Los Angeles writer Amy Wallace knew there would be blow back when she wrote a story for Wired magazine debunking the idea that autism is caused by childhood vaccinations. But she didn't imagine anything like this.
Two weeks after the story hit the Internet, the e-mail keeps flowing. A majority voice support for "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All." But at least one in five disagrees. Many seethe with indignation. A few sling vile names and veiled threats.
The rebuttals bristle with epidemiological jargon, screeds about risk and anguished testimonials of struggling with autistic children. But there is also another thread.
"They will say, 'Who do you think you are to tell me?' or 'Who does the government think it is to tell us what is best for public health?' " Wallace told me this week. "They say, 'You can't know my child like I know my child.' "
Wallace has run smack into an abiding, perhaps growing, phenomenon of the Internet Age: Citizens armed with information are sure they know better. Readers who brush up against expertise believe they have become experts. The common man rebels against the notion that anyone -- not professionals, not the government and certainly not the media -- speaks with special authority.
Where it stops, nobody knows. But already we see a wave of amateurs convinced they can write a pithier movie review, arrange a catchier song, even assess our planet's shifting weather conditions, better than the professionals trained to do the job.
Unhappy with the scientific consensus that man's activities have exacerbated global warming? Then just find and promote the academic naysayers. Or merely post your personal musings: "Climate change, bah, there's a foot of snow on my lawn."
"What's happening is a general crisis or challenge to authority and you see it in mainstream media, in politics, in law, in medicine," says Andrew Keen, a cultural critic and author of "The Cult of the Amateur." "More and more people challenge the traditional meritocracy both in philosophical terms -- is the meritocracy just? -- and also by doubting what its real benefits are."
The rise of computer literacy, high-speed Internet connections, blogging and social networks has emboldened the common man to tell his own story and, sometimes, to disdain trappings like a university degree, professional training or corporate affiliation. The citizen activists often frame themselves as truth tellers fighting against an establishment that is hopelessly venal. No matter that the corruption, routinely claimed, is seldom supported by more than innuendo.
