jumping late on the anti-vaccination backlash bandwagon, but was "inspired" by her speech at Duke on Sunday... - Shirley Wu

If we googlebomb this, perhaps Oprah will see it? If we all blog it, and link it to the phrase "open letter to Oprah" -- or is there a better term/phrase to use, any SEO experts here? -- then perhaps it will get picked up. Also, do any of us have msm contacts? They love controversy, and might reprint Shirley's letter. I'd love to see this get some real traction. I plan to blog it anyway, hoping someone can tell me how to give it maximum google juice. - Bill Hooker

Yikes, what have I gotten myself into? :P Really, I'm just rehashing what many others have already said, e.g. http://www.google.com/custom... (for those who hate URL shortening :)), though it doesn't seem like it's had much effect on Oprah's decision yet - Shirley Wu

I'm aware of the prior conversations, Shirley, but your letter is rather different in tone and strikes me as something that might get a positive (rather than an angry, defensive) response. - Bill Hooker

Good post, Shirley. Twittered http://twitter.com/MatToddChem - Matthew Todd

Saw this comment on Reddit re: my post - "Obviously this crazy person is unaware of the effects the last time people overreacted to bird flu in this country. Vaccines are potentially deadly. This headline ['Why Oprah should not give talk show to a baby killer ' - guess someone felt mine wasn't sensational enough] is crap." Does anyone know what effects s/he is talking about re: bird flu? I find it interesting that they would prefer not to risk the minute "potential" risk of vaccines in favor of the certain risks of smallpox, polio, measles, whooping cough, etc. Maybe all these anti-vaccination folks should live on their own unvaccinated island (and quarantined from the rest of us)... - Shirley Wu

It's an interesting story. In 1976 a soldier died at Fort Dix from what was diagnosed as an H1N1 (NOT Bird, that's H5N1) strain similar to the 1918 strain of the Spanish Flu: the one that killed millions post WWI. The CDC and various other advisers urged Pres. Ford to start a mass vaccination campaign. Once the campaign started, a few people reported Gullian-Barre syndrome: a rare and fatal neurological disorder just after receiving the vaccine. The trouble is, the E-value of GBS incidence was less than significant: i.e. no higher than what was expected by random. People inferred causation from correlation, and there was a huge media stink. The campaign was called off, with less than 50% of Americans being vaccinated. To this day it is not exactly certain whether GBS cases were caused by the vaccine or not, and it is very controversial. Source: Gina Kolata's excellent book "Flu", and my failing memory thereof. - Iddo Friedberg

Ah, thanks, Iddo. Seems like the anti-vaccination folks are still on shaky footing. It still seems strange because vaccines are proven to work, whereas getting sick from them has NOT been proven, and yet people keep following the anti-vaccine bandwagon - Shirley Wu

That's a great question, Neil, and I'll answer Paulo's call to arms from last week http://blindscientist.genedrift.org/2009... by explaining my understand of how better to reach these people. Dave Munger has written about(people who wrote about) the tendency for people to overestimate near-term risks and underestimate larger, further off risks. Others have written about how many people's primary way of interfacing with the world is through the emotional dimension, which is why they listen to people like McCarthy and not to people like, well, the entire scientific establishment. It's not reaching to assume that people who see the world this was may be more highly represented in Oprah's audience. So, Neil, to answer your question, we need to tell better stories. Naked facts are absolutely useless in reaching these people, it's storytelling and testimonials and generally the kind of stuff that we scientists have contempt for when we see it used to sell crap on TV that is required to reach the people that remain anti-vaccinationist. - Mr. Gunn

Just saw this. As someone from a third world country, where immunization saves more lives that people in this part of the world could possibly fathom, the anti-vaccination movement drives me nuts, especially since I know some relatively sensible people completely buy into it. Mr. Gunn's point about people listening to the fringe rather than the entire scientific community (in all kinds of situations) is the one that is really troublesome. We do need to tell better stories, and do it in ways that are not antagonistic - Deepak Singh

Jim Hardy said her post briefly made it on the top 10 list at wp.com, but I can't find it there now. - Mr. Gunn

I don't know about making the Top Posts, but the blog itself is currently listed at #7 on "Growing blogs" for May 18, 2009: http://botd.wordpress.com/2009.... (Not there on the overall "Growing Blogs" list, though.) Hard to beat CNN, FAIL blog, lolcats, and celebrity babies! - Shirley Wu

@MrGunn Yes, mis-spoke. Growing Blogs *not* Top Posts. Looks like it's faded away for the time being. Actually, I am impressed that there aren't more comments from dissenters. - Jim Hardy

Just got picked up by Bad Astronomy: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastr... Starting to freak me out... - Shirley Wu

Showed the open letter post to my mom and she's happy I did. She's now forwarded it to her friends. Let's see if her chain-mail pals can make it into the soccermomsphere. :-) - Ricardo Vidal

@Jim, I'm a bit surprised as well that the comments have been so one-sided so far. Maybe just a matter of time. I won't have made it unless I get a troll or two, right? - Shirley Wu

Now the dissenters are coming out... sit back and grab the popcorn? - Shirley Wu

To what extent does the passion of the "concernedmama" types come from making the choice to either blame themselves or blame vaccines? Obviously there's no role for blame here, but I can see a worried mother going back over things in her head (was it because I didn't eat right, was it that glass of wine I had, was it chemicals in my food ...) and looking for an answer. From an emotional perspective, it's not about facts, really, it's about how much you trust the source of your facts. Everything else gets blamed on some sort of bias. How can we shift the debate from where it is now - with each side having a preferred fact source, each of which is deeper and more detailed than one person can master, exposing debaters to the "you haven't read much about X, have you?" tactic - to which sources of information we should trust? - Mr. Gunn

Passes the popcorn ... anyone wants butter or salt? - Lars Juhl Jensen

salt and pepper on mine please. And maybe some aspirin... - Shirley Wu

@Shirley. Aspirin's not good for you, it contains acetylcyalic acid. Stick with the salt & butter. - Iddo Friedberg

Hm, now that I think of it, corn is bad (see Michael Pollan), salt is bad (low/no-sodium diets), and butter is dairy (and thus equivalent to cocaine). Just handfuls of pepper for me thanks. - Shirley Wu

Shirley: with fresh corn Pollen would have no criticism based on food processing ;) - Mike Chelen

It always comes full circle to Alice in Wonderland. Pepper, lots of pepper.. - Jim Hardy