Slashdot Mirror
YouTube Breeding Harmful Scientific Misinformation
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "University of Toronto researchers have uncovered widespread misinformation in videos on YouTube related to vaccination and immunization. In the first-ever study of its kind, they found that over half of the 153 videos analyzed portrayed childhood, HPV, flu and other vaccinations negatively or ambiguously. They also found that videos highly skeptical of vaccinations received more views and better ratings by users than those videos that portray immunizations in a positive light. According to the lead researcher, 'YouTube is increasingly a resource people consult for health information, including vaccination. Our study shows that a significant amount of immunization content on YouTube contradicts the best scientific evidence at large. From a public health perspective, this is very concerning.' An extract from the Journal of the American Medical Association is available online."
I don't see why the fact that this misinformation is on youtube is a big deal. It probably just reflects actual public perceptions of science. Educate people, don't act shocked when uneducated people say stupid things.
Currently hooked on AMP
I'm not one to support eugenics, but... this might be nature's way of working out its own kinks.
Who is stupid enough to go to Youtube for authoritative information about anything? I mean, I get why people might use something like Wikipedia for this (with all the pitfalls that can bring), but this just plain does not make sense to me.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
You honestly have to wonder how people can make super-important decisions for their children and themselves using _YouTube_ as their main provider of information. It's sad, but it's just like all those folks getting burned on their million dollar homes with sub-primes - you made a bad decision because you didn't do enough research, and you should be the one paying the price.
You are simply never going to protect all the stupid people from themselves, and making the effort often only punishes the smart people who didn't make those mistakes. That's the unfortunate realization I've come to in my adulthood.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
ON my medical application, I coined the new word "Google-gnosis" describing the problem with people self-diagnosing based on information found on the internet, making the point that Doctors are now going to have to make more of an effort to know what information and misinformation is out there, and how Doctors are going to have to spend more time teaching people correct information to dispel popular myths that get spread around. This is case in point for me. Maybe I should bring this up in my next interview...
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
If mainstream MDs and researchers care about getting their point of view out to patients, so that people who find out they have a disease don't have to learn about it from YouTube, spam, and pharmaceutical company sites, they're going to have to start using more Open Access journals or get their existing journals to go Open Access.
Sadly, this will continue to happen for a lot of reasons, but mostly, like all conspiracy theories, it actually is comforting to believe that a shadowy world government is in charge. Or to think that the reason people are autistic, or get cancer, is because of vaccines. It lets people know that there are reasons for otherwise random events, events that could happen to them any day now, or to those they love. But if you can have something concrete to blame it on, instead of just the randomness and uncertainty of life, well, then you can get angry at whatever tangible entity you want.
And things like youtube are perfect for the type of disinfo that these theories represent. The question now is how do we counter these claims? I would highly suggest listening to the Skepticality podcast ( http://www.skepticality.com/p_listentopast.php )ablout the documentary Flock of Dodos. The main theme is a discussion about how real science needs to learn to present its information and findings in a far more entertaining and easily digestible format. Just throwing facts and numbers at people, while it makes me happy, turns off the majority.
This is kind of like the whole 9/11 truth issue. People who have seen the conspiracy videos on youtube can be almost immune to evidence about physics, metallurgy, demolitions, and such. Their eyes just glaze over when you try to use facts and numbers and evidence. But if you point them towards a source like http://www.youtube.com/user/RKOwens4 which is comprised of simple arguments against the 9/11 truth theories, in easy to understand 3 minute chapters, then you start to make headway.
This is the course science must take with the public. Like it or not. The alternative is far to dangerous.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
This weekend I had a chat with a fine gentleman who is one of the youngest polio survivors in the USA. He's in pretty good shape (he's in his 50s) but from visits with many others he knows what his future is like. Apparently, those who recover from polio do so by "swapping in" spare neurological paths -- the same ones that keep the rest of us functional as time takes its toll. Well, his "spares" are already used, so any additional losses as he ages are coming straight from function.
Measles? Look up the numbers. Case mortality for measles in the USA has been steady for over thirty years at 2/1000. In 1964, there were about 400,000 cases reported. Back when it was nearly universal, every state had well-filled schools for the deaf and blind -- most of them there thanks to neurological sequelae to measles, and which are still just as common as ever on a per-case basis. Those schools are empty now.
I have a smallpox vaccination scar on my arm, and wear it proudly. Most of you don't. You're welcome.
If you listen to the anti-vaccinationists, the vaccines are immeasurably worse than polio, measles, and smallpox. The best answer to that was stated by George Santayana. The rest is commentary; go and learn it.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
There are a lot of people (see above) that are just saying "Whoda thunk there's misinformation on the internet," but this is not the point of the article. The point is that misinformation is being ranked higher than videos showing the scientific truth. Now for entertainment sake, that's fine. In this case however, many of the videos were meant to be informative or persuasive instead of strictly entertainment.
We'll take a parallel into Hollywood. The fact that there's entertainment based off of lies or misinformation is no big deal. I don't know of too many people who think their car will randomly transform into a robot or their body is being used as a battery to power a giant ai network. The problem the article is hinting at is many of these videos are supposed to be informative and we break into the realm of documentaries or informational movies (i.e. Fahrenheit 9/11, An Inconvenient Truth, etc.) Now I don't want this debate to get political (although I think it may) but we'll further examine Fahrenheit 9/11. I personally am a democrat and when I saw this movie, I believed much more than I should of to be the absolute truth. Later on a fair portion of the movie was debunked, but because it was a compelling story in line with my own viewpoint, it was easy to believe.
To add to this, I have heard many people tell urban legends to me (which I knew to be untrue) as the absolute truth. The point is that humans tend to believe what makes a good story and not necessarily the truth, which in many cases is too bad.
I don't think it's unlikely or unheard of that there's misinformation on the net and I really don't feel that's what this article is getting at. Instead the article is pointing a blame-ful finger at the gullibility of human kind.
Sometimes lies may be fun, but take them only at face value.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
When Jenny McCarthy goes on to Oprah, to the delight of millions of viewers, to say that "science" is wrong because "my son is the science" that proves vaccines cause autism ... I don't think YouTube is really a significant factor in this discussion.
Going back to the first quote, let's just say for sake of argument you're right, about being a single person in the population who does not get immunized. Let's just say at that point you run a higher risk of getting the disease from the vaccine than from another source.
How do you know when you're in that situation? How do you know, you're the ONE person, of all the people you may come in contact with, the one lone person who has system beat? (And of course that the only vector by which the disease will spread to you is through another unimmunized person.)
Oh, that's right, you don't. So you've set up some fantastical situation that will never occur, even if your conclusion is correct.
I'm sorry for your family heartache.
I recognize Wikipedia is not definitive, but everything linked below has references, so it allows these to be tied up with a bow quite nicely.
However, correlation is not causation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_causation. Assuming you're from the US or Europe, Thimerosal is not used in vaccines except for influenza (which isn't required) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thimerosal. In addition, the CDC, FDA, and WHO categorically reject any relationship between Thimerosal and autism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy. The CDC, Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences,and the UK National Health Service have determined no link between MMR and autism.
The risks of not vaccinating children far outweigh even the real risks of the vaccine. Multiple-vaccine shots don't "overstimulate" the immune system. Not vaccinating your children can expose populations to previously squelched or heartier strains of disease. http://www.healthcentral.com/ency/408/002024.html
http://www.boystownpediatrics.org/HealthTips/immunization.asp
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/285/12/1573 (warning, login needed)
True, autism rates have been rising over the years. However, it's unclear how much of this is really "new" or incremental, and how much is due to attention paid to it and more advanced diagnosis mechanisms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism
. There are many, less nefarious but more plausible explanations. The vaccine hysteria is simply not supported by any real evidence. To be honest, most mothers of autistic children also probably ate carrots during pregnancy or (more recently) used their wireless phones. That doesn't mean either caused the autism. I realize your family tragedies are tied closely with significant, stand-out events. Augment this with pseudo-scientific fear-mongering about vaccines, and I can see why you might feel this way. However, thoughts and beliefs simply don't equal fact - no matter what you (or anyone), well, believes.
This doesn't mean you're an "indoctrinated idiot" - by your own admission, you're fairly biased based upon personal experience. I might be afraid to get back on a roller-coaster if I survived a horrible accident (or lost a close family member in one). However, I (would like to think that I) would not go so far as to suggest that my personal experience and bias ought to be construed as factual, even if it were in line with a bunch of people who were for the closing of amusement parks and dismantling of all roller-coasters.