In the last couple days I tried to coax an anti-vaxxer FB friend (probably met through Castle Age, doubt she still plays but I digress) to at least peek out of her ideological prison, and was met with hostility. No, the former VP of Pfizer has not come forth to decry Gardasil as "deadly". A couple of the sites promoting this fiction are apparently recognized and trusted by anti-vaxxers (NaturalNews, e.g.), but most of the top Google results are patently dismissable just on the basis of their URLs. But we should entertain the ravings of ANY and EVERY website because don't judge book by its cover. Nope, sorry, if the book-cover is Chick-tract-quality, if it's published by Conspiracy Exposed Today Press South Africa Ltd., if the author's name is "Dr. Bernie Bernstein" and their doctorate is a Ph.D., not an M.D. and they have no woo-free credentials, if the claims fly in the face of mainstream science... then you approach the claim from the position that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

If I had to propose a general heirarchy of stupid, then Flat Earthers would be bottom-rung, evolution deniers (including "intelligent design" subscribers) a step up, anti-vaxxers perhaps a little less dim, and sincere climate change deniers nearly average. Each of these beliefs relies on a postulation of a massive conspiracy, and/or a presumption of intellectual ineptitude of a vast majority of actual scientists who must be somehow "indoctrinated" to accept the mainstream narrative in question. Science is the body of methods by which we gather and validate knowledge in order to extend our power to accurately predict. In short... Science IS intelligence. "Intel" gathered by means that fail the tests of scientificity is not intelligence at all; it's propaganda.