You can learn a lot on the internet, and on Wednesday, a Twitter spat between a doctor and William Shatner—of Star Trek fame, with 2.5 million followers—taught us just how easily cranks and charlatans can manipulate the information out there. This isn’t a surprise, really—misinformation is everywhere, particularly online—but the exchange was such a perfect embodiment of the larger issues of the unavoidable desire to self-validate and the spread of quackery that it’s worth breaking down.

Three days earlier, Shatner had tweeted support for Autism Speaks, a controversial group whose approach has been criticized for stigmatizing autism and silencing autistic people. It has also received wide criticism for only recently changing its position from suggesting there is a link between vaccines and autism to accepting the overwhelming amount of science that proves that there is not.

As is often the case when someone famous missteps, the Twitter pile-on was swift and fierce. Shatner, who was no doubt simply trying to do some good, became defensive. His reaction was understandable: Many of the tweets were angry, misrepresented what he’d said, and intimated wrongly that he himself opposed vaccination.

Enter Dr. David Gorski, an oncologist at Wayne State University and founder of Science-Based Medicine, a blog that specializes in rigorous evaluations and explanations of controversial medical claims...

more....http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/04/what_we_can_learn_from_william_shatner_s_twitter_meltdown.html