- The Huffington Post recently tried to pull a fast one once again in regards to its past behavior as a platform for anti-immunization zealots. Jenny McCarthy’s main outlet for her nonsense back in the day was, yes, the Huffington Post. It’s great that HuffPo came to its senses after receiving an avalanche of criticism, but the site actually had the chutzpah to recently publish a story about how McCarthy is being accused of trying to whitewash her past opposition to inoculations, while ignoring that the site has likewise disappeared its own involvement. I’m not blaming Arianna Huffington herself for this because I don’t know how much control over the property she maintains at this point, but the site as a whole is culpable. It’s not the first time I’ve criticized HuffPo for such behavior. Sadly, it won’t likely be the last.
- Malcolm Gladwell’s continued blind spot for the serial liar Jonah Lehrer is perplexing. I don’t believe in throwing away a human being who’s screwed up, even repeatedly, and I hope the disgraced journalist and neuroscientist is receiving therapy to try and locate the source of his bizarre behavior and become a more well-adjusted person, but he should not be anywhere near journalism, even in a blog form. Gladwell should know better at this point than to further encourage Lehrer in a field he clearly has shown he lacks the ethics for, especially since the publication he most embarrassed was Gladwell’s employer, the New Yorker, becoming, as far as we know, the only plagiarist and fabricator of the David Remnick era. Gladwell actually sent out this tweet last week: ‘Jonah Lehrer is back with a new blog. It is well worth reading. Welcome back Jonah.” Yikes. How can someone as smart as Gladwell continue to do something so foolish?•