Tag Archives: Brian Martin

Skepgoating: why antivaxxers need to devalue skepticism

Posted in Alternative "medicine" scams, Anti-Drug Lobby, Atheism, climate change, Scam, Science by

Skepgoating: Skepgoating (adj) is derived from the notion of scapegoating. It refers to the practice of falsely accusing (scientific) skepticism, skeptics or other individuals of pursuing predetermined agendas derived from distortions of (scientific) skepticism. Used as both defence and attack it aims to cast the other party as inferior, negative and wrong. Particularly found within or in relation to discourse in which truth can demonstrably be derived from evidence. In this way the accuser seeks to drive onlooker or reader attention away from the lack (or presence) of evidence and evoke an irrational and emotional response toward the individual or organisation being skepgoated.

Claims made in skepgoating are false. Rather than address evidence, attempts are made to malign the other party to such an extent that a Faux Victory is claimed. Eg: “Skeptics worship science and are too close minded to understand”. Or, “Skeptics want to suppress your freedom of speech and your right to choose”. Or, “Skeptics want to do bad things to me, that is why they say words that make me appear stupid”.

Skepgoating is also used by certain cult-like groups to imply skepticism by association, by group members who exhibit independent thinking. In such cases skepgoating may have similar power to the belief in witchcraft leading to swift and disproportionate retribution directed at the skepgoat (n). Banishment of the skepgoat and expunging of their visible history follows in an attempt to convey unity to remaining cult members. Dominant or Alpha skepgoaters decide who will be deemed a skepgoat.

As pseudoscience, anti-science, sham disciplines and conspiracy theories have blossomed with high speed information flow, those with a critical eye have kept pace. Some go on to embrace skepticism (scientific skepticism) with an astute and passionate awareness of critical thought and evidence based decision making. Others take great delight – perhaps comfort – in reading skeptic material. Skeptic social events and presentations (often together) are well attended.

Here’s where an observation is needed. There isn’t necessarily a direct correlation between how active a person is skeptically speaking, and how they identify with organised skepticism. In certain areas of interest to skeptics, the most active are not remotely interested in organised skepticism. Alternatively, active skeptics may well spread their interests across many areas. This might prohibit ongoing activism in one area but produces valuable skill sets in skepticism itself.

Some skeptics are deeply involved in areas that demand all ones skeptical faculties, yet find it absent from skeptical topics. In my case drug law reform and a host of human rights issues spring to mind. Having been around these areas a very long time, my advice to skeptics would be to not involve the skeptic movement in major law reform. Being generally apolitical is a valuable feature of skepticism. Exactly when topics enter mainstream skeptical discourse, in part reflects social evolution.

Perhaps it’s best worth noting that some areas involving research, science, critical thought and ample evidence may at once yield unambiguous themes and needs, yet not suit skepticism. Said differently, some areas of scientific consensus receive the attention that reflects political climate more than scientific veracity. Beliefs change in the wake of evidence and the process cannot be rushed. The sacking of Professor David Nutt by the UK Home Office in 2009, is a powerful example of this.

Nutt was of course, absolutely correct. Yet the skeptic in me can spot the evidence he perhaps should have lingered to consider. No matter how you approach it, the facts about drug related harm appear to trivialise the matter. Politically and emotionally Australia, the UK and the USA still blame the inanimate drug and not the policy that denies us control. Unpalatable for many, yes. Slowly changing, indeed. But a fact no less and one that impacts on conclusions.

Rest assured, I’m not diverging onto that topic. Rather, hoping to point out how this fits with the observation above and offers insight into the intellectual paucity that sustains generalised attacks against skeptics in the form of skepgoating. Labelling skeptics as beholden to predetermined agendas is born of the same in-group type thinking that labels science a belief system.

When it comes to skepgoating, your relationship to skepticism may at times be defined for you, by someone with a need to pigeon hole interlocutors or label critics. Note this recent Facebook comment.

As most here know, the AVN is a strident anti-vaccine group, falsely professing to offer “informed choice”. However, as demonstrated by this comment there is a dominant theme emerging peculiar to taking sides rather than discussing vaccination choices. Both the person addressed, and the topic of that address, are very much fans of the AVN. Apparently if one is out of step it’s “outrageous” and one is a friend to a ‘skeptic’. Yes, those inverted commas are intentional and I’ll get to that.

I conclude this comment is quite representative of the AVN. One notes praise and support for the commenter from the AVN president and her own similar combative monochrome approach used to restrict independent expression. Particularly one notes the absence of tolerance for freedom of expression with the AVN.

Of course this is a very silly comment – albeit important to this post. So, what’s going on? Although the subject being attacked here merely thanked another member for posting something “from the pro side” she has been skepgoated. No praise for vaccination took place, and nothing “outrageous” occurred. No rationale is needed. Just point the finger and intone the magic word.

This comment brings up the need for another observation. Whilst passive deconstruction of pseudoscience, scams and paranormal topics of all manner is as old as skepticism itself the internet radically changed communication about these topics. There are no cigars for spotting that skeptics are known for one primary trait. Requesting and examining evidence to substantiate claims. In this light skeptics tend toward a strong appreciation of the scientific method and the role of science.

It follows quite predictably that scientists, those working in or with a background in science, those with an appreciation of science and scientific education to communities and others who understand science, may gravitate toward skepticism. This is by no means absolute but suffice it to say there is overlap. A cursory search would indicate skeptics feel motivated toward activism and use of modern media to publish critiques of pseudoscience and exposure of scam tactics. Ultimately skeptics value scientific inquiry, the scientific method and tend to seek out and conclusively judge scientific consensus.

This helps to grasp the genesis of the irrationalism in the above comment. In an age in which non evidence based claims are pitched toward the health consumer, skepticism is proving a bitter natural pill to swallow. Regarding vaccination the science and pseudoscience are easily identified. “Pro-vax” is quite meaningless, but has been promoted heavily to falsely qualify conclusive evidence and sustain the illusion of a debate.

There is no “pro-vax” and there is no “informed choice”. There’s fact and mistakes. Vaccine science makes vaccination a no brainer. Misinformation leads to fear, confusion and poor or delayed choices – aka mistakes.

For skeptics however, this topic presents examples of evidence denial, cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, conspiracy theory, flawed reasoning, blind belief, belief in the absurd, exhaustive scams and schemes, in-group thinking, cult like features and so on.

A veritable banquet of non critical thought and destructive behaviour, the antivaccination movement is of enormous interest to skepticism. Of course, the notion that someone deemed to not be a “fan” of an antivax group, are therefore friends to skeptics is utterly ridiculous and paranoid. It helps underscore just why these groups attract so much interest from skeptics.

Forget vaccination for a moment. What if you’re interested in the psychology of quasi-religious bigotry, how leadership dogma drives members to attack, how the need to belong shapes perception of the Self and others, the primal need to identify “enemies” and thus elevate our own importance, and on and on. There’s practically an entire Skepticamp in that one comment.

In this case it goes beyond “If you’re not with us you’re against us”. It’s essentially asserting that if you deviate from arbitrary rules you can be labelled in a manner that defines a great deal about you as a person – including loyalty, belief and motivation. Whether on a micro or macro scale one need not be a skeptic to appreciate how destructive the dictatorial thought process is.

This actual skepgoating comment exists in a thread relating to a major skepgoating article by Mike Adams. In fact the person who published it on Facebook goes to extreme lengths to devalue skepticism almost daily. This is primarily to fill an evidence vacuum and to convince members or observers that skeptics have malignant intentions. Meryl Dorey is that person and first published this article two weeks after it was written – 2, 1/2 years ago.

Then again only days ago.

I’m not convinced Dorey believes very much of this at all. It’s rampant ad hominem generalisation that, presented with no reference to Adams, would appear to be Poe’s Law in action. As noted here before, the pseudo-neoconservative philosophy she peddles flips the argument away from evidence based discussion to a claim of being persecuted. “Thinking” with ones gut yields poor results and this is Dorey’s aim.

As AVN member and coach University of Wollongong lecturer Dr. Brian Martin argues, this allows one to provoke outrage in onlookers with the hope of causing backfire of critics’ evidence based techniques.

Martin reveals in his writings that his grasp of what separates pseudoscience and actual dissent is remarkably poor. Referring to scientific theories as “dominant paradigms” he seems incapable of grasping scientific consensus, the scientific method, the import of evidence, altruism and moral responsibility. A champion of both pseudo’ and anti-science we see that fierce devaluation of demonstrable facts and scientists themselves, pepper his writings.

Depending on the sophistication of your audience, almost any attack will do. Engender outrage. Force backfire. Justify censorship. Divert from evidence. Inhibit thinking. Which brings us back to Dorey’s second posting of Mike Adams at his most absurd. The fact that it’s bogus is kind of cute given that he did some “research”. It includes;

Skeptics believe that many six-month-old infants need antidepressant drugs. In fact, they believe that people of all ages can be safely given an unlimited number of drugs all at the same time… Skeptics believe that the human body has no ability to defend itself against invading microorganism and that the only things that can save people from viral infections are vaccines. Skeptics believe that pregnancy is a disease and childbirth is a medical crisis. (They are opponents of natural childbirth.) Skeptics believe that ALL vaccines are safe and effective (even if they’ve never been tested), that ALL people should be vaccinated, even against their will, and that there is NO LIMIT to the number of vaccines a person can be safely given. Skeptics believe that the SUN has no role in human health other than to cause skin cancer. Skeptics believe that human beings were born deficient in synthetic chemicals and that the role of pharmaceutical companies is to “restore” those deficiencies in humans by convincing them to swallow patented pills…..

Mike claims to have lifted all this from skeptic sites. However, “I’m not going to list those websites here because they don’t deserve the search engine rankings”. Given that not raising the rankings of sites one links to is quite basic, we may conclude Mike invented this silliness.

Okay, so that’s a patently nonsensical article. It’s false and clearly so. Indeed, round two imploded on Meryl Dorey and set the tone for the above comment. As usual most critical comments have been deleted and the members banned. Only “skeptic trolls” would disagree with Mike. The single remaining critical comment has the most “Likes”. I can’t be sure but it may have remained due to the reply below it. The respondent authored the original comment above.

It’s quite unambiguous. Despite attesting to not fancying polarisation it is clear this individual is only there to skepgoat. Now a certain Facebook page is deemed populated by skeptics. It isn’t. Yet evidence based critiques of health scams have become hate speech. Anyway, I think the point is made. This is a decided effort to divert attention from evidence and attack the results of scientific inquiry.

So what then is scientific skepticism? Why attack it so often and so ridiculously? Definitions of scientific skepticism including Wikipedia are worth reading. For our purposes in understanding skepgoating it’s not just skeptical appreciation of evidence and inquiry. Identification of belief and the ease of accepting doubt attracts criticism. Where there is doubt there is… doubt. Pseudoscience is frequently about replacing doubt with fiction or logical fallacies.

In terms of belief consider alternatives to medicine, superstitions, vaccine injury chic, paranormal scams, new age diagnostics and healing, vitamin therapy, wonder foods, etc. The list is practically endless. Appreciating evidence, scientific inquiry and understanding how easily humans are fooled is not what those profitting from cancer cures or removing “vaccine poisons” want widely known.

Mike Adams is a prime example. By attacking modern medicine and modern living he attracts a global demographic that may likely purchase from his multi-million dollar empire selling garbage that purports to repair the damage sustained from modern living. Damage he simply invents. Like Meryl Dorey it’s difficult to be sure where the crafty money making begins and the delusion leaves off.

Then there’s the plain whacky skepgoating characters like Martin Walker. Skeptics are “the global corporate science lobby group”. His Health Fascism in Australia is priceless:

To quote Orac. “‘Health Fascism’ in Australia? The anti-vaccine loons think so”. Walker is one bizarre piece of work. His rambling attack on sinister fascist skeptics includes:

The sinister Skeptics group, agents of what used to be CSICOP now the  Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) organised from the US and linked to the major corporate lobby groups, American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) and American Council Against Health Fraud (ACAHF), which is in turn linked to the Australian CAHF) are making ground in Australia.

Supported by authoritarian ideological influences in government and Big Pharma, the Skeptics are running constant attacks on homeopathy, natural cancer treatments, those who question vaccination and those who support any form of alternative medicine.

With the present world fiscal crisis, all those linked to Big Pharma and Science are fighting a bitter battle to preserve drug company competitiveness. But where fascist influences in government and health with most force come together is in attacking anyone who speaks out about freedom of choice and expression in relation to vaccination.

Over the last year the international corporate lobby Skeptics, have been behind a campaign against the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN). […]

Yes. The “campaign” one retired bloke sent off in a complaint. Nice work it was, but “campaign” by an international corporate lobby? NURSE!

Dorey tried this approach herself blaming skeptics for Friends of Science in Medicine:

There is an organisation in Australia which hates every natural therapy. They hate the healthcare practitioners and they hate the healthcare consumers who ‘turn their backs’ on Western medicine in favour of a range of other modalities which put no money in their pockets and take away their prestige. Worst of all, they hate anyone who chooses not to use vaccines! That is the ultimate heresy, as far as they are concerned.

But it’s OK – because they have a plan and they have the money and media backing, they think, to bring this plan to fruition.

This group, the Australian Skeptics, has been instrumental in setting up the organisation, Stop the AVN.

Now, they are working on a new initiative – and this one is more ambitious then just stopping a small, parent-run community support group. Now, their goal is to stop anyone in Australia (today Australia – tomorrow the world as far as this bunch of ratbags is concerned) from learning about or using natural therapies. Their mad campaign is getting plenty of publicity too!

They have just set up a new front group called Friends of Science in Medicine (FSM) which is behind the new effort to outlaw the teaching of any natural medicine course in University. […]

It’s widely known SAVN is a Facebook page set up by a non-skeptic. It’s a Facebook page, not an organisation. FSM was quite capable of launching themselves. Yet Dorey’s skepgoating is clear. Whilst Australian Skeptics employ a total of one person to ensure a decent magazine appears each quarter the above paints them almost as powerful as a small country.

My little definition of skepgoating up top includes “other individuals” because, well even skeptics can’t do everything. Just make it seem that way.

I explained how crucial it is for Dorey particularly to tar all critics with one brush. Not with the AVN? Then must be a skeptic actively working against the AVN. This next example speaks for itself.

An article today in The Telegraph notes vaccine conscientious objectors (perhaps having grown under her guidance) continue to secure government immunisation incentives. It also ran in other online publications.

They ran a poll asking “Should anti-vaccine parents get paid?”. The results are quite in line with national vaccine rates. In fact they err toward more fully vaccinated Aussies supporting the payment for vaccine objectors.

Nonetheless this is Meryl Dorey’s response:

[Note – see update at end]

Despite most skeptics in Australia not bothering with such unscientific nonsense as a dodgy self reporting poll, Dorey still plays that card. It gets sillier when one notes she has asked her own members to visit the poll and vote. Nonetheless it’s a great example of skepgoating and raises my promise to elaborate on those inverted commas within the initial comment.

You see scientific skeptics aren’t skeptics but pseudo-skeptics according to Meryl. No doubt this is intended to provoke the odd skeptic but it’s bizarre given the definition of pseudoskepticism. Marcello Truzini coined the term. He wrote in On Pseudo-Skepticism in 1987:

In science, the burden of proof falls upon the claimant; and the more extraordinary a claim, the heavier is the burden of proof demanded. The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved. He asserts that the claimant has not borne the burden of proof and that science must continue to build its cognitive map of reality without incorporating the extraordinary claim as a new “fact.” Since the true skeptic does not assert a claim, he has no burden to prove anything. He just goes on using the established theories of “conventional science” as usual. But if a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that he has a negative hypothesis—saying, for instance, that a seeming psi result was actually due to an artifact—he is making a claim and therefore also has to bear a burden of proof.

I’ve dealt with Dorey’s obsession with laying claim to skepticism before, including that appallingly offensive blog abusing the name of Australian Skeptics. She seems to have muddled Hume’s true skepticism (philosophy) with evidence denial. This prompts her to argue that belief is actual skepticism. As in be so skeptical deny reality as well.

Where this fails utterly is that in promoting belief, she unwittingly concludes that is a final contention. You may know this position as “science can’t explain everything”. Dorey, and pseudoscience take it further. “If science is limited this way then anything is possible – especially what I allege”. It’s here where the agnostic (if you like) or acceptance of doubt in science that skeptics are at home with kicks in. Belief does not change. Scientific skepticism accepts that change is always likely but what may eventuate is a matter for inquiry. Certainly not conjecture or at worst, rank conjuring.

Of course science doesn’t “know” everything. But assuming it thus truthfully knows nothing, is a recipe for intellectual disaster. This gives us vaccine denial, AIDS denial, conspiracies, UFO assertion and other false contentions that lead to attacks on modern medicine and the growth of sham industries.

SCEPCOP do exactly the same. Claiming to be the Scientific Committee to Evaluate Pseudo Skeptical Criticism Of the Paranormal, they also lay claim to being actual skeptics. It’s pretty cringe-worthy. Dorey’s use and abuse of both “skepticism” and “pseudoskepticism” is identical to SCEPCOP. There’s also Skeptical Investigations and plenty of others like them. These groups spawn individuals who associate covertly with skeptic groups only to compile negative evaluations about skeptic interests.

Child Health Safety is another antivax site with a long record of attacking skeptics, and presupposing the intent of discourse based on identity. From Dorey’s blog.

Wow. Um is there a point you wanted to make? As you can see dear reader, skepgoating frequently involves attacks with no substance, no context and actually no relevance. All we see over and again is the need to devalue genuine agents of evidence.

Rational Wiki describe pseudoskepticism as if describing these groups and the AVN. By projecting their own pseudoskepticism they seek to devalue critics and label evidence based criticism unfounded. The important point is that it has two common usages at present. 1.) To further devalue scientific skepticism by laying claim to the title (but not process) of skepticism. This is abuse of the term and includes Meryl Dorey’s use.

2.) As a substitute for “denial” it may be used to describe those who pimp and preen as skeptics, make a few convincing noises but hold to a predetermined agenda. They will ignore any evidence that challenges them. Despite holding a PhD in physics and strutting as an academic, our radical sociologist antivaxxer Dr. Brian Martin is a genuine pseudoskeptic. A fraud. I can be no kinder.

I should stress that skeptics themselves must be aware of slipping into pseudoskepticism. Fortunately skeptics are rather good at keeping each other honest. This may sound strange but I’m yet to find a better defender of Dorey than skeptics. Not because they accept her piffle for a moment. But because tolerating generalisations or making assumptions about the AVN without evidence is intolerable.

As I mentioned earlier communication influences present day skepticism. In this way skeptics and those with good critical thinking abilities have made genuine long lasting inroads into debunking scams. People are getting ripped off, made ill and at times dying. Often, they are ripped off while dying and being made more ill by some shonky scam. Skeptic movements have a particular distaste for such “health freedom choices”. They are only too happy to inform governments how poorly existing legislation is. So, if skepticism has changed what can we identify?

Skepticism might be viewed as existing at the centre of four inroads. Evidence, human rights, consumer rights and moral or legal obligation. Each inroad is not exclusive. They may accommodate portions of each other or highlight qualities we value as a society. Such as education, free speech, rationalism, reason, truth, democratic freedom, progressive policy design, equality and so on.

I’ve left out specifying paranormal investigation, enduring themes (like perpetual energy and religious experience) exhaustively examined and respectfully considered by skeptics. I couldn’t possibly do justification to legendary visionaries like Nigerian skeptic Leo Igwe and his struggle to fight superstition and brutal irrationalism with reason and education. No doubt this article could be pages long and include almost every division of pseudoscience and superstition.

One thing I should stress is that skeptics do identify those who have been misled as opposed to those who mislead. The result is an even stronger conviction to prevent charlatans from scheming and scamming the vulnerable. From sabotaging education and indoctrinating with dogma. In turn those who measure profit by victim count, don’t cope terribly well with a skeptic critique.

Presently it’s practically standing room only for the enemies of reason. From creationism to cancer cures they are easy to find. So too is a critical response to these impossible claims. Depending upon ones background, education, experience and social circle individuals pick up fairly quickly on the patterns that resonate with them.

Skepticism is tearing down the walls of illusion and that is why pseudoscience is so keen to attack skeptics and skepticism. Arguments, much less legal or legislative challenges, cannot be won by scam artists on merit. To them it’s imperative that those who seek to hold them to account be devalued, falsely maligned, abused, accused and worse.

If there is one thing this article lacks it is a full representation of the outrageous, scurrilous, blame filled and nauseating attacks on skeptics. Skepgoating.

Ultimately the more skepgoating there is, the better the job skeptics seem to be doing.

July 16th – Update on newspaper poll. Another copy to run a similar piece was the Courier Mail. Providing a shorter piece, they worded their poll differently. “Are vaccinations worth the risk”? I know, I know. Given one is more likely to become a billionaire than experience anaphylactic shock it’s a stupid and loaded question. Still here’s the poll results as of early afternoon the following day.

So with a general vaccination rate of 95% plus, over 20% of us don’t reckon it’s worth the risk! Pseudo-skeptic vote bot, Pseudo-skeptic vote bot. Where for art thou Pseudo-skeptic vote bot? Pathetic effort.

However, gracious in defeat I doff me cap to the anti-vax flying monkeys.

The Malicious is delicious

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, Denialism, General, Health, Science by

In an upcoming work defending the Australian Vaccination Network it is postulated that Denial Of Service attacks might be a tactic used by critics of the AVN.

This ever expanding list of “attacks” dreamed up by Meryl Dorey already includes causing Meryl’s ISP to experience a mysterious outage, having the Age of Autism’s Facebook page pulled, causing problems with the AVN website and attacking the site of a Living Wisdom advertiser. There are many but most reflect a variation on these.

In reality the suggestion that DOS was perhaps perpetrated by Stop The AVN with no evidence of this even occurring is indicative of the gulf between Ms. Dorey’s accusations and backing them with evidence. Equally, suggesting her critics have the means (or cause) to anonymously attack her ISP and Facebook, then squander such a coup on Age of Autism, is the stuff of conspiracy central concoctions.

The issue of the Living Wisdom advertiser – who probably wonders where the heck his advertisements are – is worth retelling. Members of SAVN became aware Ms. Dorey was accusing critics of having “hacked” this advertiser’s site. On examination it turned out the CSS file was not styling the site. If I remember, the index file and CSS file weren’t chatting. Ergo, a slight coding problem.

As it turned out, two AVN critics contacted the advertiser and happily fixed the problem for him. This entailed some degree of trust which clearly was not abused. Tally? Meryl rips him off for paid ads she never published. Stop AVN fix his site problems for free, but Meryl lies about it claiming SAVN “hacked” his site. Strangely, this “attack” has never been cleared up by AVN members with a dash of truth.

Poor SAVN is also accused of giving the AVN a poor WoT rating. Yet a quick visit to the AVN Facebook page shows a whopping 4,596 Likes. Fascinating for a page with about 10 – 15 active posters. Aside from scamming her own members out of approximately $180,000 in magazine subscriptions this figure gives you an indication of how many genuine parents, natural therapists and others have been accused of trolling. Posts deleted, access banned.

The same can be said for the AVN website. These are genuine issues of trust and vendor reliability. Genuine concerns that are raised about the safety of refusing all vaccines are never allowed. All censored by the AVN. The AVN have strayed very, very far from representing parents with concerns about vaccination. Perhaps the AVN should look further afield for who might rate them as shifty and dangerous.

Recently on AVN Facebook a desire to discuss the pros and cons of current policy was met with deletion, banning and accusation of trolling. In defence the AVN runs the mantra that the page is for AVN fans only. Which by extension means healthy discourse or independence is not tolerated by AVN in-groupies. Check this out-take from a thread, starting Saturday June 16th.

Oh yes of course. No way could they be genuinely interested visitors seeking to respond to the issue raised. That would be too logical.

It’s pretty messed up stuff. Either you ignore best practice and evidence in health, or you’re a troll and a paid Big Pharma shill. Yet the AVN is not anti-vaccination but pro-choice, we hear over and again.

Recently some genuinely childish attacks were made against this site and reasonablehank. A silly old meanie had gone and reported our URL’s to Trend Micro as dangerous, facilitating distribution of spam, malicious source code and software.

Trend Micro being none too clever don’t bother to check the site but do change the rating on their “safety page”. This changes how Trend Micro software reacts to URL’s. Someone had noticed;

“Dangerous, Verified fraudulent page or threat source”. Pathetic Trend Micro and a well known problem. This is a WordPress blog (as in, on their server) forbidding even JavaScript, Flash and HTML embed code for media or active widgets such as a trendy countdown clock. They are meticulous when it comes to ensuring safe sites. Suffice it to say Trend Micro is open to abuse. So I checked on my URL to find:

Dangerous! Malicious! Oh, how delicious! Visions of computer viruses flooded my head. If nothing else, at that moment I had a new term for unvaccinated children: Malicious. As in, “when will they test the health of vaccinated vs malicious children?” Oh, the LULZ dear reader, the LULZ.

The national childhood Immunisation Register would change to “Fully Vaccinated”, “Malicious (DANGER)”, “Unknown”, “Partly vaccinated”. The darlings could have T-Shirts at creche with big red crosses and DANGEROUS on front and back.

Novelty shops would sell DANGER: Malicious Child On Board badges for cars. Houses would need signs. DANGER! Latest tests show malicious children inside could infect visitors! Or UNSAFE PROPERTY! Please ensure your antivirus boosters are up to date. Schoolchildren could be scanned for Malicious blood types, with rating dependent upon antibodies for different VPD’s.

You should read Hank’s account of how our friend Liz above accused him of trying to infect her computer, when she got a similar warning. She was, er, trolling his site and got a fright. Then switched computers (and in the process antivirus programme) or went mobile which led to even more confusion and accusation about infecting certain IP addresses.

Liz might be happy to expose her child and innocent community members to potential viral infection but any suspicion over infecting a computer and you’re “involved in criminal activities”. But things were about to get funnier.

What with all this trolling AVN is subject to, and censorship of their pages it was hard to miss Liz trolling Dan’s Journal of Skepticism on this very issue. If that wasn’t enough Liz was also scanning for censorship:

Anyway, I’m pleased to report all is back to normal thanks to informing Trend Micro of this silly business.

The AVN ban, censor and cry troll. Their members troll, cry censorship, abuse and accuse. Meanwhile my money from Big Pharma still hasn’t turned up.

I bet Trend Micro are to blame.

Judy Wilyman named and shamed as cruel attacker

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, AVN, Denialism, Health, Human Rights, Judy Wilyman, Legal, Meryl Dorey, Scam, Science by

An anti-vaccine lobbyist who contends that children should die from illness to prevent the “genetic deterioration” she believes is being caused by vaccination, made front page headlines today.

Judy Wilyman argues that vaccines contain proteins and poisons that have a “synergistic, latent and cumulative effect” ultimately causing autism, arthritis, anaphylaxis, ADHD, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, asthma, etc, etc. This generation of children is “the unhealthiest yet” whilst no evidence that vaccines prevent disease actually exists – anywhere – she has asserted.

41% of today’s children are “chronically ill” primarily with auto immune and neurological diseases that arise from vaccines, Wilyman claims, suggesting that “good science would be investigating all possible causes of these diseases“. Yet whilst Wilyman is well known for drawing conclusions from remote correlation and blaming conspiracies for the absence of proof, today it was the latter obsession that drew journalistic interest.

So corrupt is the pharmaceutical industry, she has long reasoned, that to support vaccination must involve financial incentives. Any claim that vaccines actually do prevent disease is a simple lie. It would be “a crime against humanity” to provide incentives for immunisation and the media (who have pharmaceutical interests) seek to coerce and educate the public through fear campaigns involving stories about children ill or dying from vaccine preventable disease.

UOW researcher targets grieving parents ran the subheading of the Illawarra Mercury. Wilyman is the student of AVN defender and anti-vaccination supporter Dr. Brian Martin, professor of social sciences at UOW. Beginning with a comprehensive rundown of recently made accusations against parents who had lost their daughter to pertussis, it continued to a double page spread.

The main story by Cydonee Mardon, Grieving parents slam researcher covered what many already know.

Judy Wilyman, a PhD student and former Illawarra high school teacher, questioned whether Toni and David McCaffery had been paid to promote the whooping cough vaccine.

Ms Wilyman said the State Government was using four-week-old Dana’s death and “the mantra of seeing sick babies gasping for air” to push the vaccine.

Dana died of whooping cough, or pertussis, in March 2009. Her parents have since worked with health authorities to raise awareness about the infection and gave permission for their story to be used on a NSW Health Department campaign. […]

[Toni McCaffery said] “Dana is not an anecdote. We do not receive money for warning people about whooping cough. That is the most disgusting allegation.

“The money we received [from] the Australian Skeptics we donated to research to save babies from pertussis. Government has not ‘used us’ to promote vaccines in recent media stories. We agree to such interviews in our own time without any agenda other than to give people the warning we did not receive.”

Mrs McCaffery said Dana’s story appeared in a government brochure because “parents have a right to be warned about whooping cough and given accurate information”.

“We did not get that warning. It is up to parents if they want to vaccinate. It is also up to any parent to go public and speak to media. Do not use us against other families.”

The Mercury contacted Ms Wilyman who has so far declined to comment.

It was also another blow to the public face of the AVN who were correctly reported as hosting Wilyman’s letter to the Australian Human Rights Commissioner in which she also referred to the “mantra” of seeing sick babies gasping for air.

In W.A. in 2010 Wilyman used a 60 year old quote to suggest that infant and childhood mortality is a necessary price to pay in preventing the diseases she believes arise through interaction of genes, the environment and timing. By stopping vaccination which is switching on otherwise dormant disease-causing genes, and allowing vaccine preventable deaths we could improve “the overall health” of children, Judy Wilyman believes.

She informed her audience:

In 2010 it is known that environmental factors can switch genes on, that would otherwise remain dormant. This is called predisposition to disease. Resulting in epidemics of genetic diseases. Things like autism, diabetes and asthma.

I’ve got a quote from Macfarlane Burnet… 60 years ago. Macfarlane Burnet said:

In future years we may have some hard thinking to do. It may be that we will have to realise that mortality in infancy and childhood in the past has been the necessary price that had to be paid to prevent genetic deterioration and that some of our modern successes in preventative and curative medicine, may on the longest view be against the best interests of the state.

In the 21st century it is known that genes and environment and timing interact together in the occurrence of disease. The overall health of children in the 21st century would appear to be supporting Burnet’s prophecy.

Source: W.A. Audio (at 28min, 30sec)

Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet was a Nobel prize winner and Australian of the year born in 1899. A brilliant virologist and immunologist the Burnet Institute in Melbourne is named after him. It is almost beyond belief that in the same talk Wilyman uses influenza as her example of a disease for which the vaccine is more dangerous. Could she possibly know of Burnet’s work in advancing influenza immunisation and how it still influences progress today?

His search for vaccines, particularly for influenza and massive inoculation studies (20,000 subjects) during the second world war, earned him global recognition. Under his guidance progress on polio, pox viruses, herpes, Murray Valley encephalitis and myxomatosis were added to this contribution. Simply put the man was a giant in the progress and necessity of immunisation with vaccines.

This post has no chance of doing Burnet justice other than to highlight Wilyman’s calculated deception in her abuse of research. It is enough that the “mandatory and coercive” monitoring of vaccination status – the “crime against humanity” Wilyman and Dorey ignorantly rail against – owes no small amount to Burnet’s input into keeping records on individual vaccination history.

Also in today’s Mercury is a moving open letter from Toni and David McCaffery. It happens to include reference to the reality of encouraging parents not to vaccinate:

We moved to the Northern Rivers to bring our family up in this pristine environment. However, we did not realise this was a hotbed for contagious and potentially deadly viruses.

Our sweet Dana is the innocent victim of dangerously low levels of awareness and even lower vaccination rates. Instead of her photo winning baby competitions, she is the tragic face of a Whooping Cough (Pertussis) epidemic and sparked a national vaccination debate. […]

Please learn from our past. Vaccination was introduced because there is no medicine to stop these bacteria that killed and maimed thousands of children. Now, these third-world diseases are on the rise again. In NSW it is Whooping Cough. In Queensland it is Measles.

Do you want to live in a country where we are too scared to have friends or family visit our babies or we won’t leave our homes?

As has become a brief tradition of late we might consult the work of Judy’s supervisor Dr. Brian Martin. Dr. Martin accuses opponents of the AVN of launching “attacks”, even inventing his own list of “attack modes”. He writes in the conclusion of When Public Health Debates Become Abusive:

Debates  over  health-related matters  are  often  extremely  bitter. Usually,  though, more attention  is  given  to  the  content  — the  facts,  which  position  is  correct,  and  policy implications  — than  to  the  way  a  debate  is  carried  out.  Yet  the  methods  used  are important.  Heavy-handed  and  abusive  techniques  can  discourage  participation  and distort outcomes, affecting health policies and practices. […]

Science,  as  a  model  form  of  truth-seeking,  is  based  on  rational  assessment  of evidence. Health policy disputes can only partly follow the science model because they also involve differences in values. […]

The  question  then arises: what can be done to shift debates towards more participatory, respectful modes of engagement? […] The next question is, what should be done about those who engage in personal  abuse  and  who  attempt  to silence  opponents? A  first step  is  to  expose  and criticise  these  sorts  of  methods,  especially  when  used  by  those  on  one’s  own  side

Certainly then, more and more of Dr. Martin’s work can be seen as applying not to those who raise dissent about the privileged status of the AVN, but to members of the antivaccination movement itself.

The University of Wollongong did respond, striving to distance itself from Ms. Wilyman. I have no issue with their general position although I would hope immediate steps have been taken about Wilyman signing the letter to the AHRC as PhD Candidate. This of course is not the only example of egregious conduct on Wilyman’s part bolstered by her affiliation with UOW. From The Mercury:

The UOW issued a statement distancing itself from Ms Wilyman’s comments.

“Articles and associated comments published by Judy Wilyman on the internet, on vaccination issues, are her own personal views and not those of the university,” the statement said.

The larger problem includes the academic succor given to the evidence denial on her part, the extensive involvement of Dr. Martin that raises a clear conflict of interest and the ethical and moral obligation that UOW has to public health. To support and legitimise antivaccination propaganda is not a reflection of academic integrity. To continue to label Wilyman a “researcher” is absurd. She is a reviewer, admitting to “scouring peer reviewed research for ten years”, simply twisting selected material to her own aims.

As with parents who claim to have “researched” the science of vaccination and decide to deny vaccination, questions must be asked about evaluation. Exactly how does one conclude vaccination is entirely dangerous or that it is responsible to deny ones children protection if they have actually engaged in “research” as we understand the term?

What if Wilyman been informed by the university that claims of vaccine induced diseases have been utterly debunked? That if she wants to persist arguing that aluminium adjuvants and ethyl-mercury are causing autism and asthma she must produce compelling evidence? Where would she be today? Clearly still blaming conspiracies for the lack of that evidence but not under the banner of “PhD researcher at the University of Wollongong”. This lends false credence to misinformation and the university must take it’s responsibility to academic truth as absolutely paramount.

Finally we get more Meryl Dorey channeling Brian Martin these days. The main article notes:

AVN president Meryl Dorey said the McCafferys had chosen to go public and had to expect comments from both sides of the debate. “If one side has the right to say something and the other doesn’t, then we are not a democratic society,” she said.

Let’s check that. “Something to say” can include just about anything. For someone who labels her critics as fascists, pond scum and communists with a vendetta Ms. Dorey seems to hold a strange view of both “commentary” and democracy.

Yet again this looking glass model of dissent and attack can be clearly identified.

Manufacturing dissent: double standards in defending vaccine denial

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, AVN, Health, Human Rights, Judy Wilyman, Legal, Meryl Dorey, Scam by

If you happen to pop past the AVN Facebook page you might notice this entry:

Pretty straightforward. A post with three comments. The three comments are…

Oh. So there seems to be a comment missing. In fact it was the original comment, and here it is:

A paying member was censored. In fact their comment was deleted so that a fairly basic request to have emails answered could be hidden. The issue at play is that the AVN owe over $180,000 in magazines for which they have already taken fees. 11 magazines have not been delivered. Already 2 this year on the back of 5 last year. Yet this member appears to have sent at least two emails requesting clarification and they have clearly been ignored. Still the AVN website censors the fact it is in trouble. It is brazenly seeking new members claiming:

Membership includes 6 editions of Living Wisdom magazine (either hard copy or digital or both if you choose) and there are discounts available for 12 and 18 issue memberships.

If you pay extra as a “professional member” you get a “free listing” in the AVN magazine that does not exist.

In the conclusion of Making Censorship Backfire, co-authored by AVN supporter and full member, Dr. Brian Martin, we read:

An examination of cases where censorship backfires provides some valuable lessons in how to make this happen. The first important point is that the censorship should be exposed to audiences who will be outraged by the act of censorship itself or by the disproportion between the act (speaking out) and the censoring response (a heavy-handed attack). It is essential to have solid documentation, which means that only some cases of censorship can be exposed in this way.

It is important not to be intimidated. Censorship is often backed up by threats of what will happen if those who are censored do not acquiesce. It can be rewarding to see these threats as potential opportunities. By exposing the threats, the backlash can be made all the stronger. Targets of censorship need to be prepared for further attack – including personal invective – should they challenge the censorship.

It is unlikely wide exposure of this would help the member Dorey has ripped off. The information quoted above is interesting in that the best response would be to politely reply arguing that Meryl has had ample time to respond. Furthermore you have serious concerns about the AVN selling magazine subscriptions when overdue issues are now clearly unlikely to eventuate. This raises questions of Fair Trading and advertising under false pretences. It would be in the interests of all concerned if members could discuss this in an open forum fashion.

Of course, as has happened many times before, this member would be banned (if that hasn’t happened already) and the entry deleted. What follows is touched upon in the quote from Dr. Martin above. Dorey writes scathing and vicious reviews of individuals and her loyal members swoop in to attack them on other social media. Claims of being threatened and bullied and having to hire security to defend herself from bullies who don’t believe in free speech, health choices and your right to choose gradually take on a life of their own. The “backfire” works to Meryl’s advantage.

Dr. Martin’s writings on censorship are part of his much larger body of work on dissent, including struggles for autonomy and democratic rights for citizens oppressed by malignant governments. His work often has an artistic choreographed appeal that whilst interesting reveals an untested work in progress.

What is of interest to this article is his defence of antivaccination lobbyists censoring information in order to convey a fallacious and sometimes dangerous message of authority and accuracy to unsuspecting readers. As I suggested recently extremely serious questions can be asked about Dr. Martin’s moral and ethical conviction. This is only reinforced in finding that altruism is not a feature of his work yet saying and doing what one wants, when one wants regardless of the consequences, are features of those he willingly assists.

Muddying the waters further are his attacks upon community volunteers who have themselves raised dissent. The failure of government regulators to challenge what is a litany of legislative transgression, charity scams and antisocial behaviour by Australia’s so-called Australian Vaccination Network is undeniable. Devoted to attacking conventional medicine and vaccination, the group continued unimpeded for 17 years until individual activists raised dissent with government agencies.

Dr. Martin holds his PhD in physics but does not work in any related area. Apart from being president of Whistleblowers Australia, he is presently Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Wollongong. Thus use of the term “Doctor” is quite misleading in qualifying his skill as a social scientist. It is unclear if he has any requisite understanding of ethics or moral responsibility as it pertains to social sciences and indeed, society as a whole.

One may venture to suggest it is of course unsurprising then, that Martin also writes about “dissident scientists” who work in dissent of what he terms “paradigms”, disagreeing as to what theories are correct. We are left only to ponder how a physicist has found himself well versed in the mechanics of “scientific dissent” whilst at the same time defending the denial of evidence as if it were dissent.

In startling misunderstanding of the scientific method and the value of evidence he notes incorrectly in Grassroots Science:

Dissent is central to science: the formulation of new ideas and the discovery of new evidence is the driving force behind scientific advance. At the same time, certain theories, methods, and ways of approaching the world – often called paradigms – are treated as sacrosanct within the professional scientific community. Those who persist in challenging paradigms may be treated not as legitimate scientists but as renegades or outcasts. […]

For example, there are many individuals who have developed challenges and alternatives to relativity, quantum mechanics, and the theory of evolution, three theories central to modern science. […]

Western medical authorities at first rejected acupuncture as unscientific but, following demonstrations of its effectiveness, eventually accepted or tolerated it as a practice under the canons of western biomedicine, rejecting its associations with non-Western concepts of the body. […]

At the same time, some mainstream medical practitioners and researchers are hostile to alternative health. This is apparent in pronouncements that taking vitamin supplements is a waste of money or in police raids on alternative cancer therapists, the raids being encouraged by mainstream opponents.

Many proponents of alternative health say that mainstream medical science is distorted by corporate, government, and professional pressures. In this context, grassroots medical science presents itself as being truer to the ethos of science as a search for truth unsullied by vested interests.

Whilst one is grateful to Dr. Martin for seeking to identify certain dynamics it is apparent that his reinterpretation of the facts serves evidence denial and pseudoscience very well. Arguably “dissent” as he terms it here may well prove valuable to science. But one might venture to add it’s primary value has been in provoking the need to examine dissenting theories such that they ultimately bring about their own demise.

He has misrepresented vitamin therapy and acupuncture, falsely accused scientists of holding “paradigms” sacrosanct and completely ignored the value of randomised controlled trials in revealing the validity or not of “outcasts” theories. I think it’s fair to accept the final paragraph as an observation, whilst also noting it’s inexcusable to omit that the evidence favours this as a distorted conspiracy. Alternatives to medicine have flourished in Australia, crept into educational institutes and been subsidised by health insurance for many years.

It would be pointless to continue with examples, which go as far as criticising the dismissal of anecdotal evidence by mainstream science. For the purpose of this article this would include vaccines causing autism, SIDS, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, asthma and diabetes. I have chosen those examples deliberately. Whilst The Australian Immunisation Handbook specifically states research has constantly replicated no link Martin is supervising a PhD student conducting a literature review, but no research, who continually states vaccines have been shown to cause these conditions.

What is clear from the errors above and the Grassroots Science article in general is that Dr. Martin either has no grasp on the concept of evidence and it’s importance to science, or seeks to misrepresent application of the scientific method to the extent of devaluing it to the status of merely discerning an opinion. One cannot ignore the parallels between the tone of his writing and that of his PhD student Judy Wilyman.

Many have sought to have Brian Martin answer how he can ignore the devastating impact of his support of the AVN. As I noted recently this goes as far as making excuses for Ms. Dorey’s refusal to engage in scientific discourse with those who seek to challenge many of her claims. A substantial amount of his work claims to expose censorship and the tactics of those who refuse to accept “dissident” or “grassroots scientists”.

Thus it is deeply troubling that he defends Ms. Dorey’s censoring of material. More troubling is his making excuses for Dorey’s refusal to accept to enter into discourse as a “grassroots scientist”. Yet most bizarre is his championing of Dorey actually censoring material to sabotage engagement as a “grassroots scientist” – and actually blame this on those who were censored despite them offering Dorey an avenue to provide evidence.

Consider this recent censorship by Dorey. It served to censor the truth and defend several demonstrable errors. In Martin’s view Dorey has no need to engage because people have “attacked” her. Despite this being a self serving interpretation, what it demonstrates is the perpetuation of misinformation. This is exactly why individuals have raised concern about overlap as an academic, an advocate for truth in evidence, the supervisor of Judy Wilyman and defender of Meryl Dorey.

This post below appeared on AVN’s Facebook page with the following comments. The first from Dorey makes the head spin. There is only one type b strain of Haemophilus influenzae (called Hib). Yet she informs readers that the Hib vaccine caused an increase in diagnosis of other types of Hib caused by yet even more Hib strains. Later she mentions “Hib (all strains)”:

Later this reply was added:

And yes, it was part of the thread:

Now if you pop back you’ll find it has been deleted and the other poster to take issue with Ms. Dorey’s creativity has now taken issue with Tristan’s rather divisive “us” reference.

The individual censored is also a member of the AVN and yes, is also wondering whatever happened to the magazines promised so long ago. Is this honestly how paying members are treated by Meryl Dorey? If so then one must begin to wonder exactly how Dorey and Dr. Martin are so certain that anonymous threats apparently come from people who have not been schemed, dismissed and discarded.

In Suppressing Research Data: Methods, Context, Accountability, and Responses, Martin writes:

Censorship, fraud, and publication biases are ways in which the availability of research data can be distorted. A different process is distortion of the perception of research data rather than distortion of the data itself. In other words, data is openly available, but efforts are made to shape people’s perception of it.

There appears to be little doubt of a significant conflict of interest. Martin is well aware of and extremely deft with tactics used to deflect the problems noted above. He is defending censorship and fraud at the AVN and his student has an exclusive history of publication bias. More recently Martin himself has distorted data by selectively using a misrepresentation of usual chatter on the Stop The AVN Facebook page. The aim – as he himself offers above – is to shape the public perception of those who challenge Ms. Dorey in such a way as to vilify and defame them.

As time passes I’ll endeavour to look closer at Martin’s work attacking those who essentially accept the overwhelming evidence on vaccination. Already we can dismiss his defence of impartiality. Yet so blatant and unethical is his present state of evidence denial a close look at parallels between defending antivaccination groups and his earlier work is warranted.

Given that Judy Wilyman and Meryl Dorey rely almost entirely on imagined conflicts of interest, this very conflict of interest within a conflict of interest to bolster manufactured dissent from outright denial and censorship is beginning to look very tacky indeed.

I do hope the University of Wollongong have a clear conscience.

Wollongong Uni, Brian Martin & Judy Wilyman: How Far Is Too Far?

Posted in Anti-Vaccination Lobby, AVN, Denialism, Health, Human Rights, Judy Wilyman, Legal, Scam, Science by

As many of you know a recent comment from one Judy Wilyman has drawn enormous attention.

Judy is a strident antivaccination lobbyist. On the matter of addressing or providing evidence, Judy’s record is arguably less than ideal. Perhaps more times than a reasonable person would accept Judy has inferred conspiratorial motives block her from exposing vaccines’ flaws.

Judy told an audience in W.A. that only “scientific research” would be presented to them. Then that the media only report on vaccine preventable fatalities in order to, “coerce us into vaccination” and as such “run fear campaigns”. It follows then that “We’re being educated by the media who have pharmaceutical interests”.

She continued with her Orwellian “science”:

There is no measure of delayed responses of vaccines or long term health studies of children monitoring the combined effects of vaccines. That’s the hard evidence that we would need to say this programme (childhood vaccination) is safe.

Writing to the Hon. Ms. Nicola Roxon [then] Federal Minister for Health, in November 2011 Judy asserted, “The Australian government will be committing a crime against humanity by introducing [immunisation incentives]”.

And that:

There is no historical evidence that vaccines controlled any of the infectious diseases listed in government immunization policies – in any developed country.

There’s a video considering this point here. Still, Judy worries over the “Conflicts of interest that exist in the science that is used in policy-development”. Or as she claimed with unusual confidence, when putting Federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek “on notice” last January :

Until these issues are addressed the public is rejecting coercive or mandatory immunization policies that result in the discrimination of healthy individuals

What are these issues Judy has taken up on our behalf? You can read them in full conspiracy tilt here. Suffice it to say the lead up included:

The community has lost confidence in the ability of the Health Department to make decisions in the best interests of the public due to the lack of integrity in the science being used and the conflicts of interest in individuals on government advisory boards. There is overwhelming evidence for this and I will list this below. As a result of this corruption of the scientific process the community has lost confidence in the Government’s Childhood Immunisation Schedule as it is clearly driven by profit and not safety.

The community, for whom this policy is designed, is saying no to coercive mandatory immunization policies. Choice in vaccination in Australia exists more in theory than practice and this is not acceptable to the public. It is unethical for a Government to link considerable financial benefits to a Public Health policy involving a medical procedure which has not been proven safe or effective.

The community?! Yet this is not the view of the community. Judy signed the letter, “PhD Candidate”. She is studying at the University of Wollongong under Dr. Brian Martin – himself a defender of antivaccination “dissent”. How far is too far? Is Dr. Martin in agreement? Does the University of Wollongong condone ultimatums to our Health Minister, made in reflection of their student body?

Former Australian Of The Year and Founding Director of the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Professor Fiona Stanley, is someone who has received awards for 17 years due to her work on children’s health. Long described by Judy Wilyman and Meryl Dorey as a corrupt human being who forces what Dorey calls “instruments of death” onto children, she merely described their combined message as “bizarre” and “so misinformed it’s crazy” [Download MP3], or listen on the player below:

Interview with Fiona Stanley

Mind you, I have no problem with addressing conflicts of interest related to therapeutic goods’ manufacture, use and/or regulation. Far from it. Yet the need to ensure best practice in legislation and industry does not equate to verification of blanket corruption or hard evidence of “a crime against humanity”. The fact is that the evidence to support attacks on vaccines is simply not there.

Which raises a question of profound morality. Judy Wilyman makes much of her “PhD researcher” status. She makes excessive use of her association with the University of Wollongong. Her supervisor Dr. Brian Martin is president of Whistleblowers Australia and a professor of social sciences at the same university. Dr. Martin has been investigating “suppression of dissent” for around 33 years. He has authored a great number of articles and papers on the topic, 15 books and 5 booklets.

Perhaps Judy is selective in the conflicts of interest she rails against?

Some of you may remember the name David Lewis. He wrote a letter in response to Brian Deer’s BMJ articles on Andrew Wakefield. He chose to defend Wakefield after attending “a vaccine safety conference in Jamaica, where Andrew Wakefield discussed his research”. It was a five star extravaganza paid for by the “vaccine-safety” promoters. Wakefield was the headline act. Why was he there? Lewis is from The US National Whistleblowers Center, and was luxuriated with others similarly inclined.

In attending what was a grand conspiracy-riddled event designed to polish the evidence vacuum of “vaccine safety” into a slick profit making machine, Lewis informs us greatly as to how whistleblowers and dissent observers network, think and of course, defend those who claim innocence regardless of evidence. The US National Whistleblowers Center contact details are on Brian Martin’s website under “Suppression of dissent” Contacts. I stress strongly I am making no assumptions from a listed contact. However, one is able to identify trends emerging here.

Whistleblowers must surely hold evidence and facts above the status quo. They aim to expose wrongdoing at risk and/or great cost to themselves. As such they have contributed greatly to justice and in cases where the greater good has not been realised, have educated the public and made us aware. Yet a whistleblower is an individual. Usually focused upon one case of wrongdoing. What of those who form these organisations? Is their reliance upon dissent and whistleblowing a conflict of interest?

What of those, like Lewis, who would insert themselves into a controversial case of profound impact that has run it’s course? The whistleblowers in the Wakefield/MMR scandal were those who exposed his fraud. His colleagues who dissented, other staff at The Royal Free who were misled and of course journalist Brian Deer. Deer, asked to do a ho-hum story on the matter discovered a trail of money and wrongdoing and ultimately blew the whistle.

A glance at Dr. Martin’s publication list is informative. Understanding, defending and profitting from dissent is Dr. Martin’s life’s work. His Suppression Of Dissent website opens with:

This site deals with attacks on dissenting views and individuals. The general field of “suppression of dissent” includes whistleblowing, free speech, systems of social control and related topics. The purpose of the site is to foster examination of these issues and action against suppression. It is founded on the assumption that openness and dialogue should be fostered to challenge unaccountable power.

I do rush to add I have no problem with this. Dr. Martin claims a very neutral tone. I perhaps have more than a neutral interest. I spent many years investing huge amounts of time in defending the magnificent strides Australia made in illicit drug policy. Human Rights gave us Harm Reduction. Then suddenly, from world innovators in the mid 1980’s to the Evangelical puppetry that took hold during the great stupor of the Howard years, I saw incalculable inhumanity in my own nation.

Thus I strongly agree that “openness and dialogue should be fostered to challenge unaccountable power”. The evidence for even greater change is overwhelming. I dealt in it for many years. Similarly I was exposed to ample abuse of minority groups and am familiar with appalling abuse of power and corruption.

Also then, I would hope I have the experience that justifies my bemusement of Brian Martin’s self righteous defence of this “Air Guitar” of suppression of dissent and claimed oppression put on by Meryl Dorey and his student, Judy Wilyman. Their endless mantra is an insult to so many tangled in corruption from the gutter to the halls of power. It is bereft of morality and I sincerely question Dr. Martin’s defence of neutral academic interest.

When it comes to critical thought and morality we have a grave responsibility. To evidence. Not the evidence that we want, but that which is.

So now we must ask more about our devotee to suppression of dissent, Dr. Brian Martin, who inserted himself in the defence of the AVN. How far is too far? Why did he attack the real whistleblower, Ken McLeod, and in doing so wrench the hearts of the McCaffery family? The whistle was blown on a cruel charity fraudster, a scam artist, a fear monger and one who had made a long living from donations gathered from members with the promise of urgent action to solve manufactured dissent.

The AVN took in $1.8 million between 2004 and 2010. It’s estimated they owe over $180,000 in unprinted magazines for which they have already been paid the subscription fees. This blog is dotted with the fraud making the AVN many tens of thousands more and numerous scams to keep fear running. Does Brian Martin seriously defend and enable such conduct with the defence of academic neutrality?

Brian Martin publishes using his title at University of Wollongong and his UOW email address. So again, how far is too far for this university to turn a blind eye to sickness, degradation and incredibly the corruption that yields a profit for the AVN? Research and academia at the University of Wollongong appear synonymous with antivaccination schemes.

At what point does dissent become denial? Or rather, why should denial ever be labelled dissent? How can a PhD supervisor support denial and antisocial tactics in the name of education? Wilyman markets herself as “currently completing my PhD in environmental health policy at the University of Wollongong“, very quickly moving on to claim against all consensus:

The diseases that have been increasing since the late 80’s include allergies, anaphylaxis, ADHD, autism, coeliac disease, cancer and autoimmune diseases (e.g. arthritis and diabetes). The medical journals and animal studies link the ingredients of vaccines as a cause of these diseases. Although the increase in these diseases correlates to the increasing use of vaccines, the government has not funded research that would prove or disprove this plausible link.

However, The Australian Immunisation Handbook notes; Research has constantly replicated no link in the following:

  • sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and any vaccine.
  • autism and MMR vaccine.
  • multiple sclerosis and hepatitis B vaccine.
  • inflammatory bowel disease and MMR vaccine.
  • diabetes and Hib vaccine.
  • asthma and any vaccine.

If Judy Wilyman has her way, Dr. Brian Martin will turn a blind eye from evidence, from research and from moral obligation. His position at UOW brings more responsibility. Has he already jettisoned it in lieu of allowing dissent to thrive, no matter the consequence? How far is too far to move the line of ones personal interests and career over ones responsibility in academia?

If Wilyman has her way she will become perhaps the first person to receive a PhD solely from attacking successful public health policy. From lying. From selectively abusing research. From ignoring evidence. From appealing to conspiracy. Judy is doing no research as we understand it, despite the puffy chested bragging. She is reviewing literature from which she draws scurrilous error to envelope in semantics and put forth as argument.

In the last 2 1/2 years Wilyman appears to have completed 3 papers. All on the same topic. Arguing that not enough Aussie women die from cervical cancer to justify the HPV vaccine. Her 4th project was a poster – a synopsis of this argument using the same graphic. In 6 1/2 years she has published 12 times including another poster and a brochure.

Vaccines only exist thanks to corruption, Wilyman ultimately concludes in light of them having no benefit. Some dark, wicked machine that runs only to profit from making fellow humans sick. Sadly, Wilyman now adds, this includes the grieving parents of a tiny baby. Somehow in this delusion Judy includes others who value evidence, human and consumer rights and the quest for truth more than anything. “They” are all against Judy Wilyman.

This video out-take from Lateline is a quick synopsis of how Meryl Dorey sought the medical records of the same infant. Dorey demanded access to the infant’s medical records and contended that Paul Corben, Director of Public Health at the North Coast Area Health Service misled the public by confirming a pertussis fatality. Corben wrote to the family:

Ms. Dorey called me on the 12th of March seeking details of your daughter’s illness and death… Ms. Dorey contended that I had misled the public in attributing your daughter’s death to pertussis.

This was a key reason for forming Stop The AVN and lodging a complaint. Since then slurs against and abuse of the family has been arguably frequent. Reasonablehank covers the latest in a long string of pleas from the family for compassion.

The University of Wollongong look set to bestow a highly prized academic title upon a fraud. A woman who, no matter how passionate, no matter how driven, no matter how dedicated, is quite simply wrong. How possibly can the University of Wollongong award a doctorate to an antivaccination lobbyist? In absolute dissonance to the position of the worlds medical community no less?

There is no scientific doubt. Vaccination is an overwhelming success. All that Dr. Martin and the University of Wollongong can achieve by affirming and rewarding a fraud, is to drive down vaccination rates, mislead and confuse the public, spread disease, counter public health programmes, cost Australia ongoing millions and ultimately take lives. Innocent lives.

Dr. Martin insists he has no opinion either way. Just an interest. His topic list includes ample conspiracy theory interest however. Origin of AIDS, fluoride in water, vaccination. Areas wherein “dissenters” cause harm. Indeed his article defending Meryl Dorey attacking her critics and science itself, was published with reference to The University of Wollongong.

Thus this raises their position on the support or not of Australia’s vaccination regime. The article is entitled Debating Vaccination: understanding the attack on the AVN.

Debating vaccination quote

Dr. Brian Martin: Debating Vaccination

Should Dr. Martin justify how he can defend Meryl Dorey’s conduct as “dissent” when it is not backed by evidence. At what point does Ms. Dorey’s misinformation cause harm and how does seeking to impede public harm by legislative and regulatory means constitute an abuse of free speech? As an observer or an interested academic at what point should Dr. Martin accept he has already legitamised the antivaccination stance?

What ethics apply to someone who calmly claims to have a neutral interest in what is apparently dissent? When is the outcome of Dr. Martin’s work deemed to have contributed to a demise in public health? There is no doubt persisting with the demonstrably flawed antivaccination mantra at academic levels has catastrophic effects on vaccination rates. Can Dr. Martin really claim impartiality as he contributes to the reduction in immunisation? Indeed, is defending the AVN even moral or humane?

Ms. Dorey quotes Dr. Martin on her website to justify her actions. This pseudo-neoconservative plan has worked well. Dorey’s aim has been firstly to avoid serious discussion or examination of evidence. In creating an enemy and fabricating malignant actions such as threats, bullying, abuse of venue owners, needing security and so on the illusion that Dorey is abused begins to take hold.

Secondly, by continually naming and embellishing an entity as the enemy, whilst attributing malignancy, gives a constant psychological peg for readers to identify with. So it’s constantly “skeptics, The Australian Skeptics or Stop the AVN”. Dorey argues all are linked and an abundance of funds is bent on destroying her. To the conspiracy mind this makes absolute sense.

I’ve already deconstructed Dorey’s claim that her opponents don’t believe in free speech. It is fallacious and again fills the void that should be filled by evidence confirming she is an authority on the topic.

Recently in preparing more work Dr. Martin sent, as is his practice, a copy for comment to critics of Ms. Dorey. I asked why Meryl censors her websites and why she had not replied to emails I had sent defeating her pertussis and autism arguments. He replied in part:

Can you give me any example of a person who has been systematically vilified, subject to numerous formal complaints and who has received threats and pornography and yet who is quite happy to open the target group’s discussion forum to people from the attacking crowd? As soon as SAVN launched its campaigns, it closed down most prospects for genuine dialogue. I think it is completely unrealistic to expect openness from targets of this sort of attack. To complain about censorship by those being attacked this way is, to my mind, to misunderstand who are responsible.

Complaints are justified and serve a larger public interest. They are a legal avenue to raise dissent – something Dr. Martin would be well aware of. The HCCC findings were not quashed by Justice Christine Adamson in The Supreme Court of NSW and accordingly remain valid. Thus, I would argue Ms. Dorey is taking an easy way out. Dr. Martin is an intelligent man. Clearly he must realise that orchestrated attacks upon a public health policy such as vaccination will be resisted.

Ms. Dorey and the AVN were found to be dishonest and pose a risk to public health. That an appeal was won against displaying a web page to this effect does not change this.

The reality is that Meryl has no evidence and even more so, less regard for authority. Asked recently to remove an advertisement promoting an illicit and dangerous therapeutic good – the subject of a TGA warning – Meryl opened an appeal for $50,000 to fight the TGA. A “legal fighting fund”.

Threats and pornography cannot be levelled at opposition to Ms. Dorey. It is a cheap shot in no way linked to those keen to engage with Ms. Dorey and Dr. Martin lowers his own image in repeating these manufactured tactics.

Dr. Martin co-authored the article Exposing and opposing censorship: backfire dynamics in freedom of speech struggles in which we note:

The normal aim of censorship is to suppress speech, publications and other forms of expression in whole or part. But sometimes the act of censorship creates more attention to and support for the censored work and its creator than would have occurred without the intervention of censors. This process, which we call backfire, is most likely to occur in societies that place a high value on freedom of expression. […]

Devaluing the target makes attacks seem less objectionable, at least to most people. Censorship of liars and thieves does not generate the same outrage as censorship of courageous dissidents. Therefore it is predictable that those who want to curtail free speech will denigrate targets and critics. […]

Devaluation of targets can be countered by arguing for the value of all people, by exposing double standards and by exposing the technique of devaluation.

In his own words then, by devaluing “the target” (SAVN) through baseless accusations of intimidation, pornography, threats, oppression and labelling legal and vital defence of public health as an “attack”, Dr. Martin can defend Meryl Dorey’s censorship. She has no obligation to provide any evidence or engage in discourse. Yet, this is defensive relativism. By coaching Dorey to continue with the plan of persecution over evidence, filling her blogs with endless self pity and insinuation of abuse, threats… etc, attention is (in theory) drawn away from the lack of evidence.

But how far is too far? It is still cowardly censorship and such defence does not fool observers. By attacking critics as “vile, hate groups, pond scum, communists, losers, paedophiles” and more, Meryl has significantly weakened the justification of the argument. If the McCaffery’s can reciprocate in a polite and pleasant manner – albeit they’re begging for mercy – may I highlight the double standard at play and simply reject this defence.

More so, as has already happened by ignoring any discourse and censoring her sites Dorey has lowered any respect that critics and other interested parties would gladly afford her. Her only avenue to integrity is by engaging with the scientific and medical communities and all families of Australia.

Clearly serious questions arise as to Dr. Martin’s very well experienced manipulation of both sides of this issue. Given the absence of evidence to support antivaccination arguments and the abundance of evidence supporting all vaccine regimes Australians have a right to ask questions. Is Dr. Martin really an impartial observer or now an active player lending academic credence to the antithesis of the Immunise Australia programme, cleverly playing off two groups for his own benefit? In the present climate documenting and publishing on the antivaccination issue would prove very interesting.

In the past Dr. Martin has avoided answering what he thinks of the abuse of the McCafferys because, “I haven’t studied the area of offensive speech sufficiently for me to express an opinion.” Thus he abstained from “a viewpoint”. Will his answer about all of Dorey’s and Wilyman’s transgressions similarly come from hiding behind the emotion of a computer terminal? Is his entire zeitgeist of human morality, compassion, right and wrong down to what he has studied?

Review the above conduct of Meryl Dorey if you wish and ask if lacking sufficient knowledge of a very specific notion would let you off the hook for moral awareness or moral obligation. How many of you studied the area of offensive speech before forming an opinion well enough to express it on the treatment of the McCafferys?

I for one suggest this is a crafty defence. In defending and enabling antivaccination fraud there is a cost to Australian health that is solely the responsibility of Dr. Brian Martin. Already he is in quite some debt.

Is Dr. Martin incapable of discerning when denial has replaced dissent and in doing so destroyed the truth? It appears he would argue so. How far will the University of Wollongong go in defending this conduct? Do both Dr. Martin and the University condone an organised risk to public health, demonstrated to mislead the public through selective use of research. One that now seeks to use it’s Fundraising Authority to fight a Therapeutic Goods Administration order to remove advertisements for a dangerous, corrosive and illicit cancer “cure”?

What is the stance of both regarding Judy Wilyman’s misguided PhD venture? Her academic freedom is of great significance but if that freedom is allowed to be abused under the auspices of Dr. Martin and/or The University of Wollongong then not only have they failed Ms. Wilyman, but made a mockery of Australian Higher Education.

We don’t need a PhD to work this out, University of Wollongong. You have an ill informed renegade student threatening Federal Health ministers, our national immunisation programme and also the health of the Australian public. Her supervisor has burned the moral bridge between personal gain and community responsibility.

How far is too far? The time for action has long since passed.