Dr. Rachael Dunlop is the vice-president of the Skeptics organisation in Australia. This is a lobby group that has many members who are promoting vaccination using false information and by discrediting academics. Evidence of this false information is provided on the Lobby-group page of my website. However, Channel 10 is presenting Dr. Rachael Dunlop as a pro-vaccine advocate in the vaccination debate. Yet Dr. Dunlop has actively prevented the public from viewing valid scientific information in a poster that was presented to health professionals at the National Health Promotion Conference in Perth 2009. She has also made comments that discredit the ABC for presenting the science on the HPV vaccine that was published in the conference proceedings for the British Society for Ecological Medicine (BSEM) in London 2011.
Channel 10 is also hindering public debate by not presenting the opposing arguments to viewers and this has been justified by suggesting that presenting someone from the opposite side of the debate would be providing ‘false balance’ to the issue. This is stated on Rachael Dunlop’s blog which is titled ‘The Skeptics Book of Pooh Pooh’: a title that is designed to stigmatise individual’s comments that oppose the desired viewpoint.
A proper academic debate on a topic does not aim to stigmatise and discredit individuals yet these are the tactics used by many Skeptic subscribers. All community members have a right to present the science in this debate regardless of their membership in any lobby group. However, the emphasis needs to be on the science they are presenting and not discrediting the individuals or media that presents the science.
