I always laugh when I see that the search phrase “Levi Quackenboss credentials” has brought someone right back to my blog. Is there any topic other than vaccines where readers hurl the accusation, “You are not a medical professional! You are not qualified to have an opinion!”
Are people losing sleep because I have an opinion about vaccines? If the answer were that I was a pediatrician, would the information I provide matter more– despite the fact that pediatricians receive no training in the inevitable injuries that happen from vaccination and they are not experts in the immune system by any stretch of the imagination? If I told you that pediatricians were the lowest-paid of all medical specialties, could you guess why that is?
If the answer were that I had a PhD in Immunology, would it matter? There are immunologists who would advise against following the CDC schedule– some would advise against vaccines at all– and they’re called quacks. What good does the degree do for credibility with naysayers?
When it comes to vaccines, we’re told that only a PhD of Immunology, or an MD (of any kind, even an eye doctor) or a nurse (especially when a nurse is doing the talking) are qualified speak to vaccine efficacy, vaccine safety, vaccine ingredient (non)toxicity, the need to protect the immunocompromised who allegedly can’t be vaccinated, and the existence of and reliance on vaccine-induced herd immunity, despite none of them having studied any of it.
Everyone else outside of these three groups is called “Not-a-doctor” and accused of getting a medical degree from Google University, where I got mine.
This is the consensus of who is entitled to have a thought about vaccines, despite the fact that the “vaccine education” of health workers who administer injections is nothing more than a short class in giving a shot. Or, in the case of Polio Ambassadors David Beckham, Pope Francis, Bill Gates and the Dalai Lama giving the squirt, it is perfectly acceptable to have literally zero medical education or training.
You can give an oral polio vaccine without being educated about the chances of causing paralysis in the child receiving it, but you are not qualified to have an opinion about vaccine-induced paralysis if it happens? Except college dropout Bill Gates, of course. His Google Degree spans all subjects and lets him have opinions on anything he wants, not that he’d talk about the hundreds of thousands he’s paralyzed.
Where do we draw the line here?
So… what do you think about the 2016 election? Wait, never mind. Keep it to yourself. You never ran for public office, so what do you know about government?
When was the last time you heard someone say, “I don’t need to follow politics, I just trust my elected officials.” No one, literally no one in America, trusts their city councilman, mayor, state senators, or US Congressmen to do what’s best for their well being, and we’ve all got opinions about it.
Anyway.
What did you think of that crazy Casey Anthony trial a few years ago? And do you have a law degree to back that up?
Hell, not only do we all have legal opinions, but the Supreme Court established in 1975 that we can act as our own lawyers if we can clear the gigantic hurdles of being old enough and speaking English. In fact, Tupc Shakur’s mother Afeni had very little formal education but was able to successfully defend herself when the Black Panthers were charged with 156 criminal counts. Good thing she didn’t get the memo of leaving the mental heavy lifting to the experts.
Moving on… wasn’t it tragic when Prince died? He was one of the greatest guitarists of all time, don’t you agree? Well, I hope you went to Julliard or you can just shut your mouth when you talk about music.
Spring is here! Are you planning to grow any food in your backyard? I don’t see a horticulture degree hanging in your office. Where do you get off changing your own oil when you’re not a mechanic?
We all have opinions about acting, cooking, photography, law, government, music, and writing but few of us actually have degrees in those fields, and anyone who does have one of those degrees is 1,000 times more specialized in their field than a pediatrician is in vaccines.
So yes, if you’re here looking for what credentials I have that entitle me to an opinion about vaccines, I’ve got them. We all do.
Well, OK, not everyone.
But I do.
Levi Quackenboss 
So true. Whenever you say something remotely challenging to the vaccine status quo, you get this who are you, and your Google degree, and don’t believe everything you see on the Internet . But suddenly when you read the CDC website it is all holier than thou. And the FDA is Mother Mary, the IOM and The NIH are the Angels of truth. And of course the only revolving door is the one in your head. And no wait, I am a woman, thinking is not allowed…
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LOL Well almost.. I find that if you don’t agree with vaccinations, it doesn’t matter if you quote right from the CDC or NIH, they’ll still say it’s all lies. When I was talking about the live flu vaccine shedding, I was told it was poppycock because this gal’s mom was a nurse for 40 years and so she knew better. When I linked her directly to the CDC website about live flu vaccines, she refused to look at it because her mother was with her, a nurse, and therefore the expert, and it’s all she needed… I was in disbelief!
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This is awesome, Levi! Thank you for all you do and your fantastic articles. You make some great points. Anyone with half a brain, or even a quarter can look at vaccine ingredients and quickly realize that those can’t be good for the body. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist. It just takes a smart person who did some research and looked around at the skyrocketing numbers of autism and allergies and asthma and autoimmune diseases to see the connection. Easy stuff. Preschool level stuff.
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thanks Levi as always.
Here is some effective material I found.
Vaccine pusher: “Dr Google!”
Us:
“Are doctors so stupid that they haven’t worked out how to use computers the way every other professional has been able to? Why is it perfectly acceptable to use the internet for all kinds of information – some simple, some complex, and many many issues of great substance but for some reason medical information gets all jumbled the moment it is uploaded onto a computer?
VP: “You aren’t an expert in immunology. How could you possibly know they are useless?”
Us: “You aren’t an expert in homeopathy. How do you know homeopathy is useless?”
Note that your personal feelings about homeopathy are irrelevant – what matters is that vaccine pushers hate the thought of their precious beliefs being compared to it.
You can use astrology, naturopathy, faith healing etc.
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I always get excited when I see a new post from you. You never disappoint and you give me just enough of a push to keep fighting the good fight. Thank you for this.
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Love the diploma. I disagree, though, that nobody trusts the gubment. I think there are a couple of people left.
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The diploma!!!! That just sent the coffee straight out the nose!!! hahaha! You are such a gifted, and highly educated writer. Love your feisty, truthful posts – keep up the great work!
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As many of us prove every day in the doctor’s office…we know more than they do, and can show it. I have google docs on my phone and tablet and I have all the Ingredients, studies and more at my fingertips. I can prove them wrong easily with my handy dandy phone app. I confounded the cancer doctor when I told him his own Journal of Oncology says that the long term survival rate with chemo is only 2%, and that I wasn’t doing something that would send my stem cells into over drive.
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And even when you DO have the qualifications, Internet-Land people don’t believe you. I have a masters in Medical Immunology and a PhD in the design of cancer vaccines. I also have two kids who have had adverse vaccine reactions, and my youngest is unvaccinated. I’ve done most of my vaccine-related reading – peer-reviewed journal articles and reviews, not just the pro/anti-vax websites – since having kids.
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I really got a kick out of your diploma! My 78 year old father has a genius IQ and is a psychotherapist, and despite his diploma etc, he really dislikes the current day practice of snobbery you write about. He calls it “credentialism” and says it’s a form of prejudice. Which is not to say all degrees are meaningless, but come on… modern education has been so dumbed down that most college graduates don’t even know basic grammar and spelling.
Also, it’s a fact that medical schools and hospital teaching programs get so much funding from pharmaceutical companies that they’re taught way too much about pill pushing, and way too little about actually preventing illness or healing the body with nutrition, etc.
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One of the tenets of fallacious reasoning is the “Appeal to Authority”. ie experts know the facts, amateurs do not so their conclusions are dismissible on its face.
Another is the ad hominem attack. Which is to reject a person’s argument by attacking their character. Bad people cannot be trusted to know the truth.
A third common tactic is to make an unsupported assertion that people are routinely mislead by all the false information on the internet. Of course, there is no science ever provided to support such claims.
All of these intellectually fraudulent tactics are worn old debating tricks to distract away from rational discussion of the facts. Ironically, they are prominently used by those who define themselves in the pro-science, anti-quack camp. So here is my serving of ad hominem on them: they are phony hypocrites. Neener neener.
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LOL Love your “serving of ad hominem”! LOL
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Lenny, the appeal to authority is when an expert in one area is cited as an expert in another. Robert De Niro, for example.
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Yes! Thank you!
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LOL. x3
But seriously, why do when parents express concerns that vaccines have injuries do the “experts” say “vaccines save lives” ? Can you write about the two issues not being mutually exclusive? Or is it that our “experts” justify those with vaccine injuries for the “saved lives”? Shouldn’t there be a little more to the discourse than that? The next time someone says “vaccines save lives” in the discussion of real vaccine injuries, I am going to punch someone in the face. It’s like telling someone “My family was in a terrible car accident due to a malfunction,” and people responding with “cars are the best form of personal transportation and we cannot function as a society without them, so enough of your anti-car rhetoric. Are you a mechanic?” I am quite sure Levi you can handle the numerous analogies here.
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If the articles were written on paper, would that make them more credible? The internet is nothing more than a highway. You can read books and articles in real space, or off a computer screen. What difference does it make? You have either done the research or not, put it into context or not. Credentials may get someone in the door for consideration, but only if they have actually done the work. And if you have any intelligence or critical thinking faculties, all you need is to do the work to be taken seriously. The astro-turfers and paid Pharma shills are great at mockery and lies, and little else.
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And the greatest irony is that science/medicine is so divided that an immunologist knows about immunology and that is about it. And let’s qualify that – knows most of the current knowledge, theory and opinion about immunology, which barely even begins to understand or explain immunological response, let alone the impact of vaccines on it.
There are no longer physicians with a good grasp of the body and medicine in general, everyone specialises, and given the complexity of human function there is not a chance that an immunologist knows enough to understand the effect of vaccines anyway.
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I often challenge trolls and ask them what their scientific credentials are when they call into question studies or reports by Doctors who challenge the vaccine paradigm. Often when you’re on a comment board and someone tells you they are an authority—they most likely are not. That’s an old troll tactic. It’s called invoking authority. If they aren’t willing to identify themselves than they are blowing smoke and I challenge them on that. I ask them if you are a doctor where are you working? Where did you go to school? What is your specialty? Questions along those lines. Make these naysayers defend their position but never explain or even defend your position even with government paid for research. It just puts you on the defenses and validates them.
If you notice these people don’t deal a lot in specifics and if they start the emotional rant of how unvaccinated children are infecting others yada yada yada. I ask them if vaccines work than what are they worried about. If they keep coming at you because trolls will do that for a couple of reasons:
1. they get paid to push their owners agenda
2. they not only get paid per comment, they get paid when people respond.
3. they enjoy being combative.
Keep the above in mind when responding. I like to respond to a troll remark non-directly. If a troll makes a comment in response to me, I don’t reply to them by hitting the reply button, I open a new comment window and put their name in the body, addressing the response they made to me BUT denying them the money for responding to their comment.
If you’ve been online for a while you pretty much have a feel for troll trash talk and they are the ones questioning people’s credentials. When I’m asked what my credentials are I tell them show me yours and I’ll show you mine but neither one of us knows for certain if we are who we say we are so what’s the point? Deal with the information I posted. Don’t talk about the website it comes from, don’t ask about my credentials or education. Either you can discredit the information or not. I always ask for Independent non-industry paid for rebuttal information such as studies. People who ask for your credentials will ignore the challenge to discredit the information and try and engage you in an emotional exchange. Don’t engage. Keep bringing the issue back to the information. Soon they will get tired, another troll will probably jump on as a distraction and I usually start the same with them. it’s all about discrediting you the commentor therefore in their opinion your comments or reporting is discredited.
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We actually get paid even if you respond indirectly, but we have to submit an extra review form.
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Actually its not your opinion that is being challenged. But rather your source of information! And your ability to dissect studies.
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Nice, a whole article about “Well I dont actually have any qualifications but I’m just not going to care and put the “quack” back in “quackery””. Levi..bubby…you have NO qualifications, deal with it.
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I’ve read some of your posts which I find filled with BS. Anyway that’s your opinion and as you cliam here you are obviously qualified to an opinion. And ofcourse you have every right to support that opinion. But answer this: If a person decides to follow your advice on vaccines (since you are qualified to give advice, you have a ‘diploma’ duuuuhhhh) and they don’t vaccinate his/her kids, and after sometime the kid is getting sick with a 100% preventable disease, will you personally take responsibility of that kid? Because doctors are held responsible when their advice goes wrong…
You are qualified to have an opinion on vaccines, you are not qualified to decide if, how and when to give them. Find a doctor who will help you with your concerns. Don’t play ‘doctor’…I have an opinion on buildings, would you trust me on how to build a building because I read 10 articles about them?
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