Kathleen Seidel writes a blog called Neurodiversity on autism issues, and in particular opposing the scientifically-discredited idea that preservatives in vaccines have caused the recent increase in diagnosed cases of autism. She uses freely-available information sources to document the scientific case against the vaccine theory.

Recently she was the subject of a harassing subpoena from an attorney in a lawsuit against the vaccine makers. She has published the relevant court papers filed by the attorney, and marked them up with lots of links to provide context and refutations of his points. And in the course of this she has revealed the source of her secret powers: where he describes her as “a person utilizing investigative ability well in excess of that available to the mother and housewife she claims to be”, she links “investigative ability” to the Wikipedia article on Library and Information Science, and “mother and housewife” to Librarian.

I’ve never seen the act of hyperlinking look so much like stepping into a phone booth.