advocacy community as well as in the political arena, with U.S. Representative Dan Burton openly supporting this movement and holding a number of Congressional hearings on the subject. Further support for the association between autism and thiomersal appeared in an article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the magazines Rolling Stone and Salon.com alleging a government conspiracy at a CDC meeting to conceal the dangers of thiomersal to protect the pharmaceutical industry, and a book written by David Kirby, Evidence of Harm, dramatizing the lives of parents of autistic children, with both authors participating in media interviews to promote their work and the controversy. Although the allegations by Kennedy were denied and a US Senate committee investigation later found no evidence to substantiate the most serious allegations, the story had already been well publicized by leveraging Kennedy's celebrity. Salon magazine subsequently amended Kennedy's article five times due to factual errors and later retracted it completely on 16 January 2011, stating that the works of critics of the article and evidence of the flaws in the science connecting autism and vaccines undermined the value of the article to the editors. Meanwhile, during this time of increased media publicity of the controversy, public health officials and institutions did little to rebut the concerns and speculative theories being offered. Media attention and polarization of the debate has also been fueled by personal injury lawyers who took out full-page ads in prominent newspapers and offered financial support for expert witnesses who dissented from the scientific consensus that there is no convincing evidence for a link between thiomersal and autism. Paul Offit, a leading vaccine researcher and advocate, has said that the media has a tendency to provide false balance by perpetually presenting both sides of an issue even when only one side is supported by the evidence and thereby giving a platform for the spread of misinformation. Despite the consensus from experts that there is no link between thiomersal and autism, many parents continue to believe that such a link exists. These parents share the viewpoint that autism is not just treatable, but curable through "biomedical" interventions and have been frustrated by the lack of progress from more "mainline" scientists in finding this cure. Instead, they have supported an alternative community of like-minded parents, physicians and scientists who promote this belief. This mindset has taught these parents to challenge the expertise from the mainstream