It's Past Time to Pay the Piper

In the story The Pied Piper of Hamelin, the German town of Hamelin suffers from an infestation of rats. When things are looking bleak, along comes a piper dressed in bright colored clothes. He claims that he can rid the town of the rats. The mayor makes a deal, promising to pay a handsome sum of money if the piper should accomplish this feat. At once, the piper sets to the task, playing his magic flute. The rats begin streaming out of the houses and shops, following the piper to the nearby Weser River, where all of the rodents drown. Having held up his end of the deal, the piper goes to collect his due, but the mayor shirks his responsibility. He reneges on the deal and refuses to pay the piper the agreed upon sum. Angry, the piper leaves, vowing to have his revenge. He returns later and once more plays his magic flute. This time, all of the children of the village flood the streets to follow the piper out of the village, never to return.

The story inspired a lovely phrase, "pay the piper", to describe those situations where one must accept the unpleasant or undesired consequences of one's actions. It's a phrase that is particularly appropriate when talking about the anti-vaccine movement, their enablers and the current, and distressing, measles outbreak originating at Disneyland. For years and years, anti-vaccine activists and the handful of physicians who eschew their professional obligations in order to pander to them have downplayed the risks of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles, exaggerated the risks of the vaccines, and done their damnedest to bring down vaccination rates across the country. The natural consequence of this is that we are seeing the return of diseases that we eliminated from endemic circulation.

For Balance, We Turn To... - Jen Eyer Edition

This seems to be the week for lazy journalists falling for the false balance that is the epitome of sloppy reporting. I had originally planned to write about this particular bit of nonsense yesterday, but the article giving a platform to anti-vaccine bully Becky Estepp took precedence. Also, Dr. Steven Novella and Orac both beat me to the punch. But, there's still plenty of meat in the story to go around.

I'm talking about the latest verbal vomitus from anti-vaccine activist Mary Tocco, titled No one should be forced to vaccinate their children". Ms. Tocco's letter was in response to a science-based op-ed, "Anti-vaccination movement threatens the health, safety and well-being of Michigan children", by Dr. Anthony F. Ogjnan and Dr. Sandro Cinti. The original letter is well worth the read, particularly for those who live in Michigan and are concerned about their legislators being gulled by the dishonest misinformation campaigns of anti-vaccine groups, like Michigan Opposing Mandatory Vaccines (MOMV - apparently Ms. Tocco is as bad at making acronyms as she is at everything else, since she calls it "MOM", i.e., "Michigan Opposing Mandatory"). Ms. Tocco's response is an exercise in name that logical fallacy and an excellent illustration of how "research" (in anti-vaccine world) is a far cry from actual research in the real world. I'm not going to delve into her letter very much, since Dr. Novella and Orac both covered a good deal of what was wrong with it, but I will point my readers to discussions of how Ms. Tocco she tried to twist the Bible to support her ideology.

What I want to focus on is the person responsible for giving Ms. Tocco space to spew her bile, Michigan Live's Director of Community Engagement, Jen Eyer.

For Balance, We Turn To...

Over a dozen current and former students in the Carlsbad High School broadcast journalism program have found themselves in the middle of a long-running bullies' rights and health debate after they produced the film Tangible Harm. We turn to Candy Wenpigzfly for her armchair report.

The film debuted online more than a year after it was completed. Students say that's largely due to the backlash they've faced, even during the production stage.

Chad Stryker, an intern with this station, worked on the film during his junior year. He said the idea came from the San Diego Traffic Circle Club two years ago. Their members were impressed by the students' previous award-winning documentaries and wanted the journalism class to do one on the topic of bullying victims' health and rights.

"We told the Traffic Circle Club we would do the film, but only on our terms. That meant we would approach the subject with serious journalism and investigation," Stryker said. "We wanted to make sure the story we would end up telling would be unbiased and free of the false balance so common among many media outlets. We would go where the evidence led."

The Visible Attacks on Invisible Threat

I've been a bit slow getting around to this post, so the subject is rather old news, in blogging terms. Back at the end of April and early May, the anti-vaccine world went into a tizzy about a documentary developed by chstvFILMS (Carlsbad High School Television), an award-winning broadcast journalism program run by high school students for high school students. They have a teacher adviser and a parent volunteer to help the students, but the students do the work of writing, filming, interviewing and so forth. Several years ago, the students started work on what was intended to be a short (15 minutes or so) documentary on the immune system. What they ended up with was a roughly 45-minute documentary on vaccines, the threat of infectious diseases and the role of vaccine refusal in the spread of disease: Invisible Threat.

Invisible Threat Trailer from CHSTV Videos on Vimeo.

From the moment the students announced the project, anti-vaccine folks attacked it, with comments like this, from Age of Autism's Anne Dachel (Age of Autism, "Reporters - The Next Generation", Sept. 19, 2012):

This class assignment was a HOW-TO GUIDE on how to deceive the public by covering up relevant facts about a major issue...What was produced here was propaganda.

This, of course, without Ms. Dachel having seen the film at all. Unlike AoA's Media Director, I wanted to actually watch the film before I made any comments on it, either for or against it. So, I contacted the film's producer Lisa Posard at InvisibleThreatInfo@gmail.com.

Just Missing the Mark Again, Katie Couric Airs HPV Followup Segment

Back on December 4, award-winning journalist Katie Couric aired a mindnumbingly bad episode of her show Katie. Throwing her credibility and journalistic ethics to the wind, she made her show a platform for the anti-vaccine organization SaneVax, which promotes the erroneous belief that Gardasil, among others, is horribly dangerous and is killing our kids, going so far as to make available a guide on how to blame the vaccine if anything bad happens to your child at some point after they receive it. The episode featured two women, one (Emily Tarsell, National Vaccine Information Center's Director of Gardasil Network Development) who blamed Gardasil for the death of her daughter, and one (Rosemary Mathis, Founder and Director of SaneVax) who blamed a wide range of non-specific maladies that her daughter experienced. Both guests have a vested interest in scaring people away from the vaccine. In addition, one of the primary investigators of the Gardasil (Merck) and Cervarix (GlaxoSmithKline) clinical trials, Dr. Diane Harper, appeared on the show to downplay the effectiveness of the vaccines, stating they only lasted 5 years, while overselling pap smears in such a way that it made the vaccine seem pointless. For the science and reality side of the "conversation", Couric included Dr. Mallika Marshall. Dr. Marshall did her best to point out the facts of the vaccines, but when the entire show was framed to generate fear and mistrust of the vaccine, she had a very difficult time of it.

While others focused on the myriad flaws and errors in the episode, I focused on the ethics, though I did include links to a number of other articles lambasting the show. As a journalist, Couric had a number of responsibilities to her viewers to seek out the truth and report it. Unfortunately, she and her producers opted for ratings. The Friday after the episode aired, someone at the show put up a lukewarm justification for how they opted to do the show. It did not offer any apologies, nor did it correct any of the misinformation from the episode. More criticism popped up, and Couric herself penned a "mea culpa" of sorts on the Huffington Post. It was a step in the right direction, but Couric still didn't go far enough to correct the errors and damage done by her December 4 show. She addressed some, but not all, of the problems the others pointed out, but she skipped over some very important points. To make matters worse, she did it in the wrong venue. Rather than devoting time on her show to the corrections, which would have been seen by the same audience as her original episode, she opted to address a completely different audience: the ones who were criticizing her and already knew what the problems were.

Well, it seems that the well-earned criticism has finally filtered through...kind of. This past Friday, December 13, Couric devoted her "Follow Up Friday" segment to HPV and the vaccines that prevent it.

Followup: Katie Couric Addresses the Criticism...Sort Of

Last week, Katie Couric, award wining reporter and host of her own talk show, Katie, threw journalistic ethics to the wind. She hosted a show on the HPV vaccines, engaging in false balance by propping up two anti-vaccine anecdotes as being not only valid, but equivalent to the scientific evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. The backlash from science bloggers, journalists and the public was fast and brutal, pointing out all the things Ms. Couric (and her producers) did wrong.

When lukewarm justification for the way the show was done appeared on the Katie web site, it was not an apology. It did not correct any of the errors of the show. In short, it failed the ethical obligation to "admit mistakes and correct them promptly". Today, Katie Couric posted an article on the Huffington Post titled Furthering the Conversation on the HPV Vaccine. While it goes part of the way toward correcting things, it isn't quite enough.

Katie Couric Chooses Ratings Over Ethics

The blogosphere, Twitter, even mainstream news outlets have been abuzz about a recent episode of Katie Couric's show Katie. The episode, which aired December 4, 2013, was on the HPV vaccine, a vaccine that prevents infection with a virus that causes cervical cancer, head and neck cancers, warts and so forth. To give you an idea of how Couric and her producers were going to frame the discussion, here's what the teaser said:

The HPV vaccine is considered a life-saving cancer preventer … but is it a potentially deadly dose for girls? Meet a mom who claims her daughter died after getting the HPV vaccine, and hear all sides of the HPV vaccine controversy.

This blurb could have been written by the National Vaccine Information Center. Just like NVIC's recent anti-flu vaccine ad and more generic anti-vaccine billboards, the topic is framed to emphasize fear and distrust of the vaccine. And after watching the show, I agree with the numerous critiques that have been levied at Couric and her producers. The flaws with the show have all been stated very capably, so I'm not going to bother repeating them. Nor will I go into detail about the human papillomavirus or the vaccines that prevent infection. If you are interested in learning any of that, take a look at the links down at the bottom of this post.

Instead, I want to talk about the effect that Couric's show may have, not to mention some of the ethical implications involved.