Statistics professor Sander Greenland had just finished lecturing a group of students and doctors at Harvard Medical School about errors researchers make when interpreting evidence. Chatting with me in the hallway afterwards, he brought up an unlikely topic — a celebrity-driven campaign called the “thimerosal challenge.” As I quickly learned, actor Robert De Niro and lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr. had offered $100,000 to anyone who could demonstrate the safety of this mercury-containing preservative used in flu vaccines.
Greenland mentioned this not to shame non-scientists for meddling in medical affairs. He wanted to point out the errors of logic and reasoning on the side of the professionals reacting to the challenge — the people who should know better.
