The Rogues Gallery

Jenny McCarthy – A Wasted Effort

Ed Warren dedicated the better part of his life to investigating (sort of) ghosts and “educating” the public about ghostly phenomena. If science and reason are any judge, ghosts do not exist. They are a figment of human fear, superstition, and imagination. Therefore, one might argue that Ed Warren wasted his entire career on a fiction. He’s not the only one.

I often ponder those individuals who waste years or even decades following a lost cause, an intellectual dead end. By that I don’t mean scientists throughout history who were wrong in their conclusions – being wrong is of great scientific value. Rather I refer to those who are not even wrong, whose efforts yield no progress, no insights, nothing except perhaps a cautionary tale about pursuing figments. It’s sad. What’s worse is that human psychology is such that most individuals, after a certain investment of effort and prestige, are incapable of admitting their error and thereby cutting their losses. If anything, the more the evidence suggests they are on the wrong track the more desperate they become to prove they are correct.

Actress Jenny McCarthy has set herself on such a path. She has a son with autism. My sympathies go to any parent with an afflicted child, but such sympathy does not excuse taking it upon oneself to cause harm through ignorance. McCarthy has chosen to leverage her modest fame to champion the disproved notion that there is a link between vaccines and autism.

Her crusade began with a book: Louder Than Words: A Mother’s Journey in Healing Autism. This, of course, led her to the book lecture circuit, including an appearance on Oprah. Her primary point in the book is that her “mommy instinct” is a more reliable indicator of scientific truth than science. If we don’t believe her than we are attacking mommies.

More recently she has been claiming that diet along can ease the symptoms of autism. Starpulse Entertainment News Blog reports that:

Actress/model Jenny McCarthy has called on the U.S. medical community to recognize that diet and vitamins can help ease the symptoms of autism.

I have no problem with celebrities or politicians using their position to raise awareness, or even to advocate for more research into a particular problem. But I do have a problem with a celebrity with no scientific credentials calling on the medical community to accept a particular scientific claim – in this case that diet can help autism. She is quoted as saying:

I’ve been speaking to moms across the country who are all shouting out the same thing: ‘This (diet and supplement intake) is working.’ It’s so heartbreaking to see the medical community not support something called diet and vitamins.

It may surprise McCarthy to learn that medical scientists actually do something called research and they are quite capable of reading the scientific literature and coming to their own conclusions. They don’t need a second-rate celebrity to tell them how to interpret the scientific evidence. She is also arguing for the acceptance of anecdotal evidence. This is simply naive – scientists understand why anecdotes are not reliable. So McCarthy is also telling scientists to abandon the scientific methods they have developed over the past few centuries. Without any scientific background she feels she can tell scientists how to do their job. I would never presume to tell an actress how to do her job, or to make naive judgments that call into question the thespian arts as they have developed over centuries.

Now McCarthy is trying to organize a protest rally outside the Center for Disease Control (CDC). This completes her journey to full-fledged pseudoscientific activist. She can now join the ranks of all those who wish to overturn scientific knowledge by grass-roots fiat, rather than by, you know, scientific evidence. She is no different than creationists who use political means to attack evolution, or Neal Adams who uses his minor fame to promote his hollow earth nonsense. Actually McCarthy is arguably worse, for she is meddling in medical science, and her shenanigans can cause direct harm to the public.

I will counter Jenny McCarthy’s call to action with one of my own. I call upon all those autism activists out there (McCarthy included) who wish to help children with autism and who profess to want to discover true causes and treatments for autism, but who have chosen to attack the scientific community with accusations of conspiracy, to abandon their current counterproductive activities. Stop attacking science and scientists. Stop advocating for anecdotes over evidence. Stop the baseless accusations of widespread conspiracies among medical professionals. This is not only a wasted effort, it is counterproductive. You are causing harm to the very people you profess to want to help.

Instead, decide to work with the scientific medical community. Help scientists do their job by raising awareness and funds, but don’t tell them how to do their job. If you think an avenue of investigation is being neglected then work through the scientific community to make your argument. Science works because ideas must survive on their own merits – don’t subvert this system because you think you have some magical access to the truth. You don’t. Strive to make your organization and your efforts as science-based as possible – otherwise you are nothing but an ideological cult. Stop wasting all your energy and effort.

I am not optimistic that Jenny McCarthy or any of the other misguided autism activists will see the light. They are likely too far down the rabbit hole to turn back now, and there are huge psychological barriers to making such a profound change in outlook.

Perhaps trying to reason with the unreasonable is my wasted effort.