American actress Jenny McCarthy used to be a scandalous beauty in the Nineties, but lately she is more famous for her work against vaccines. Yes, against. She is the face of the anti-vaccine movement, which claims that vaccines cause autism. Today, I came across yet another case of internet lore on this topic, rather a vulgar one (but it got the point across): the Jenny McCarthy body count—how many lives have been lost due to the myth of vaccines causing autism? 1170 by today’s count, in the US alone. Why is this a Netopia topic, you ask? Because it reminds me of a brilliant story in Wired magazine a few years ago that took the anti-vaccine movement as a departure point to discuss how the internet makes us regard all facts as equal and that experts are often believed to have such vested interests that their knowledge becomes a reason for suspicion rather than trust. “Denialism” is the term coined by science writer Michael Specter. Navigating a web with no publisher responsibility puts a lot of responsibility on the individual user in evaluating facts and statements. In the offline society, we used to rely on specialists to make those judgments; now we like to assume that everyone is perfectly equipped to do it themselves. I, for one, can testify that that’s not the case—how many times have I clicked dubious links or taken misinformation as fact just because I was not enlightened in that particular field? Countless. And I have a lot more coming. So do you.
