Is Bristol Palin an Activist (cha-cha-cha)?

Posted on November 11, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Bristol Palin is a nineteen year old single mother who has learned ballroom dancing on network tv.  The premise of Dancing with the Stars, her current network home, is that people will want to watch celebrities who have achieved notoriety in one field undertake the difficulties of learning another discipline.  ABC’s bet has paid off big, and many people tune in to watch.

Of course, casting the celebrities is the big trick, and putting Bristol on stage was a smart move.  But how to introduce her?  Dancing is generally filled with actors, athletes, and even an astronaut.  The “a” for Bristol is “activist.”  Add another A for abstinence.

It’s not a very good description for Bristol, but they may not have anything else (half-term governor’s daughter?).

Bristol’s activist resume is pretty thin–not surprising for a nineteen-year old mother.  (She hasn’t had time to do a lot.) For a fee, Bristol will speak on behalf of sexual abstinence.   Two issues: Bristol’s credibility on the topic; what do activists really do?

Bristol ostensibly learned about the wisdom of abstinence by abstaining from it.   As a high school student, she conceived her son with her on/off/on/off fiance, Levi Johnston (surely, every parent’s nightmare boyfriend).   Will her experience dissuade young people from having sex?  Bristol’s choices have given her a cute son, network television exposure, the chance to meet Tom Bergeron, and maybe even a source of income.  That’s not what the manual predicts for teen pregnancy, and it’s hardly a cautionary tale.

What about activism?

Working on a college campus, I see 19 year old activists all the time.  They hand out leaflets, organize events, attend demonstrations, ask questions at lectures (sometimes, not very politely), and issue demands on matters of policy.  Activists go door-to-door to meet people and talk about issues, they sell baked goods to raise money for causes,  they hold signs outside polling stations and on street corners, they write articles to promote their ideas, and they go to meetings. (Oh so many meetings!)

Activists work hard to try to change the world, often sacrificing time, money, and convenience in the process.

Most aren’t professionals, and some of the actors and athletes who might appear on Dancing devote some of their time to causes.  Last month, for example, I received robocalls from Susan Sarandon and Martin Sheen, suggesting how I should vote in November.  Lady Gaga has been vigorous in pushing for the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t tell.  You can think of scores of other examples.  What’s notable is that these part-time activists is continue to derive their income and their reputation from their professional identities as actors or singers.  They’re amateurs, just like millions of other American activists who are far less visible most of the time.

There are, of course, professional activists as well.  They become expert in a set of issues, raise money, and organize, organize, organize.  It’s important and difficult work at the core of American politics.

“Activist” can’t just be a leftover category for people who have no other sign of gainful employment.

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Students protest against fee hikes

Posted on November 10, 2010 by David S. Meyer

The new Conservative/Liberal Democratic government in the UK has proposed very large hikes in university tuition, the New York Times reports.   University fees were first imposed by the previous Labour government.

Hiking fees makes sense as a way to control spending, but fighting against them makes sense for students who will now have to pay more than twice as much as they’d previously planned.

Paradoxically, the Labour government enjoyed more tolerance from its allies in increasing the costs of higher education.  Seeing a Tory government as completely unresponsive to their concerns, students activists see no hope for influence beyond making as much noise as possible, with the intent of fracturing the governing coalition.

Protests in the streets have so far led to property damage and great disruption.

Let’s see how American students respond to proposed tuition hikes here.  (The President of the University of California, my employer, has proposed 8 percent increases in tuition for the next school year.)  The LA Times reports:

Under the plan, undergraduate student fees for 2011-12 would rise by $822 to $11,124 annually — about $12,150 when campus-based fees are included. Some professional school fees would also rise, depending on campus and program. The fee hikes would generate about $180 million in annual revenue.

The UC Board of Regents will consider the plan when it meets Nov. 16 to 18 in San Francisco. The university raised fees 32% for the current academic year, sparking student protests.

Last year’s volatile student protests led to a California state budget that protected the university at the expense of many other programs.  But the state budget crisis, including funding higher education, is far from over.

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Will Rand Paul deliver?

Posted on November 8, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Now that Tea Party candidates have won elected office, how do they work within a system they have described as bloated and corrupt.  Senator-elect Paul, who (probably accurately) describes himself as a Tea Partier before there was a Tea Party, has expressed a strong almost-libertarian commitment to forging a much more limited government.

On ABC’s This Week, Senator-elect Paul reaffirmed his commitment to shrinking government and balancing the budget.  This must include, he said, consideration of cuts to the defense budget and entitlement programs.  Of course, Paul is too smart to think that a budget can be balanced and taxes cut without dramatic reductions in what the United States government spends the most money on.  And it can’t help but strain a limited government to support hundreds of military bases around the world.

Other members of Congress must be smart enough to know this as well, but few Republicans (with the notable exception of Rep. Ron Paul) have been willing to bring cuts in the military budget or overseas commitments more generally to budget negotiations.

In taking this libertarian view to Congress, Rand Paul is representing the beliefs he campaigned on.  It’s doubtful, however, that many of his Republican colleagues will join him.  (Ron Paul’s last ally on cuts to the military budget was Barney Frank.)  It’s also doubtful that his Republican colleagues will want Kentucky’s new senator to be out front publicly on foreign and military policy.

Will Rand Paul disappoint his colleagues or his Tea Party base?

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The Uses of History

Posted on November 6, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Boston Tea Party, 1773

It’s not that those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it.  Rather, those who don’t know about the past become victims of the waves of enthusiasm perpetrated by others.  History provides context for the present; it’s not that history repeats itself in some predetermined line (or cycle or pendulum), but that what we live through now is never without precedent or analogue.  When we learn about the past, we see contingencies, things that could have turned out differently (We’d like to believe Martin Luther King that the arc of history bends toward justice, but we know it’s hardly smooth or static-free.)  Knowing history helps us make sense of the present, and to have a clearer view of possibilities for the future, and the difficult work that social change entails.

Alas, Americans are too often unduly proud about their shared ignorance of the past, and get sucked up in the overwrought urgencies of the moment.

The huge Republican victories have led even mass media commentary to turn back as far as 1994, when the Republicans made huge gains running against Bill Clinton, and gained control of both the House and the Senate.  But there’s good writing around the web last week that takes us back even farther and offers a better sense of how open the present moment is.

First, see the interview of historian Lucy Barber on Congress.org.  Now Deputy Executive Director of the National Historical Publications and Records, Barber wrote the irreplaceable history, Marching on Washington, which details more than 100 years

Coxey's Army marches in Washington, 1894

of demonstrations on the mall.  Protesters haven’t always been so polite, nor government so tolerant, as the last two months of demonstrations would suggest.

And Politico, seeking context and comparisons for the Tea Party movement, has published commentary from leading historians of twentieth century America.

Alan Brinkley, perhaps best known for his books

Huey P. Long

about Depression era politics in the United States, reviews the sometimes populist movements that Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced, including Huey Long’s Share our Wealth Movement, populist radio preacher Father Coughlin, and The Townsend Plan.  The campaigns contained all the optimism and ugliness of popular movements in America, and were far more volatile than the current Tea Party.  Roosevelt succeeded, in part, by harnessing the populist rhetoric and connecting it to his own policies for using government to help the American people.

Robert Dallek, author of many books, including at treatments of at least seven presidents since William McKinley, gives a brief survey of Populist movements and presidents, dating back to the Populist party of the 1890s and up through the reactionary John

John Birch Society

Birch Society of the late 1950s and early 1960s (whose ideas have found new expression in Glenn Beck’s lessons).

American populism has skewed both left and right over the generations.  It’s oddly ironic that a contemporary president can be condemned as elitist for proposing to guarantee health care for all Americans, and to tax the richest two percent of Americans at marginally higher rates.  The current Tea Party, fueled by very large business interests and animated by frustrated Americans at the grassroots, is an unstable alliance that offers rhetoric about government for all and policies that defend the interests of the very wealthiest.

Democratic politicians, including President Obama, and the mostly dormant movements of the left, will bear a great deal of responsibility for how well that Tea Party alliance holds together.

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Taking the Tea Party Indoors

Posted on November 4, 2010 by David S. Meyer

It was an extremely crappy election for Democrats.  The 60 seat loss (thus far) in the House is historic, but it’s not all.  Democrats lost seats in the Senate and across the states.   You may be able to find the crazy optimist sifting through the crap and hoping to find a pony, but not here.

But bad news for the Democrats isn’t necessarily good news for the Tea Party movement,  and you’ll certainly remember the triumphalist (and mistaken) rhetoric that followed big elections in, oh, 1992, 1994, and 2008–to name just a few.  History hasn’t ended.

In trying to explain the most recent historic rout, politicians and pundits think more about the present.  Republicans say that the public rejected President Obama’s policies on health care, or the environment, or the deficit, emphasizing what they want to work on in the future.  Democrats chastise the president for being too bold or not bold enough, or just not working enough on communicating effectively.  (I don’t think you can really outcommunicate 9.5% unemployment.)

Current recriminations offer a useful take on the dilemmas the Tea Party movement and the Republicans now face.  Organizer and author Marshall Ganz, writing in the Los Angeles Times, takes Obama to task for abandoning the movements that got him elected:

Obama and his team made three crucial choices that undermined the president’s transformational mission. First, he abandoned the bully pulpit of moral argument and public education. Next, he chose to lead with a politics of compromise rather than advocacy. And finally, he chose to demobilize the movement that elected him president. By shifting focus from a public ready to drive change — as in “yes we can” — he shifted the focus to himself and attempted to negotiate change from the inside, as in “yes I can.”…

… the president chose compromise rather than advocacy. Instead of speaking on behalf of a deeply distressed public, articulating clear positions to lead opinion and inspire public support, Obama seemed to think that by acting as a mediator, he could translate Washington dysfunction into legislative accomplishment…

Seeking reform from inside a system structured to resist change, Obama turned aside some of the most well-organized reform coalitions ever assembled — on the environment, workers’ rights, immigration and healthcare. He ignored the leverage that a radical flank robustly pursuing its goals could give a reform president — as organized labor empowered FDR’s New Deal or the civil rights movement empowered LBJ’s Voting Rights Act….

Finally, the president demobilized the widest, deepest and most effective grass-roots organization ever built to support a Democratic president.

I’m sure you’ve already heard arguments like this, as well as the opposite position, that Obama neglected compromise and the political center.  What I’m interested in here is Ganz’s implicit advice to the Tea Party: maintain a link to the movement at the grassroots.

Like the Democrats, however, the Republicans in Congress face competing pressures, and now that the election is past, there’s less pressure or incentive to rally around the “R.”  The dirty laundry is out on the front porch, and partisans are beating each other with it.

Republican senators are castigating Senator Jim DeMint (South Carolina), and by implication, the Tea Party (particularly Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Express), for saddling them with, uh, suboptimal candidates like Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, and Ken Buck–in races that Republicans could have won.  The leadership is visibly worrying about at least some of the Tea Partiers who have gotten in, notably Rand Paul, who endorses the foreign policy views of his dad–which would isolate the United States from international commitments–and have clearly isolated the Paul family from the Republican mainstream.

And in the House, Tea Party stalwart Michele Bachmann, founder of the Tea Party Caucus, has announced the she will seek a leadership position in the Republican Caucus.  Once the challenge is announced, there’s not really a winning position for the Party; either it rejects a visible symbol of the Tea Party–who raised and spent enormous amounts of money on like-minded candidates–or it puts a set of personalities and policies supported by a small, and very passionate, minority, at the center of its public agenda.  It’s hard to see that as a winning strategy.

The movements that inspire people to engage in politics often make for awkward and demanding allies after the votes are counted.  The Tea Partiers want at least some of what they worked for–just as Democrats who heard candidate Obama promise to close Guantanamo, end the wars, or lift don’t ask, don’t tell, expected him to deliver once in office.

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Is the (Tea) Party Over?

Posted on November 2, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Mostly, yes.  On election night, before any results come in, I feel confident in saying that the influence of the Tea Party as a mass movement peaked 6-8 weeks ago, with the end of the primary season. The Tea Party movement is one of the most attractive stories of the year: populist revolt against intrusive government, mobilizing previously dormant constituencies, and shaking up the political process.  It’s such an attractive story that it will be told over and over again, even if it’s only a (tiny) part of the truth.

Important elections came relatively early in the Tea Party’s development, confronting activists with the dilemmas Madison built into the Constitution.  Frequent elections, and lots of them at lots of levels, mean that there is almost always the promise of affecting influence by channeling your efforts through the electoral system.  Madison’s insight was that government became more stable when you brought conflict into it.

But that system, as Madison argued, promotes moderation.  Seeking majorities in single-member districts, candidates play to the center of the district (or state), and activists have to decide how much to compromise their ideals in pursuit of a victory.

Once elected, politicians have to compromise with others elected by different districts in order to get anything done.  At the grassroots, activists again have to come to terms with sacrificing purity for pragmatic gains on matters of policy.

In the primaries, where turnout is low and passion is a value, the Tea Party exercised serious influence.  A very passionate minority can sway such elections, and some of those Tea Party victors will win office tonight.   The Senate contests in Alaska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Delaware were shaped by the Tea Party movement; you can credit or blame them for the results.

But this election is more about the recession and near 10 percent unemployment than anything else.  Political scientists using the simplest models were predicting massive Democratic losses in the House months ago, as Michael Wagner points out.  (Thanks to Maryann Barakso for the reference.)  The Tea Party offers a more colorful and contingent way of working through the election results tonight.  It’s just not as good an explanation.

The better the Republicans do tonight, the rougher it will be for the true Tea Partiers.  Most Republicans want to win elections, organize majorities, and make policy, and are willing to compromise to do it.  The Republican leadership has already promised to sell out the Tea Party in its Pledge to America.  They wanted to say something to the Tea Party, but avoid saying anything specific enough that it might fracture a broad electoral majority.  Predictably, it engendered ridicule from the Tea Party base.  As Erick Erickson blogged at Red State:

These 21 pages tell you lots of things, some contradictory things, but mostly this: it is a serious of compromises and milquetoast rhetorical flourishes in search of unanimity among House Republicans because the House GOP does not have the fortitude to lead boldly in opposition to Barack Obama.

I have one message for John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and the House GOP Leadership: If they do not want to use the GOP to lead, I would like to borrow it for a time.

Yes, yes, it is full of mom tested, kid approved pablum that will make certain hearts on the right sing in solidarity. But like a diet full of sugar, it will actually do nothing but keep making Washington fatter before we crash from the sugar high.

It is dreck — dreck with some stuff I like, but like Brussels sprouts in butter. I like the butter, not the Brussels sprouts. Overall, this grand illusion of an agenda that will never happen is best spoken of today and then never again as if it did not happen. It is best forgotten.

The election of a few true believers will not change the Republican leadership, nor more significantly, the electoral and funding constituency any set of Republican leaders will continue to need.  They will have to take positions on divisive issues the Tea Party has mostly avoided, including the role of social conservatives (anathema to libertarians) and foreign policy (Rand Paul’s stance on Afghanistan isn’t notably different from his father’s, and that was a non-starter for the Republican mainstream).  A Republican leadership concerned about winning elections will gesture to the radicals in the Tea Party rhetorically, and tack toward the mainstream where there are more votes.  (Jacob Weisberg makes this case clearly at Slate.)

So what will the Tea Partiers do?  The Tea Partiers have never rallied behind a clear agenda–beyond stopping President Obama’s initiatives.  The closer the Republicans come to running something, the more they will have to move beyond opposition to an agenda–and every initiative has the potential of fracturing their coalition.  And at the grassroots–and in the Tea Party organizations, some will swallow hard and endorse the party.  Others will grow disaffected and go home.  Still others will take the issues they care most about and continue to push them.  It’s not that it won’t matter, but it won’t be much of a party.

(More to come.)

 

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Billions for Civility?

Posted on November 1, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Stephen Colbert proclaimed that Comedy Central’s weekend rally drew 6 billion participants.  He may believe this; he is not to be believed.  (In the same way, Rep. Michele Bachmann’s estimate of one million at Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally shouldn’t be taken seriously.)

CBS News hired the same outfit that estimated Beck’s turnout at 87,000 to take aerial photos and count the crowds at Jon Stewart’s “Rally for Sanity.”  They came up with a count of 215,000.  (You can find methods and photos here; we discussed how these counts are done here.)

This doesn’t mean, however, that the Comedy Central fans are likely to be three times more effective than Beck’s fans from FOX.  A March isn’t a Movement.

I was surprised that so many people attended the Comedy Central rally.  Organizers picked a more difficult date (colder, and after school starts) and, because of the relatively tight time line,  had less of a chance to publicize their efforts and coordinate logistics–including transportation.

At the same time, Beck’s 9-12 rally-ers can sign onto an organization and an ongoing campaign.  Despite Glenn Beck’s claims otherwise, there was plenty of politics at the rally, with prominent Republicans featured in the program.

In contrast, nearly three times as many Americans went to see a Comedy Central performance.  The leaders explicitly rejected politics (although Jon Stewart railed against polemics and mass media coverage), and candidates for office didn’t appear at the mic.   Neither Stewart nor Colbert fronts a political organization, and attendees were left with little clear direction beyond a call to be civil.

Rob Kleidman, a veteran of many demonstrations and many comedy shows, attended the Comedy Central Rally, and posted in the comments section.  He reports a good show, but an older and whiter crowd than Stewart claimed.  Further, Rob says:

Aside from Stewart at one point asking us to vote, and Kid Rock asking us to ‘care,’ there was no call for action, no outcome.

I’m thinking that some good may come out of the rallies:  if one million people live more moral lives and restore honor, and another six billion work to promote tolerance and civility, life will be better for all of us.

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Moderates Rally for “Sanity”?

Posted on October 30, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Is it sane for “moderates” to take their politics outdoors?

The Comedy Central Rally on the Washington Mall, led by Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, apparently outdrew (I’ve seen estimates of 200-250,000 participants) each of the previous three large Washington demonstrations (Glenn Beck’s march to Restore Honor; Freedom Works; and organized labor’s Rally for One Nation)– but numbers are always a matter of dispute.   But size isn’t all that matters anyway.  (See reports here, here, here, here, and here.)

First, was it really a rally for moderates?  To the extent Stewart and Colbert’s politics are visible, they skew left of center.  Although the planners tried to bring a diversified roster of performers and participants, the crowds in photos look different than those at Beck’s rallies.  The people were younger, no lawn chairs in sight, and the signs they carried were less colorful and more self-conscious [“this is a sign.”]

A host of left and other groups tried to piggyback on Comedy Central’s crowds to put out their own messages.  PETA was particularly visible, pushing soy milk.  Is this moderation?

Was there a political message?  When he’s on message, Stewart always claims to be a comedian, first and throughout, with obligations not to politics, but to entertainment.  He did devote a full show to an interview with President Obama this week, but his questions were neither confrontational or fawning.  (For a fawning example, find Stewart’s interview of Bruce Springsteen.)   Still, sometimes an earnest critique of mass media creeps through.  His closing speech was pretty clear, and its clear targets were not politicians of the left or right so much as mass media:

This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times…

The country’s 24-hour, politico, pundit, perpetual, panic conflict-inator did not cause our problems. But its existence makes solving them that much harder…If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.

It’s hard to think that most of the attendees are likely to vote for Republicans on Tuesday (but plenty of other people will), or that most are committed to politics in any kind of substantial way.  The rally was an event, not a movement, and it’s not clear whether it’s a part of anything larger beyond the comedians’ careers.

When do moderates march?  In general, people turn out to protest when they believe their efforts are both necessary and potentially useful.  This means some kind of intense concern.  For the passionate activist, this comes with the cause.  For the moderate, it comes with the circumstance; the middle sometimes comes out in response to threats.  When Nazis marched in Skokie, Illinois, in the late 1970s, they were far outnumbered by anti-Nazi demonstrators.  Contemporary Ku Klux Klan demonstrations also typically draw far more opponents than supporters; they respond to the provocation.

But the demonstrators at the health care town meetings last summer would tell a similar story, that they were stirred into aggressive activism by the threat of government-run health care.

Moderation is relative–of course.

What’s this all mean?  Glenn Beck claimed his purposes were only partly political, but he provided a venue for Republican candidates for office, and publicity for his various commercial enterprises.  Stewart/Colbert claim they are primarily entertainers, and their program featured more music and comedy than the typical Washington rally.  In both cases, the attendees received the speakers’ messages, but brought their own to bear to the event as well.  Beck’s people skewed right, and Stewart’s left.

The movement question is, as usual, whether the demonstration is an isolated event, or part of something larger.  Glenn Beck clearly is doing more politics.  I’m not sure that Stewart/Colbert will be, but that doesn’t mean that some of their fans won’t make more of the sanity campaign than their hosts will.

If any readers attended, please post your experiences, thoughts, in the comments section.

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Constitution classes for Congress

Posted on October 30, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Another entry in our ongoing “if people only knew more, they would agree with me” series: Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann, founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, has announced that she will organize classes on the Constitution for the members of the next Congress.

Bachmann, like many many members of the House, has a law degree (Oral Roberts University), surely knows that most members encountered some instruction on the Constitution somewhere in their educations.  But maybe they haven’t had the right teachers.  Bachmann’s classes would be closed to the media, and the list of instructors would not be public.

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What Glenn Beck knows (part II)

Posted on October 29, 2010 by David S. Meyer

Again, it’s not American history.  Beck does know, however, that people like to find authorities who agree with them.  The fact that people who like what Glenn Beck, uh, teaches, can log onto Amazon and find real books (bound and printed paper!) that endorse and amplify those lessons only makes Beck more credible–to people who already believe him.

That W. Cleon Skousen’s books inspire little credence among professional historians, or that they are not published by reputable scholarly presses is of little concern.  Indeed, it makes a certain amount of sense: if there’s really a conspiracy to keep these truths from the general public, then why would we expect the (completely corrupted) professoriate to give them appropriate attention?

But the choice of authorities based on their political positions is hardly limited to Beck’s 9/12ers.

An animal rights activist once told me that scientists learned nothing from research using animals that they couldn’t have discovered without animal experimentation.  When I suggested that most working scientists (indeed, virtually all working biologists) would disagree with that statement, she responded: Henry Heimlich.

The inventor of the Heimlich maneuver indeed condemned animal research at one point in his life.  His authority outweighed that of other scientists because he agreed with the animal rights activists.  Indeed, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (which opposes animal experimentation) has given awards for “innovative medicine” in Heimlich’s name.  It also features a list of expert authorities on health, medicine, and nutrition, who will support PCRM’s political line on animals.  What makes them credible experts is not necessarily training, research, or publications; rather, it’s their political line.

Climate change doubters have to look very hard to find scientists who dispute the recognition that human activity has changed earth’s climate, and that these changes are serious and demand collective responses.  But they find and then promote them.  For years, this meant Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish journalist with a Ph.D. in political science (like Woodrow Wilson!) received extraordinary attention for his 2001 book, The Skeptical Environmentalist.  Opponents of the Kyoto agreement trotted Lomborg out to legitimate their opposition to global action on the environment.  Working climate scientists, however, tore the book apart, dismissing its claims and emphasizing the ignorance and deceptiveness of its author.

Lomborg, however, has come around, and now says he pretty much agrees with Al Gore.  His new book will call for a carbon tax and global action on climate change.  Climate change skeptics, long his allies, have dismissed his apparent flip on the science as a lack of courage.  To be sure, they have found others with academic credentials to support their position, but not working scientists

Dinosaur rides at the Creation Museum in Kentucky

The scientific landscape is even worse for critics of evolution.  The number of working biologists who doubt evolution is somewhat less than a handful.  The very very few prepared to stand for the science of “intelligent design” can stay extremely busy, and can reach an appreciative audience that eludes scientists worried about publishing journal articles and designing replicable experiments.  The most famous, Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, has largely abandoned peer review science based on experiments to promote intelligent design.  His department has taken the highly unusual step (I’ve never seen such a thing before) of defending his academic freedom while disputing his views on its website.

Crusaders against childhood vaccinations have argued that the MMR vaccine increases the likelihood of autism in children.  A key plank in their platform was a published study in the Lancet by Andrew Wakefield in 1998, based on a study of twelve patients.  Over time, all of his coauthors withdrew their support for the paper.  In February 2010, the Lancet officially retracted the article, announcing that its findings were fundamentally deceptive.  Other journals followed, retracting two other papers by Wakefield.  The UK’s General Medical Council also investigated Wakefield, and found his research and practice to be dishonest and irresponsible, striking his name from the medical register in Britain.

But Talk about Curing Autism, an activist group in the United States, continues to endorse Wakefield’s science, and is currently promoting his current book tour.

The main point is a disturbing one: people seek out authorities to endorse their views, trumpeting their credentials and research only when it supports what they want to say.

Are we all like this?  Think about the experts you decided to trust on the last controversial issue you cared about.  How about the last time an expert’s opinion changed your mind on something important?

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