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Study Finds Vaccine Science Outreach Only Reinforced Myths (arstechnica.com)
Ars Technica reports on a study suggesting that "Striking at a myth with facts may only shore it up." Applehu Akbar writes:
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh studied public attitudes toward vaccination in a group whose opinions on the subject were polled before and after being shown three different kinds of explanatory material that used settled scientific facts about vaccines to explain the pro-vaccination side of the debate. Not only was the anti-vax cohort not convinced by any of the three campaigns, but their attitudes hardened when another poll was taken a week later.
What seems to have happened was that the pro-vax campaign was taken by anti-vaxers as just another attempt to lie to them, and as reinforcement for their already made-up minds on the subject. A previous study at Dartmouth College in 2014 used similar methodology and except for the 'hardening' effect elicited similar results. What's really scary about this is that while the Dartmouth subjects were taken from a large general population, the Edinburgh subjects were college students.
"The researchers speculate that the mere repetition of a myth during the process of debunking may be enough to entrench the myth in a believer's mind," writes Ars Technica, with one of the study's authors attributing this to the "illusory truth" effect.
"People tend to mistake repetition for truth."
What seems to have happened was that the pro-vax campaign was taken by anti-vaxers as just another attempt to lie to them, and as reinforcement for their already made-up minds on the subject. A previous study at Dartmouth College in 2014 used similar methodology and except for the 'hardening' effect elicited similar results. What's really scary about this is that while the Dartmouth subjects were taken from a large general population, the Edinburgh subjects were college students.
"The researchers speculate that the mere repetition of a myth during the process of debunking may be enough to entrench the myth in a believer's mind," writes Ars Technica, with one of the study's authors attributing this to the "illusory truth" effect.
"People tend to mistake repetition for truth."
"The science has been settled" says the scientism expert. Did you do the experiments yourself?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
What's even sadder is that it was a relatively small number of scientists that have discredited science as a whole in the minds of so many people.
There was a time when people in general trusted scientists. This was back when scientists were seen as people with integrity. When a scientist made a claim, it was generally taken to be correct. That's exactly what we should expect from science: claims are made only when they can be solidly backed up with evidence and observation. By being consistently correct, scientists built up a sense of trust in the eyes of the general public.
But today? It's a very different situation.
It hasn't helped that climate science, for example, has been wrong so often. When climate scientists tell people in the 1960s and the 1970s that global cooling is a threat, but then switch in the 1980s and 1990s to telling them that global warming is then the threat, and then switching again in the 2000s and 2010s to telling them that the much more vaguer and unspecific "climate change" is now the threat, average people will eventually stop believing what scientists say. It's especially bad when scientists were making dire predictions about cities being permanently submerged under water within a few years, for example, and these predictions don't come true at all, despite "climate change" supposedly getting worse and worse at a rapidly increasing pace.
We see the same from scientists who study nutrition. One decade we're told that all fat is bad, and it must be removed from our diets. People act on this supposed science, but then the next decade it's discovered that wait, those initial claims were wrong and perhaps even harmful. Some fats can be good for you!
While science does need to work to correct its mistakes, and retractions are an important part of science, it must be realized that being wrong also has a big impact on how science and scientists are perceived.
When scientists feed incorrect information to average people again and again, these average people have no choice but to become skeptical. The danger of this is that climate scientists and nutrition scientists being wrong can spill over into other areas. Now vaccine scientists are distrusted because of the actions of their colleagues, even if the vaccine scientists haven't been wrong.
I don't know if there's an easy way to solve this problem. The only way might be for vaccine scientists, for example, to publicly denounce climate science and nutrition science. But until something like that happens, average people will all consider them to be "scientists", and average people won't be able to trust what scientists in general have to say.
Just outlaw the shit and be done with it. Simple as that. No need to be sad about it.
Nah, too many are far too entrenched in the judeo-christian belief that human life is sacred and children especially so for outlawing the shit to be feasible. So we're stuck with vaccines for now.