Amy Wallace recently wrote a deeply-researched piece for Wired: An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All.
Anyone who’s written a blog post on an even marginally controversial topic knows that Wallace was sure to get her share of enraged hate mail. But on a topic like this, it’s not just your general venom. It’s hate mail from people who are certain that, armed with a connected computer, they are the experts on just about every topic, scientific or otherwise.
James Rainey expands on this notion in an LA Times piece.
Wallace has run smack into an abiding, perhaps growing, phenomenon of the Internet Age: Citizens armed with information are sure they know better. Readers who brush up against expertise believe they have become experts. The common man rebels against the notion that anyone — not professionals, not the government and certainly not the media — speaks with special authority…
The rise of computer literacy, high-speed Internet connections, blogging and social networks has emboldened the common man to tell his own story and, sometimes, to disdain trappings like a university degree, professional training or corporate affiliation. The citizen activists often frame themselves as truth tellers fighting against an establishment that is hopelessly venal. No matter that the corruption, routinely claimed, is seldom supported by more than innuendo.
It’s like millions television pundits have walked out of the screen and entered real life. That can’t be a good thing.
(I covered the vaccine debate previously in a post called Jenny McCarthyism).
