#799: Cynthia A. Janak

Cynthia A. Janak is a business owner, mother, and freelance writer. In Janak’s mind, that makes her an expert on science. Her method is “gut feeling”. Using this method she has researched Polysorbate 80 and Gardasil, and is more than ready to share her groundbreaking results with therest of us. Now, as opposed to most internet cranks, Janak did in fact consult real scientific studies on the topic, and she admitted that she didn’t understand the language or the methodology used in those studies. She nevertheless concluded that her attempts to read material she couldn’t understand didn’t make her gut feelings go away. And predictably enough, she concludes with hysteria: “I am begging the FDA, CDC and Merck to please please look at my findings. I am not a research scientist but I was the one to have to put the pieces of this epidemic together for you […]We have girls dying and disabled and you are saying that there is no causative factor with Gardasil. Here it is! All the causation you need. Look into this immediately.” Maybe, Cynthia Janak, it is because you, as opposed to the FDA, CDC and Merck, don’t display even the most cursory understanding of the studies you have looked at, and wouldn’t recognize a fallacy (post hoc in particular) if it yelled at you.

Now, there is an almost innumerable amount of people like Janak out there, educating themselves to the most bizarrely false conclusions at the University of Google using pure confirmation bias as their method. The reason Janak is at least moderately notable is that the far more obviously dangerous Mark Blaxill seems to rely on her findings.

Oh, her freelance writing is, in fact, for Alan Keyes’s RenewAmerica, and Janak is, it seems, their resident anti-vaccinationist, and fluoridation conspiracy theorist.

Diagnosis: One of many victims of Dunning-Kruger that constitute the grand proof that critical thinking education is sorely deficient and in rather urgent need of reform