The "pharma shill" gambit

I get the impression from the rapidly decreasing number of comments being posted here that the Hitler zombie might--just might--have overstayed his welcome. (Either that, or everyone agrees with me so much that they don't see the need to comment; a conclusion I find highly unlikely.) It's probably not surprising that people might tire quickly of the Hitler zombie, given that (1) he's a walking rotting corpse and thus doesn't smell too good and leaves a mess wherever he goes; (2) he has a propensity to eat brains, which is not generally welcome in polite company such as this blog, and he has really lousy table manners to boot; (3) he incites incredibly idiotic, overblown rhetoric, which annoys the hell out of critical thinkers like me and (I hope) my readers; and (4) he's Hitler, fer cryin' out loud. Even so, after rebutting a defender of Harry Belafonte, I was still half-tempted to write one more sequel, entitled something like "The Hitler zombie and those who love him," à la Jerry Springer meets Shaun of the Dead. Fortunately for all, a rare good sense of restraint stayed my hand.

It's time to move back to other entertaining (I hope) pastures.

I've mentioned before that I cut my skeptical teeth, so to speak, on Usenet, that vast untamed and largely unmoderated territory full of tens of thousands of discussion newsgroups which used to be a lot more active before the rise of the World Wide Web and then later blogs. It started out with combatting Holocaust denial and then branched out into more general skepticism, particularly about the claims of creationists and alties (please read my disclaimer about "alties in the link). After I began to participate in the debates in the main newsgroup where alternative medicine is discussed, misc.health.alternative, it didn't take me long to encounter a favorite tactic of alties who were not happy with one who insists on evidence-based medicine and who therefore questions claims that are obviously not based in valid science: the "pharma shill" gambit. This is a technique of ad hominem attack in which an altie, offended by your questioning of his/her favorite herb, colon or liver flush technique, zapper, or cancer "cure," tries to "poison the well" by implying or outright stating you must be in the pay of a pharmaceutical company, hired for nefarious purposes.

Since I entered the blogosphere, I've only occasionally checked back at my old stomping ground, mainly because blogging is so much less constraining than posting to Usenet, where mostly I used to respond to the posts of others, rather than writing about what I wanted to write about. A couple of weeks ago, though, out of curiosity I checked back and found this interesting little tidbit from a poster calling himself PeterB that demonstrated such a perfect example of the "pharma shill" gambit that I had to comment about it:

To : All participants and readers of misc.health.alternative + other health-related newsgroups

Please be aware that many comments and responses posted to this forum are not those of casual posters interested in an honest exchange. A number of individuals with ties to industry are engaging an effort to shape public sentiment about the risks of mainstream medicine while denigrating the benefits and validity of natural medicine. I refer to these individuals broadly as "Pharma Bloggers"(*). Pharma Bloggers on usenet don't promote a specific company or product, as might be the case with standard "blogging" on a weblog. Most of these people are likely to have an association with a PR campaign whose "blogging" efforts are underwritten by the media and marketing groups of industry. They are not difficult to identify due to specific patterns of behaviour in posting.

Here are a few points to remember while participating in usenet newsgroups:

1. Pharma Bloggers on usenet use intimidation, mockery, and insults to silence those who express belief or interest in natural medicine.

2. Pharma Bloggers on usenet attack those who question the effectiveness of mainstream medicine and defend disease-management "healthcare" as the only viable form of medicine.

3. Pharma Bloggers on usenet post the majority of their responses simply to bury the comments of others; they also strive obsessively to have the last word.

4. Pharma Bloggers on usenet are much faster at posting than casual participants; they almost always respond first to a new thread, question, or observation.

5. Pharma Bloggers on usenet use multiple "bloggers" in a swap-&-relay fashion to create an aura of the "consensus view" in an effort to isolate posters who question the value of mainstream medicine. You will see this tactic used more often than any other.

Tip: If you find yourself reading a response that is unusually dramatic in tone, or inexplicably vicious toward other posters, and if that response is a defense of mainstream medicine, you can be sure you have stumbled upon a "Pharma Blogger." Unfortunately, there are more of these individuals posting to usenet on a daily basis than virtually anyone else, which is why I am posting this alert. If you find it odd that so few people on health-related usenet newsgroups are expressing an interest in natural medicine, it isn't because they aren't there, it's because they have been intimidated into silence. The Pharma Bloggers have over-run the various newsgroups with their industrial brand of dogma, mockery, and ridicule. Many casual posters are simply frightened away. That's one of the goals of Pharma Blogging.

(*) Pharma Blogger: An individual who uses the Internet to: 1) promote and defend maintstream medicine while denigrating natural medicine approaches; 2) attack others who express a preference for natural medicine, or who question the value of mainstream medicine; and 3) cite a variety of "junk medical science" funded by industry for the purpose of establishing markets for marginally effective, and often dangerous, medical products and devices.

PeterB

Ooh, boy. See what I had to deal with? First, let me just mention that I realize that astroturf campaigns do exist, but, quite frankly, die-hard Usenet alties like PeterB tend to be interested in such Internet PR efforts only as a means of smearing those who criticize them for their claims or who have the temerity to ask them to provide scientific studies to back up their assertions. To them, everyone who questions them is probably part of an astroturf campaign. It goes with the conspiracy-mongering proclivities so common among cranks.

This sort of obvious pre-emptive ad hominem attack would be utterly laughable if it were not so common. I sometimes get the impression that PeterB and his compatriots must think that there are hordes of "pharma shills" sitting behind banks of computers (remember the claim "more of these individuals posting to Usenet than anyone else"), waiting to pounce the instant anyone like PeterB starts posting critiques of big pharma or praising herbal "cures." (Yes, that they seem to think they are worth that sort of effort implies PeterB and others like them do seem to have an inflated view of their own importance.) My usual first response to such gambits tends to be facetious and runs along the lines of asking, "Where do I sign up to become a pharma shill? How do I get me a piece of that action? After all, why should I waste my time seeing patients and working like a dog to do science, publish papers, and write grants and then only having a couple of hours in the evenings to blog, when I could make big bucks ruthlessly mocking online dissent against big pharma full time while sitting back in my pajamas and sipping a big mug of coffee? Count me in!" (Expect to see my words posted somewhere out of context to make it seem as though I was being serious about this.)

However, facetiousness usually just infuriates people like PeterB to new heights of "pharma shill" accusations. At that point, it's time to try to be rational, hard as it may be in the face of such provocation, but I try. First, a lot of this smear tends to be a case of projection, of the pot calling the kettle black. For example, #1, #2, and #3 are more typical of Usenet alties than of anyone who questions altie claims. Indeed, the denizens of misc.health.alternative who are most pro-alternative medicine tend to react quite defensively to questioning of their assertions. They are often like a group of Cyber Sisters, except that they are comprised of both men and women, ruthlessly descending upon anyone who questions the dogma of their favorite alternative medicine, criticizes their behavior, or suggests that maybe, just maybe, conventional medicine might have value. (No, those on "our size" are not entirely innocent, but in my experience the alties tend to be quicker with the ad hominem.) One reason for this, I suspect, is that many of them are also active on moderated groups such as CureZone.com, where anyone questioning the alt-med treatment du jour too long or too vigorously will be banned from the discussion groups, thus providing a nice, safe, cuddly environment, where never is heard a discouraging word. #4 and #5 are clearly designed to imply that the so-called "Pharma Bloggers" either don't have a regular job (why else would they have so much time?) or that they are working for big pharma. Of course, they never provide any evidence to support their accusations. In fact, they almost never provide even any reasoning to support their accusations more substantive than variations on "he's criticizing alternative medicine a lot so he must be a pharma shill."

The "pharma shill" gambit, like other varieties of ad hominem or well-poisoning rhetoric, conveniently frees alties from having to argue for their favorite remedies on the science and clinical studies supporting them (which in most cases tend to be badly designed or nonexistent). It's a technique that's not just limited to alties, either. Anti-vaccination cranks and mercury/autism conspiracy theorists like it too. As Skeptico pointed out, even if a newsgroup denizen were a pharma shill, that wouldn't necessarily invalidate his argument. Yes, in the case of a true "shill" who does not reveal that he works for a pharmaceutical company and pretends to be "objective," it is quite appropriate to "out" that person. (Note that I have yet ever to observe such a person in action, which tells me that they are probably a lot less common than alties like to claim.) Even in the case of a real shill, however, this sort of "outing" is not a refutation of that person's arguments; it merely serves to increase appropriately the level of skepticism about what that person is saying. Such an "outing" still leaves the task of actually using evidence, logic, and sound arguments to refute what that person is saying, something alties rarely even attempt to do. It's far easier to fling the accusation of "pharma shill" about and see if they can get it to stick, as PeterB and his ilk do.