As I write this, I just got back from hearing author Seth Mnookin give a talk here in Boulder about his book, The Panic Virus (the talk was sponsored by my friends at the Colorado Children’s Immunization Coalition — I love those folks). It’s an excellent book about the rise and power of the antivax movement. I recommend reading it. That is, if your stomach doesn’t get upset over the events it describes. Mine did.

The talk was quite good, with him going over the basics of the people who fight against vaccinations. The most interesting part was during the Q&A, when a woman sitting right behind me starting soapboxing about how vaccines weren’t tested enough, and there weren’t enough studies showing their safety, and so on. It was clear after she said just a few words that she was from some antivax organization, and I found out afterward she was from Safeminds — a group that tried to get really awful ads placed in movie theaters but which was fought tooth and nail by Skepchicks.

The woman’s tactics were pretty simple: sow doubt, and use bad ...