#383: Ginger Taylor

Ginger Taylor is an ardent anti-vaccination activist and conspiracy theorist perhaps most famous for her attempts to blame criticism of the anti-vaccine movement on misogyny. The fact that science doesn’t support the vaccine-autism link is explained by “there seems to be a denial of the fact that scientific consensus has quite often been (and most assuredly still is in many places) wrong.” Yes, it is the Galileo gambit again – it doesn’t matter that Taylor has no evidence in favor of her cherished position (though she has some “other ways of knowing”, specifically “I am a mother, so I know what caused my child’s autism”). Furthermore, according to Taylor “science" is the new religion and their dogma cannot be questioned. Scientists are the priests, and those who diverge from the cannon are branded heretics.” She has also claimed that listening to science rather than her is “elitism”. In short, instead of actually engaging with the science, the data, or reality, she tries, feebly, to discredit the results by all other possible means.

Taylor has her blog at Adventure in Autism. There’s a decent takedown of her idiocy here. Her lack of self-awareness is rather stunning, even for a hardcore denialist.

After the utter discrediting of anti-vaxx hero Andy Wakefield, she was one of the people who tried to distance herself from Wakefield while simultaneously portraying him as the victim of a conspiracy, providing for instance blathering attacks on Brian Deer (who was a large extent responsible for having Wakefield exposed).

Diagnosis: A particularly dimwitted denialist, Taylor has apparently applied every single fallacy known to man, though she harbors a particular fondness for appeals to emotion. She seems to have some readers, however, and must be considered dangerous.