Loud Shouts of Little Sense

Evidently, there’s nothing quite like illogic and fear-mongering and distrust to bring the people together.

And no, I’m not talking about Congress.  I’m talking about swine flu.  Well, not even swine flu, per se, but the vaccine against swine flu.  Both ends of the political spectrum are jumping into arguments, fists swinging madly, mangling logic, reason, and common courtesy with loud shouts of little sense.

From the right, Rush Limbaugh committed the classical Ad Hominem flaw by declaring his reasons for declining the H1N1 vaccination: “Screw you, [HHS Secretary] Sebelius,” he said. “I’m not going to take it precisely because you’re now telling me I must.”

Uh, that’s stupid.  There may be good reasons not to take the vaccine, but spite isn’t one of them.  Any argument that depends upon the character or characteristics of the person against whom the argument is made is a failure.  But we’ve learned not to expect much logic from these quarters.

And representing the left, we have Ace Ventura Jim Carrey (really), just raking in the big points for flaws in an article for The Huffington Post.  He commits the Analogy Error (comparing vaccines to cigarettes), the Absence of Evidence Flaw (arguing that since he finds present tests insufficient proof of the vaccine’s safety, that the vaccine isn’t safe.  If you accept his premise that the evidence for their safety is thin, then we can conclude that, er, the evidence is thin.  We cannot argue, as Mr. Carrey did, that this thinness indicates that the vaccine is bad), the Ad Hominem Attack (questioning the legitimacy of the studies because their chief proponents have “close working relationships” with the vaccine’s makers; this relationship does not entail that the studies are flawed.  To imply that it does is like saying that since Hitler was such a bad guy he must also have been a poor speller.  To impugn the studies, you’d need evidence about the studies, not about their authors or their backers), and rounds it off with a bit of Equivocation (“surely there’s a limit as to how many viruses and toxins can be introduced into the body of a small child,” he writes, where “viruses and toxins” take the place of the word “vaccine.”  Yes, a vaccine must, by its very nature, contain the virus against which it is meant to protect.  But to allow the language to shift in such a way as to make it sound as though these doctors are out to poison our children is not a logical argumentative strategy.  It’s a misleading emotional appeal).

There are, I’m sure, compelling arguments against vaccinating against swine flu.  They’re just not coming from the poles (even though, this being a special case and all, here they’ve managed to align themselves as allies in egregious error).

Bonus points to the first to reply with more errors from the Carrey article, or from this collection of gems on the same subject.