{"id":500413,"date":"2010-04-01T09:29:40","date_gmt":"2010-04-01T13:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/?p=10230"},"modified":"2010-04-01T09:29:40","modified_gmt":"2010-04-01T13:29:40","slug":"taking-the-plunge-bad-astronomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/500413","title":{"rendered":"Taking the Plunge | Bad Astronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dylan Otto Krider <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.denvermagazine.com\/capital\/2009\/12\/taking-plunge\">wrote a nice piece about antivaxxers in the Denver magazine recently<\/a>. He interviewed me for it, and I&#8217;m pleased with how it came out. Otto is one of the good guys, and one of the few in the MSM willing to take this topic on without pandering to nonsense to provide false &#8220;balance&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>One of [Plait&#8217;s] latest causes has been debunking the antivax movement that he sees as dangerous. \u201cThey don\u2019t have anything to stand on except emotions,\u201d he says. \u201cThey play on the heartstrings, and unfortunately, people tend to listen to their emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He says the antivax movement is having an effect. \u201cYou can see it,\u201d he says. \u201cThe number of people getting vaccines is going down.\u201d What he finds particularly annoying is that when things change \u2014 for example, thimerosal has been largely, although not entirely, eliminated as a preservative in vaccines \u2014 antivax groups just \u201cmove the goalposts\u201d and claim vaccines do something else.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m glad to see this getting more press, and I&#8217;m very glad to see the antivaxxers getting hit harder and harder. Every time their garbage is aired out, a few more kids get a chance to live a life with a lower risk for preventable diseases.<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/qscLGs8Y0NHSKKGzbsB3XEjajWg\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/qscLGs8Y0NHSKKGzbsB3XEjajWg\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><br \/>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/qscLGs8Y0NHSKKGzbsB3XEjajWg\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/qscLGs8Y0NHSKKGzbsB3XEjajWg\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/BadAstronomyBlog\/~4\/FVlz7Jg1sgw\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/DiscoverMag\/~4\/ad3hLiu_pfM\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dylan Otto Krider wrote a nice piece about antivaxxers in the Denver magazine recently. He interviewed me for it, and I&#8217;m pleased with how it came out. Otto is one of the good guys, and one of the few in the MSM willing to take this topic on without pandering to nonsense to provide false [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-500413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}