used as guinea pigs.
Rita Morrison writes:
Because otherwise you’d quickly starve.
That’s why I’m against sending money to Darfur, it does nothing to help the street-children of Calcutta.
Can’t stop the signal.
does not protect against every HPV
So it doesn’t. Just the genotypes most likely to cause cervical cancer. And anal cancer. And head and neck cancer. And squamous cell carcinoma of the skin. Practically no protection at all.
Rita Morrison at #56 (and again at #57):
I believe in science…
Saying that one “believes in” science casts doubt upon one’s understanding of the nature of science.
…proved not to be harmful
Science does not offer that kind of proof, whether one “believes in” it or not.
The FDA does not do its own testing before a product is put on the market.
duh. It relies on the industries/universities/independent labs involved to do and pay for the tests, but it hardly leaves it at that. All studies submitted to the FDA for approval are rigorously analyzed. Many drug studies and trials have been tossed (at the submitter’s expense, of course) because the standards the FDA uses to judge them are actually quite high. Literally thousands of potentially quite useful medications have been tossed on the scrap heap and never developed because of what might even be considered coincidental occurrences or outliers, but the FDA’s stringent policies required a complete retest that the applicants simply couldn’t afford (in time, money, and/or other resources).
you seem to think there is no oversight at all. This is so far from the actual case as to be entirely laughable.
Well, as I understand it the HPV vaccination does protect against Human Papilloma Virus (and cervical cancer, genital warts, and assorted other complications); what it doesn’t protect against is girls having sex – it is sexually transmitted. I suspect that much of the resistance to this vaccination is that people fear that STDs are a punishment for having sex and therfore that a vaccine will encourage pre-marital sexual relations.
Not approved, then, by “moral” parents who don’t trust their daughters. Is this the real reason why people distrust this particular vaccine?
This is exactly why I don’t get a yearly flu shot – they don’t protect against ALL flu, so what good are they?
And if they REALLY worked, I wouldn’t have to get a new one every year!
[/sarcasm]
Oh and Tim Minchin’s here:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/02/tom_minchin_on_confronting_alternative_m.php
(thanks Orac) Very funny. Enjoy.
Wow, the quick smack-down to Rita’s comment both makes me proud to be a commenter here and makes me a tiny bit more optimistic about the future. Nicely done, guys! Now, let’s hope we can be as effective supporting Ben …
It would be interesting if either a vaccine producer or the NHS decided to sue a few of the more vocal anti-vaxers in the UK. In both cases I would suspect there is a case to be argued that they have suffered damage as a result of the actions of the anti-vaxers. In the case of the vaccine makers in lost sales, and in the case of the NHS increased expenditure in treating more cases of measles.
I don’t think we can, or should, sue the anti-vaxers. It’s part of their received “wisdom” that there is a conspiracy against them which would only be intensified if we tried to shut them up legally.
Much better to fight them with science and logic.
Any anyway, blogs such as this proudly operate on the basis that we can, within reason, say what we feel without repercussions. I mean, I’m (guardedly) pro-choice but would hate to be prosecuted for incitement to murder – extreme example obviously but it comes to mind.
The main trouble I have with anti-vaxers is that unlike with creationists I’ve had a sense-of-humour bypass and feel unable to use ridicule against their particular brand of stupidity. It’s because I think lives are at risk, I guess.
Ben Goldacre is a hero for all free thinkers We should do all in our power to help him and continue his important work, The anti-MMR campaign in the UK will cost lives, measles is on the increase up 36% this year alone . Support Ben Visit is site leave comments on the fool jeni barnetts site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeni_Barnett Complain to the radio station http://www.lbc.co.uk/. Fight for the right to be RIGHT before Just plain Wrong wins!!
Goldacres site is loading slowly or not at all for me. Has it been Pharyngulated, or is someone trying to shut it down the old fashioned ways?
http://www.lbc.co.uk/complaints-and-feedback-5735 this is the link to complain at the radio station.
Let them feel our Wrath
My favourite line is the “most people aren’t that one in fifteen.” True, that’s only 7% of us, which is, oh what, roughly 450,000,000 of us? Just a few.
Um… You make quite a bold claim there: ‘so she rushed to silence her own words’. Can you explain where you got that info from? How you know that she was involved in the decision to request removal of the audio from Ben’s site? I just find it odd given that Barnett seems to be publishing every comment – positive or negative – left on her own blog. That doesn’t seem the action of someone disinterested in dialogue?
540 deaths daily.
197,000 deaths in 2008.
(WHO)
“Measles was never that bad anyway.”
http://pics.livejournal.com/heatherly/pic/0006cqtk/s320x240
Posted by: NickK | February 6, 2009 1:39 PM:
You’re == You are. So I read your sentence this way:
And it doesn’t make any sense. If you find you make this mistake regularly, you might be better off writing in ERV-mode.
It’s pleasing to see how the blogosphere has rallied around Ben. It certainly won’t be the last time the lawyers go after him, but I guess that just shows he’s got the quacks and their uncritical apologists feeling nervous.
Jeni’s show (honestly, who spells it like that? Is it pronounced like Jedi?) was an appalling display of unapologetic ignorance. Her responses to critics, despite her pretence at inviting debate are utterly shameful. A reasonable nurse who contradicted her on air comes to be described as “over-dramatic” and “vicious”. The posts of the Bad Science posse labelled merely as “sarcasm”.
Shameful.
It is just the lunatic fringes. As it says in the NT, “Forget the lunatic fringers, they will always be with us.”
The wayest out ones are the Germ Theory of Disease deniers, especially the HIV/AIDS subbranch. Their two worst tactics are:
1. Quoting some obscure decades old paper. If you bother to get the paper, you invariably find that the quote was taken out of context and doesn’t mean what they said it does. Or the quote isn’t even there.
2. Taking quotes out of papers and “fixing” them.
“HIV causes AIDS” becomes “HIV does not cause AIDS. They just lie a lot.
FWIW, HIV deniers occasionally die of mysterious diseases no one has ever heard of. Strangely enough, they sound a lot like the opportunistic infections and cancers that AIDS patients are alleged to die of. Some delusions can kill.
#70 – your first link isn’t the radio host’s website, it’s the Wikipedia article about her. Leaving comments there is a waste of time pure and simple. They will just be reverted by other Wikipedia editors and it’s incredibly unlikely that the subject of the article will ever see them.
She has a podcast named, ironically, ‘Bad Medicine’, I loaded it into my ipod, not knowing what a kook she was and my mouth dropped to the ground when I heard her crazy spiel. Please go to itunes and rate this podcast so no one else will be gobsmacked by her drivel!
A truly staggering number of contradictions are contained in the broadcast. Seemingly, Bad Science has imploded, as I can’t load it, and links from here and Bad Astronomy also fail. Maybe the LBC suits are more powerful than expected…
Anyway, comments can also be posted at Jeni’s blog:
http://www.jenibarnett.com/index.php
Be nice. We gain nothing (except some self-important giggles) by abuse.
I’ve got a copy now. Think I’ll put it in my favorites in YouTube!
Who slashdotted BadScience? Was it you guys?
*tsk* This is why we can’t have nice things.
Good to see Ben Goldacre getting up people like this. Bring on the frivolous lawsuits, all it does is call to attention the deceptive practices of these nutters. Go Ben!
Nor rye. Oh, well – wheat tried.
Wow SC, way to earn that OM. Amaizeing puns like that oat to get noticed, sow well done
83: Boingboing had flooded it out before PZ linked but I’m sure the Pharyngulites extended it.
Rita over here in Yurp (sorry he’s gone, Europe) the HPV vaccine is being licensed for routine use in boys too. Based on protection from genital warts and increasing evidence for HPV’s role in testicular cancer. Mind you if I had a son I’d get him immunised anyway. Hard to get rid of a virus if only half of the interacting population is immunised.
I’m starting to collect a database for legal action against these anti-vaccination half wits.
Anyone who ever caught a cold ,came down with the flu ,anyone who ever was “sick” who ever came in contact with any person or persons who refused to be vaccinated.
Depraved indifference!!
I know ,I know. What connection can you establish between your illness and the non-vaccinated party? The same “causal” logic that they use. I’m sick and you aren’t vaccinated. Obviously ,there is the connection.
Rita Morrison: The question is more subtle than simply being “against” any particular vaccine. Rather it is whether or not X vaccination should be given universally (routinely and mandatory) or if it should be voluntary.
For those of you jumping on Rita, though, her arguments about HPV are not without merit. The vaccine doesn’t provide blanket coverage against all strains of HPV, and even less protection against the associated cancers, because cause/effect relationship between HPV infection and those cancers isn’t 100%. Only a minority of infected individuals actually develop the cancer. It is not unreasonable to argue that this vaccine should not be given universally to a population that is not sexually active, but should be voluntary instead.
The chickenpox vaccine I would also argue should not be mandatory at this time, because we don’t yet know if the immunity is lifelong from this vaccine, and in general there is a tendency for chickenpox to be milder in young children but more severe in older people.
All the other vaccines normally given to children are no-brainers, of course.
Well I had chickenpox in my 30s and it was shit. I was really ill for many days and coundn’t leave the house because I looked like a plague victim. I’d say much worse – anecdote only, but still.
If chickenpox vaccination actually works then have it! It’s not merely the initial chickenpox infection which can be nasty in later life but the ongoing horror of shingles repeatedly recurring if the virus has decided to hide in your nerves.
I’ve no idea how much UK law may have sneakily been changed in the past couple of decades but a (now dead) member of my family, who was not merely a lawyer but chief law examiner, always reckoned that public broadcasters didn’t have a leg to stand on in claiming copyright for stuff they’d broadcast out into “the aether”. He was itching for there to be a test case from one of the big players attempting to bully someone for recording and replaying something which had already been freely broadcast.
A large number of sites now have full transcripts of the Jeni Barnett broadcast, some have commentaries, some let the logical fallacies speak for themselves…
http://themilligan.wordpress.com/
Has the full transcript, plus links to the audio and a criticism of JB’s so-called “apology” (which really amounted to “I’m sorry I didn’t know what I was talking about, but I’m still right.”)
http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/2009/02/jeni-barnett-mmr-measles-and-bad.html
The NHS Blog Doctor also has the transcript and an excellent commentary, whilst…
http://holfordwatch.info/2009/02/07/some-rebuttals-to-jeni-barnetts-canards-in-her-lbc-radio-mmr-segment/#more-2743
The Holford Watch has been doing an amazing job of keeping track of all the best blog posts and other articles.
This was like watching a slow-motion car-crash. With any luck, her media career will have some trouble pulling itself out of the wreckage.
But I doubt it somehow.
Can’t stop the signal!
rnb @ no 16:
Don’t think living in Austin TX will protect you & yours from AntiVax nutjobs. Wakefield wouldn’t be able to get emplyed here in the UK by any reputable hospital now, but he’s happily plying his anti-MMR trade, along with Arthur Krigsman, “recovering autistic children” at a place called Thoughful House in – Austin, TX.
Mozglubov –
I posted this link on your blog, but here it is for the PZ audience.
Ben Stein interview with TBN’s Paul Crouch Jr., part 1 of 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhQqw23lC-s
I capped the entire interview. Parts 2-5 are there, too.
LSF | February 6, 2009 7:15 PM
Um… You make quite a bold claim there: ‘so she rushed to silence her own words’. Can you explain where you got that info from? How you know that she was involved in the decision to request removal of the audio from Ben’s site? I just find it odd given that Barnett seems to be publishing every comment – positive or negative – left on her own blog. That doesn’t seem the action of someone disinterested in dialogue?
Funnily enough, all the comments to this entry in her blog have just been ‘lost’.