These posts by Adams were scurrilous. He accused me of being associated with Dr. Farid Fata, the Detroit-area oncologist who bilked Medicare and Medicaid for tens of millions of dollars by giving chemo to patients who didn't even have cancer and too much chemo to others.
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Replying to @gorskon @MarkHoofnagle
Adams also claimed that he was reporting me to the state attorney general and the local FBI office for unspecified "crimes." He even implied that I might be a pedophile. (Of course, the latter he did by implication, with plausible deniability.)
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Replying to @gorskon @MarkHoofnagle
Basically, I ended up ignoring it. Unfortunately, Adams was not alone, not was he the first. For instance, in 2010 Jake Crosby provoked age of Autism readers to launch an email and telephone campaign complaining about me to my university's board of governors.
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Replying to @gorskon @MarkHoofnagle
I could go on and on given that I've been at this for 15 years. Basically, my Google reputation has been trashed, probably irreparably, but definitely intentionally. It's what antivaxers and cranks do, and they do it to intimidate and bully critics into silence.
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Replying to @gorskon @MarkHoofnagle
Unfortunately, if you speak out against quacks and are effective at it, especially if you're a physician and at least 10-fold worse if you're a woman), you WILL be targeted. You have to be ready, and you have to be sure you can handle it.
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Replying to @gorskon @MarkHoofnagle
As for the issue of websites targeting you, I've had several over the years. Who knows? Some might still exist. There's really nothing you can do about them.
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Replying to @gorskon @MarkHoofnagle
I did, however, once manage to get an abusive Facebook page about me taken down. I had to claim copyright to photos used in memes about me to do it, though.
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Replying to @gorskon @MarkHoofnagle
The bottom line is that quacks, cranks, and antivaxers play dirty. Targeting the critic personally is how they operate to try to shut down criticism.
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Replying to @gorskon @MarkHoofnagle
Let's just put it this way. My partners and I were in a meeting with my cancer center director last week. His greeting to me? "I haven't gotten any emails about your blog lately." (Yes, antivaxers and quacks like to harass critics by complaining to their bosses.)
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Replying to @gorskon @MarkHoofnagle
That's what I'm most known for by my dean, cancer center director, and department chair.
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And that, my friends, is all too often the price of deconstructing quackery on social media.
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