I recently came across a book published in 2013 titled How to Fake a Moon Landing by graphic novelist Darryl Cunningham. It’s great, and I’m going to make my son read it.
The book attacks the different aspects of science denial, using comics, photographs, and diagrams to show how information is manipulated by all sides of the ideological spectrum. One segment of the book comes to mind in the wake of Robert De Niro’s reversal on showing the documentary Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastroph at the Tribeca Film Festival, after a massive outcry from a public fed up with anti-vaxxers continuing to push their long-debunked claims.
The film is a laudatory attempt to vindicate the research of Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced British doctor who is the father of the anti-vaxxer movement. Wakefield published a study in 1998 that claimed to prove links between the MMR (measles, mumps, Rubella) vaccine and autism. The movie aims to prove his discredited theory, claiming there’s new evidence to show that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was involved in a cover up.
In the media clutter, the story of who Andrew Wakefield is can get sidetracked. His research is not based on a simple misunderstanding or humanly-flawed science; it’s based on an outright fraud.
In a segment from Cunningham’s book, a comic titled The Facts in the Case of Dr. Andrew Wakefield lays it out brilliantly:
You can follow Darryl Cunningham’s blog here. You can also find him on Twitter. (Republished with permission from Darryl Cunningham)
