Anti-medicine = anti-woman

stole this from hearshot:

So there’s this thing called the Shorty Awards.  They’re an interesting little competition in which Twitter users nominate notable Twitter-using people or organizations for awards in certain categories.  For example, Adam Savage is leading the Science category, NASA has the top spot in Government and Neil Gaiman is second in, interestingly enough, Customer Service.

There was a bit of a shakeup a few days ago when people noticed that the Health category was currently being led by two alternative medicine jagoffs, Mike Adams and Joseph Mercola.  The next thing people noticed was that many of Adams’ votes appeared fraudulent; they were the only tweet from the accounts from which they were sent.  Just deleting these would have dropped Adams comfortably into third or fourth place, but the Shorty Awards removed him from consideration altogether.  Adams had, shall we say, a disproportionate response to being dropped from eligibility for a Twitter award.

Mercola remains in consideration, but instead of being a buddy-buddy co-reality-denier with the first place contender, he now finds himself 400+ votes behind Dr. Rachael Dunlop, instead.  Dr. Dunlop is a legitimate doctor, is affiliated with The Skeptic Zone podcast and Skeptics’ Book and has been a vocal and dedicated opponent of dangerous antivaxxers.

Mercola, perhaps learning from Adams’ mistakes, has commented on his Facebook fan page that he wishes Dr. Dunlop good luck, that he respects her accomplishments as a woman in science and that he admires her dedication even if he disagrees with her cause, making me feel kinda guilty for calling him a “jagoff” before.

Nah, just kidding.  He called her fat and insulted her integrity:

As if we needed additional proof that anti-reality antivaxxers are worthless.

If you like what you see of Dr. Dunlop’s work and you have a Twitter account, please consider voting for her in the Shorty Awards.  Because the only thing better than Mercola losing would be Mercola losing by more.

ETA: My wording is misleading above at one point.  I called Dr. Dunlop a “legitimate doctor,” but I did not mean to imply that she has an M.D.  Neither Dr. Dunlop nor Mercola received an M.D.; Dr. Dunlop has a Ph.D. from Sydney University Medical School, Mercola has a D.O. from Midwestern University.