One of my Friday night pleasures is watching “Real Time with Bill Maher.” I know there are many out there who are put off by what people see as his obnoxious self-righteousness in bashing Trump, political correctness, obese people, religion, etc. etc. Now it’s my turn to be angry with Bill. Last week he had Dr. Jay Gordon, a pediatrician and vaccine skeptic, on his show. Of course Bill, always the provocateur, really liked his fellow maverick.
Dr. Gordon has been banned from appearing on many TV shows because of his controversial views on the alleged connection between vaccines and autism. And as so many people do when they contest basically settled science, Dr. Gordon characterizes himself as an open-minded guy who believes in the value of objective discussion. In the same way, journalists are taught to present both sides of a story in the interest of fairness when the preponderance of evidence favors one side.
I am so disappointed in Bill. This champion of reason who defends the many scientists who have painstakingly laid out the case for man-made climate change has decided to turn his back on science in the vaccine-autism debate. Like many others, he has let his passions and prejudices lead him to throw science and the health of non-immunized children under the bus. And the usual tough questions he asks of both his friends and foes were missing from his discussion with Dr. Gordon. Instead he gave a doctor who admitted, “I can’t prove anything so I talk quietly,” a platform to speak loudly and spread his dangerous message to millions of people.
Conventional wisdom isn’t always wise
To be sure, sometimes conventional wisdom is flat-out wrong. Exhibit A: for decades it was commonly believed that stress and poor eating habits caused ulcers. Then two brave Australian doctors proposed an alternative cause, a bacterium, and were ridiculed by most in the medical establishment.
Well, flash forward more than 20 years and these doctors won the Nobel Prize for being right. Their journey to the Nobel Prize started in 1980 when one of the physicians, Dr. Warren, isolated some odd-looking bacteria from ulcer-ridden human stomachs. This was surprising because the medical books all said that no bacteria could live in the stomach due to the stomach’s high acidity. Dr. Warren noticed that something was off and decided to investigate this “chink in the armor” of conventional wisdom.
What’s the chink in the armor of conventional wisdom about vaccines and autism that hasn’t been thoroughly disproved? Step forward if you think “something’s off” with the medical consensus on the lack of a link between vaccines and autism and let’s subject it to rigorous examination. Yes, there’s an infinitesimally small chance we may find evidence tomorrow that overturns conventional wisdom, but we have to look at probabilities. And, as a 2008 article in Psychology Today argued, we humans are lousy at estimating odds.
Question authority but be prepared for “the man” to sometimes be right
When I was in high school, some of the hipster kids in my class wore buttons that said, “Question Authority.” I dug the sentiment. As Bruce Springsteen sagely said to the audience at one of his concerts, “Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed.” I am not proposing that we patients follow our physicians and the rest of the medical establishment like docile sheep. I’ve seen too many times physicians confidently make pronouncements that were categorically wrong. An empowered patient should question away but often the physician presents such compelling reasoning and evidence that the patient will conclude the doctor is right. I believe that true patient empowerment is the ability to separate facts from fiction, as well as good arguments from bad, and the wisdom to know the difference.
As Bruce said, don’t have blind faith. Be open-minded and question both authority and those arrayed against authority. However, sometimes so-called authority is right and the evidence is overwhelmingly on their side. I do sympathize with fearful parents. I urge parents, though, to focus their fears on the conditions that public health and other medical experts say are the real threats to their kids.
