When I was a kid, there was a big controversy about how flouridation of the water supply (to combat tooth decay) was suddenly attacked as being slow poisoning of the population. It was a conspiracy by the Communists to weaken the American people and prepare us for invasion, most of it based on on political and ideological fears. The authorities, including the dental and medical professions, repeatedly stated that this was a harmless public health measure, but there was still a lot of public opposition to the measure. You may recall how Stanley Kubrick’s character, USAF General Jack D. Ripper in “Dr Strangelove”, was obsessed by how how the Commies were polluting our “precious bodily fluids” by poisoning our “essence”.

Now I certainly don’t know if there was anything to this or not. I know next to nothing about the effects of minute amounts of flourides in our drinking water, or their effectiveness as a dental health prophylactic. Still, I was ready to accept the authorities’ claims on this, I figured they knew better. This may have been premature optimism on my part, we know now of many potential carcinogenic or other negative consequences of trace chemicals in the environment. But if any problems arose from flourine, they don’t seem to have made themselves obvious half a century later, and Americans have the finest teeth in the world!

A similar situation is arising today, routine vaccines have been implicated in the presence of autism in children, and there is a growing social movement against innoculations based on these fears. Again, the authorities’, medical and public health, protestations that these fears have no scientific foundation, and that the one paper and researcher who suggested this have long since been discredited, and no additional evidence has since turned up to corroborate these charges, have been ignored by a large proportion of concerned parents.

Again, I know nothing about immunizations or autism, but I’ll be willing to rely on the official announcements until I’m convinced otherwise. I know enough about science to realize the pros sometimes make mistakes, and new research opposed to the current orthodoxy has an uphill battle against the scientific establishment (as it should!). But I’m starting to hear the old conspiracy theories flaring up again, although this time its not Commie plots to weaken our precious bodily fluids, but capitalist plots to protect the lucrative medical establishment.

I thought the internet was supposed to protect us from this sort of thing, by allowing the public to become more informed and make the correct decisions.

There is one tool we now have to help us navigate this minefield of conflicting claims. At least, its one I’ve come to rely on. Once you hear that the other side is masterminding a conspiracy, that some evil plot is being concocted by the bad guys to cover up their crimes and pull off their skullduggery, then you know that the new theory relies on two assumptions, not just one. When you have to rely on an imaginary cabal of villains to discredit evidence against you, you are short of evidence of your own.