troll

Anti-vaccine internet trolls try to connect the dots and always get it wrong

This blog, and by extension this writer, has been skewered by anti-vaccine trolls so many times, it has become a badge of honor. I mean, I don’t really take myself too seriously, the whole point of this blog is mock pseudoscience.

Let’s see. I’ve been accused of being a shill of Big Pharma (about a thousand times), Kaiser Permanente, and Monsanto (another thousand times). These anti-vaccine trolls certainly believe I must be rolling in the gold bullion from these companies.

I’ve been called a sock puppet of Dorit Rubinstein Reiss (who’s a nice person, a description that could be used for me only if you’re stoned). I’ve been called an astroturfer by the antivaccine “journalist,” Sharyl Attkisson.

One more silly accusation and I believe I get the skeptic merit badge for Laughing at Ad Hominem attacks. I’ve been working hard on it thanks to the anti-vaccine trolls.

But most of the junk science that comes my way is fairly easy to mock. It writes itself, as they say. Frankly, there’s just too much out there on the internet. I bet most skeptics ignore 99% of the silliness on the internet. I mean Natural News would require 24/7 debunking.

So that brings me to something that showed up on my email this morning. It’s a blog post, by a blogger named Marco Cáceres di Iorio, entitled “Internet Trolls Attack Anyone Resisting Vaccine Party Line.” Read away if you want, it’ll probably be the most hits his blog will get ever.

Usually, I ignore this stuff. But hey, he called me “troll.” Oh no. Except, this new member of the anti-vaccine trolls connected the dots in such a way that I’m not sure if I should feel honored. Or insulted. Possibly both? What

Racist Facebook troll attacks pro-science writers

People try to claim that there’s some sort of debate about vaccines. In fact, one side, supported by the facts that the safety and effectiveness of vaccines is overwhelming and unbiased. The other side has nothing, so they employ a racist Facebook troll to game the system to make it appear that “we” are bad people.

It’s kind of a funny strategy on their part. The troll attacks Allison Hagood, an accomplished author and one of the leaders of the movement to protect children with vaccines. The racist troll has attacked Dorit Rubinstein Reiss and ghostly Orac, both of whom are intellectual heavyweights, who know more about the science and ethics of vaccines than the racist Facebook troll would know in a million years.

One of the troll’s and her minions’ latest attacks was a photoshopped image that made Professor Hagood look like a weird looking Hitler. And just to remind the reader, generally, using images that attempt to link an innocent person to Hitler or Nazism is a form of anti-Semitism, and is considered hate speech.

The racist troll has done all she can do to suppress the intelligent and thoughtful discourse about vaccines – that they protect lives and have saved nearly a million children’s lives in the past few years.