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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."
Sad
I'd rather air on the side of caution. When my children are adults they can decide for themselves if they want to take that poison.
Repetition does play a key-role, obviously, in enforcing lies. Just look at the mechanism of "prayer". This has been known for a very long time to work.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It's always important to ask, "What evidence would change your mind?"
If the answer is, "Nothing." Then there is a big problem with the ideology.
...repeated often enough becomes the truth - Joseph Goebbels. I could have saved them a bunch of time.
Says it doesn't work right on the bottle. Many, many other vaccines work but shoving the flu vaccine down everyones throat isn't doing anyone favors, and damages the reputation of legitimate vaccines.
Big lie was "repeat a lie often enough and loud enough, and it becomes mistaken for truth."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie#Hitler.27s_use_of_the_expression
And he turned into a transsexual. So clearly autism causes gender dyslexia.
And I don't mean "I'll have another beer".
50 years ago, these people would have gone to church every Sunday, and had their children vaccinated in a Church-sponsored public health drive.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Yes, it's annoying when your kids question you all the time, and I feel for teachers who have to deal with everyone else's kids... but maybe we ought to stop with the Santa and Tooth Fairy and all the other 'cute and harmless' lies we tell kids.
Instead, we ought to be asking them what they think, and why, and then show them where they've made errors... so when they come up against something new, they have a fighting chance of figuring it out without someone holding their hand the whole time.
The best experience I ever had in school was a teacher mocking me for being afraid to be wrong, which is really the fork in the road where you either try to figure something out or just shut down and stick with your initial belief. We need more of that for our kids.
If you don't vaccinate, you don't get medical treatment. Eat watery sugar if you want, but no actual medicine.
The modern anti-vaccination movement is one manifestation of public loss of trust in institutions and credentialed "professionals". The thing is.. most anti-vaccination types do not doubt the existence of infectious diseases or that some vaccines are very useful and effective. It comes down to other issues such as their inability to trust obviously greedy "professionals" who recommend vaccines against 15-20 diseases (some of which are uncommon). At that stage, more than a few people start wondering if it is more about profit and domination of others than helping people. Also, a lot of the popular ideas pushed by medical profession for decades such as "fat makes you fat", "jogging is good exercise- regardless of age" etc plus promising to treat diseases with newer and expensive drugs which have little to no effect on most disease endpoints (mild to moderate Depression, Type 2 Diabetes etc) do not help their cause- to put it mildly. https://dissention.wordpress.c...
It seems important to us as a species to have these settled world views, and I wonder why that's important.
Maybe banding together intellectually is an important feature in our tendency towards tribalism.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
but maybe we ought to stop with the Santa and Tooth Fairy and all the other 'cute and harmless' lies we tell kids.
Not arguing in favor for it, but not exposing them to this they might grow up believing adults / the general public always tell them the truth.
The Santa lie should make them skeptic. Maybe it makes them question "is the whole god thing a lie, too?".
But then there are those people who don't think we went to the moon or even the crazier the earth is flat group in colorado. I'm a skeptical guy myself, but really vaccines? I guess when we have a big polio outbreak again and have kids in iron lungs the no-vax group will have to live with what they did.
We techie folks spend much of our lives hanging out with our peers. This tends to give us a rather warped sense of the average intelligence and rationality of the general population. The fact is that most folks just feel overwhelmed by facts and data and really don't want the responsibility of choosing their own path through life. They would rather have someone they trust tell them what to do and think. Hence the popularity of religion and autocrats. It is counterproductive to try engaging these folks in some sort of rational fact based argument. That just makes them fearful. Try to remember that they are not acting stupid in order to annoy us; they're just in over their heads.
The word is "bright". "Brite" is not a word.
I don't respond to AC's.
Anti-vac trend can also be considered a form of critical thinking. Not everyone have time or inclination to properly research everything so there is always a need in some sort of trust chains in research of such information. The issue here is that official trust chain associated with government and mainstream science is no longer widely accepted in the populace. People just turned to new trust chains due to official ones too often pushing poorly researched and self serving information. If you're spreading too much nonsense and misinformation then even truth you share along the way can get tarnished.
Consider the long and body-strewn history of companies whose products have done enormous damage to large numbers of people.
The cigarette companies were denying that their cute little puff-sticks could cause cancer after a decade in which the causality was as firmly established as 1+1=2. The company that brought out thalidomide was still denying their product maimed unborn babies quite some time after the evidence was rolling in like a tsunami. Monsanto is even now busy suppressing evidence that their roundup product causes cancer.
I could cite a bunch of other instances, but it all comes down to the proven fact that corporations lie about the disasters they cause. They have every reason to: Cleaning up their mess or making amends to the victims will cost them money!
"...once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind." -- Robert A. Heinlein Citizen of the Galaxy
...the science doth complain too much!
Does this explain climate change denial and the election of Donald Trump?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Consensus?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
while the Dartmouth subjects were taken from a large general population, the Edinburgh subjects were college students.
Half the population of school-leavers now go to university in the UK. That is despite the fact that there are only sufficient "graduate level" jobs for a small fraction of them.
While the smartest graduates will get those jobs, the rest will be left with a crushingly large bill for their 3 more years of "education". You have to question just how clever those remaining graduates actually are.
So it comes as no surprise to learn that in this topic, university students can act just as dim as "ordinary" people - since most of them are exactly that.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
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.
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.
I'm sure they'll perk up when they get their Darwin Awards.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
...stupid is forever.
It's the boy who cried wolf, in a nutshell. I don't agree with them, but I understand the viewpoint.
"Ought to" and "will do" are two separate things. The authorities have a very vested interest in keeping the populace credulous. A skeptical public would overthrow them in an hour.
"Stop trying to confuse me with the facts! I've made up my mind!"
IF a child - who is NOT inoculated spreads a disease throughout his/her peer group, then it's high time to start prosecuting their parents for criminal mischief, at the very least, for allowing their child to be a carrier and disease vector simply because they refused to get that child vaccinated. Prosecution levels should even be allowed to go as high as "involuntary manslaughter", although, to me, it's NOT involuntary, it's premeditated, and should be criminalized to the full extent of those statutes.
Granted, this doesn't solve the problem resulting from that incident, but it WILL send a message to all the other parents that refuse to get their children vaccinated. Basically, if you allow your child to be a disease carrier, then YOU are responsible for all the harm caused to the other children who are harmed, disabled, crippled, or even killed - ALL THROUGH YOUR OWN NEGLIGENCE, or your BELIEF SYSTEM.
It makes no difference whether the issue is religious, personal, or just plain obstinate hard-headedness - YOU are the reason another child (or children) contracted a disease that could have been prevented with current vaccination regimes.
OK, so it's a sad and sometimes horrific (in case of permanent disability or death) situation, and there are many who would say that the parents (and child) have suffered enough - - - BUT the situation is SOLELY the responsibility of the child's parents / guardians to see that they are given the best medical care available - and that INCLUDES THE VACCINATIONS !
There is a serious line of demarcation between religion and scientific medical processes - and if the 'BELIEF' faction is allowed to put the health and lives of the other children at risk, then I BELIEVE they should be removed from the general population - - - as in ISOLATION WARDS / CAMPS.
Sorry if this sounds a bit fascist, or absolute socialistic, but there is just too much at stake to allow this type of behavior to endanger the health and well-being of the majority of the population - - - simply because someone says "My FAITH says I should NOT do this".
Take your FAITH and use it to cure the harm caused to the other children endangered by your actions (or INactions).
GET YOUR VACCINATIONS - REGULARLY and ON TIME - - - to protect the whole world.
cheers . . .
redneck geek
Yes, we got the problem with the dust tackled. And the threat of a Global Cooling has diminished. And yes, climate scientist were right then.
Perhaps voting rights should be contingent upon demonstration of minimal critical thinking skills. Kinda like how you can't get a driver's licence if you cannot demonstrate you can drive. You don't get to vote if you cannot demonstrate you can think critically, maybe discern a few logical fallacies, recognize incorrect inferences, etc. Setting the voting bar at breathing, eating, shitting, and not killing those around you, isn't all that high.
The increasing prevalence of irrationality is wearing me down. I don't really care what you think, as long as you know why and can provide sound explanations if you want to tell anyone else about it. Otherwise, pstfu.
That's a serious question. I can't tell you the number of times I've read some nonsense on /. that would be completely debunked by credible sources by highlighting the post, right clicking and choosing "Search Google for XYZ...". It's not just ignorance. It's wilful ignorance. I guess you could call it faith. Reminds me of this
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"If you are not making mistakes you are not trying or challenging yourself." It is important to keep that in mind. I went back to school later in life and got my MA in journalism. In one class, I was willing to take a guess, and often I was wrong. I think the professor gave me an A because of my willingness to to take risks in answering questions.
n/t
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
Yes, it's annoying when your kids question you all the time, and I feel for teachers who have to deal with everyone else's kids... but maybe we ought to stop with the Santa and Tooth Fairy and all the other 'cute and harmless' lies we tell kids.
Instead, we ought to be asking them what they think, and why, and then show them where they've made errors... so when they come up against something new, they have a fighting chance of figuring it out without someone holding their hand the whole time.
The best experience I ever had in school was a teacher mocking me for being afraid to be wrong, which is really the fork in the road where you either try to figure something out or just shut down and stick with your initial belief. We need more of that for our kids.
Damore's essay was a fascinating peek into the sociology of lies.
The vast, vast majority of discussion about this(*) fell into two categories:
1) He said *that* shocking thing! (Countered with "He didn't say that")
2) He wrote prejudiced opinions not based in fact (Countered with "He cited references for each position he took")
Note the pattern here: the vast majority of discussion can be described as "make something up, then complain about it".
It's a complete surprise to me how *much* dishonesty arose over this incident. I suppose it's partly due to MSM wanting to drive clicks to their sites: Gizmodo published the essay with the references removed, bolstering item #2, and CNN headlined that Damore argues women aren't suited for tech jobs for "biological" reasons, which ginned up a lot of outrage on item #1.
There were a handful of lessor discussions in the same mould(**).
It's fascinating because this is one example where anyone can drill down to the exact truth in moments - the published news reports are available, the words he used are available for comparison, everything everyone said is now part of the written record.
Despite all this - despite the truth being so easy to determine - the vast majority of discussion of every aspect of this incident has been based on lies and attempts to correct them.
We can find the truth quite easily. How, in the face of Gizmodo and CNN, can the average person do that?
Maybe it's time we stopped worrying about what people think, and examine how they *come* to the beliefs they have.
Having a higher quality stream of truth would be a good first step.
(*) You can verify this for yourself: check the commentary for any of Slashdot's recent articles about Damore's essay (such as this one). The rule holds true for other social media channels.
(**) Including: the citations he used were from institutions with clear bias, the citations he used didn't confirm his point, he claims to be a PhD but isn't (an ad-hominem attack unrelated to his point), he's not allowed to cite scientific studies because he's not himself a scientist (wtf?), he can't sue Google because CA is an "at will" state (difference between "fired for no reason" and "fired for the *wrong* reason).
This no surprise for cognitive scientists who study how people think. If you state what people believe, and then refute it with facts, most of the time people just defend their incorrect beliefs more strongly. Restating a person's false belief is not the best way to change a person's mind.
hardly surprising, despite all the information available to them they choose to believe conspiracy theories and lunies, why would you think presenting them with science and facts would change people with such fucked up logic and thought processes.
Repetition does play a key-role, obviously, in enforcing lies. Just look at the mechanism of "prayer". This has been known for a very long time to work.
There's a mechanism in your brain(*) that filters out all the incoming sensory stimulus and only presents items that are deemed important to the conscious mind.
So for example, while reading this you're probably unaware of your weight on your chair, the ambient sounds in the room, What you see outside the screen, and so on. The feel of pants on your legs goes unnoticed, but if a bug starts crawling up your calf it's immediately presented to your conscious mind for action.
It's well known that if you purchase a new car you suddenly start noticing other cars of the same model as you pass them (when you didn't before), and women who purchase a style of dress start noticing other women wearing that same style.
It's thought that this is part of a goal-seeking mechanism in the brain. Tell the mechanism your goals and it automatically filters out anything unrelated to that goal.
This is how prayer works. We live our lives awash in information that might be relevant to our personal goals, but most of it is ignored by the RAS unless we program it with these goals.
Prayer allows people to identify and set these goals in their mind, so that you start noticing the relevant opportunities. Pray to God for a miracle, and later you notice something comes along that helps you through your problem. Prayer works, God answers, hallelujah!
Repetition is important, but simply setting clear goals is often sufficient to get help from the almighty.
(*) In the Reticular Activation System, but there's some disagreement as to where it actually resides
1st thing people learn in clinical psychology is that you cannot reach the patient if you don't accept their world view. You can only navigate in their world view because any attempts to challenge it will sound very similar to what they have already heard multiple times when they were challenged on their world view. And by reminding them of how they reacted to it last time, the memory is reinforced. Anyone creating a marketing campaign should have known this.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Let's say the study worked like this... you identified anti-vaxxers with a poll. You then tell them they're part of a study (you have to) and you give them pro-vaxx documents and then you give them another similar poll to test their attitudes. Chances are they can figure out what's going on. The very idea that someone is trying to figure out the best rhetoric to use to change your mind is going to make you skeptical of what they're saying.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Such prosecutions can't succeed without credible attribution.
Prove that person that got harmed really caught it from, or because of, person who was unvaccinated, and that it wasn't the fault of the vaccine company for providing the person who got harmed a defective vaccine. (In many cases, vaccines are only ~95% effective or lower.)
Still, I'd love to see such prosecutions attempted.
the anti vaxers are smart. they pick up on the lies. they know medical professionals lie to promote their businesses. it's a business not medicine. this has resulted in medicine science being mostly entirely fraudulent propaganda, statements made by the medical profession without facts or scientific basis.
I have knowledge that vaccines are mostly a for profit system. doctors like them because so many visits to their offices are forced by pro vaccine legislature backed by billions of dollars in profits. they like to use a psychological warfare tactic to disarm the public who feels wronged by the profiting and forced medical procedures.
the same issue effects psychiatry. psychiatry is largely debunked by the industries own medical science but you never hear about it from them. they profit off abducting healthy children and adults into mental hospitals, for profit group homes, where mental health care is not provided only forced medication injections.
take a look at these four sites. even the United Nations special Reporter on health and torture is asking the United States to stop. http://www.psychrights.org/ http://www.madinamerica.com/ http://www.mindfreedom.org/ http://www.cchr.org/ http://www.wayneramsay.com/
the medical science behind psychiatric drugs proves the drugs cause severe brain damage, induce psychosis and mental disorders, prevent recovery, induce suicides and homicides, cause 25 years of life expectancy to be reduced, kill between 1 in 3 and 1 in 2 within 17 years of the neuroleptics, kill 500,000+ elderly alone yearly, do not treat any mental disorder but serve to tranquilize and chemical lobotomize only, etc. yet the standard practice when you sit down in front of any psychiatrist, MD, school counselor, or end up in the ER is for them to prescribe a drug to you knowing it won't help. sickening. maddening.
http://www.trumpsweapon.com/
"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"
As with much of your post, this never happened to the extent you pass it off as, as least from a large concensus view. In terms of modern science, fats have always been considered essential to the human diet, and that's been reflected in the large percentage that is considered to make up your daily dietary intake. Anyone with a basic understanding of biochemistry and biology knows this, unless you want to severely restrict cell and nervous system formation and maintenance, and that knowledge has been around for over half a century, at least.
The debate has been over the amount above the basic requirements and the type of fat intake. That's evolved as our understanding of biology increased, particular with disease processes, esp cardiovascular.
Much of your post, as with the fat issue, is pure, inflated BS where you take a failing and pass it off as encompassing everyone and everything in a field. It's like one person mutinied and now everyone on the ship deserves to be blown up. No wonder you don't trust squat; you can't even evaluate the validity of the sources or review the literature appropriately. Don't pass off your piss poor understanding of science, debate, and data as contempt of entire fields instead of representing a poor reflection of yourself.
Furthermore, something being wrong once does not encompass the entire validity of the process. And the process is one of constant improvement, review, and restudy, something that is severely lacking at almost any other level of human evaluation. Some climate scientists being wrong in the past because of reason A because no one was looking at reason B doesn't mean the entire field is wrong 40+ years after further research and advancement. The very basis of the fields is one of reviewing past wrongs in order to learn and make a more accurate model.
You can't teach critical thinking here in the US. You'll be called a 'liberal'.
A big mistake was making Al Gore the spokesman for climate change. That unnecessarily politicized the issue. Back in 2007, most Republican presidential candidates agreed that climate change was a serious issue that need to be addressed. That would never happen today. They don't want to be accused of "agreeing with Al Gore". For Republican politicians, it is a toxic issue, and has become an ideological litmus test, so facts and evidence no longer matter.
Still no. People still have a difficult time finding all those studies that claimed global cooling.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
...look like to be effective? Some carrot and stick approach? Or we just need to let Darwin do it's job over generations?
Vaccinations are not 100%.
Nothing is 100%, and to assume that is even a possibilty is folly.
Plenty of people cannot obtain vaccines, and rely on herd immunity. The very young, the very old, those with immunity-compromising diseases.
One family was sued (and lost) precisely because her child, caught measles, and infected (and killed) two children who were too young for vaccines.
In France, there were less than 10 cases of measles a year, no deaths; when the rate of vaccination fell to 98%, there were over 4500 cases in a single year, many deaths, and then spread through the unvaccinated population across Europe within months, killing many infants.
In Utah, one unvaccinated person returned from Europe, and then promptly exposed over 1000+ people to the Measles virus, those unvaccinated, (mostly children), were hospitalized and suffered brain damaged from the disease.
Neither option is without risk, but the risks of not vaccinating far outweight the risks of vaccinating.
And the risks of not vaccinating do not place yourself in danger, but affect thousands of others you are near.
If we are to allow non-vaccination as an option, everyone who is un-vaccinated must pay for the health-care and hospitalization of everyone who subsequently catches the disease from communication they caused, directly and indirectly. Those unable to be vaccinated due to disease or age, would be exempt. People must take personal responsibility for the effects their actions cause unto others.
Trusting a medical opinion because the person giving it is a celebrity is not critical thinking. Trusting someone because they're a celebrity is how you got Trump as president. And people continue to trust celebrities even after they've been caught in lie after lie after lie. Why? Because even if we did invent a vaccine against stupidity, they would be against it because they're stupid.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Anti-vac trend can also be considered a form of critical thinking.
More critical, less thinking. Same as a teenager.
With responsibilities comes more thoughts, less critics. That's when teenagers become adults.
"People tend to mistake repetition for truth."
Politicians, bigots, climate change deniers, and any number of people with conspiracy barrows to push have known this for years.
Say it often enough, say it loud enough, and it becomes the truth.
Sad when reason, data and evidence are Trumped by bigotry and prejudice.
Perhaps voting rights should be contingent upon demonstration of minimal critical thinking skills. Kinda like how you can't get a driver's licence if you cannot demonstrate you can drive.
How quaint. This series is devoted to people with drivers licenses who cannot drive. Can't park without hitting another car and driving off. Can't stay in their lane. Routinely step on the gas when they want to brake. Can't see, but won't get glasses. Have totaled many cars. Who are afraid of driving in traffic. Who cut everyone off. Who stop in the middle of intersections. Who make right-hand turns from the innermost of 3 lanes. Who don't understand what traffic signals mean. Who talk on the phone while eating and doing their makeup in the rear-view mirror while driving (that one was a real estate agent who claimed she could multitask, but missed stop signs). Who thought the maximum speed limit was just a suggestion, and you could go as fast as you wanted. Who somehow got their license and have never driven since because they KNOW they can't drive.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
not everyone has autism but you cannot always measure the damage. you cannot always tell when a brain disorder is caused of varying degrees. it may not be noticeable but it's still damage. even people with TBI have this problem. the test results all come back normal but the person does have TBI. one cause is detection methods for TBI is not very good, cannot see cell death or cable breaks because MRIs are not high enough resolution.
the medical industry is using this flaw to say the vaccines do not cause autism because they lack high enough resolution MRIs/ tests. a before and after shot of the brain would show the vaccines are causing damage only once the new high resolution scanners were designed and deployed.
only one hospital in the world has a scanner that might do: Pittsburgh University, they call it HD fiber tracking.
the military has classified scans that work even better but those will never even be disclosed to the public. they use those scanners for surveillance and mind control weapons like #NSAESP.
be careful when someone denies the truthfulness of these kinds of articles. from what I know environment plays a large roll in the damage being done to humans, our cells, and DNA. EMF exposure is also playing a roll in autism.
the university of San Diego also recently confirmed the cause of autism is largely environmental.
Climate scientists were right then, but it's because most of them were ignoring the global cooling bullshit:
http://physicstoday.scitation....
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
A big mistake was making Al Gore the spokesman for climate change. That unnecessarily politicized the issue. Back in 2007, most Republican presidential candidates agreed that climate change was a serious issue that need to be addressed. That would never happen today. They don't want to be accused of "agreeing with Al Gore". For Republican politicians, it is a toxic issue, and has become an ideological litmus test, so facts and evidence no longer matter.
I call that BS. Way before Al Gore became the spokesman for climate change republicans were already steering away from it because... lobbying. This is an article from the Guardian from 1997, called "Who Killed Kyoto?": https://www.uow.edu.au/~sharonb/Guardian.html
So way before Al Gore ran for president, or he did his movie/documentary, or whatever...
Did you do the experiments yourself?
How did you dare to use a computer to post that? Computers rely on scary atomic and quantum physics and contain toxic chemicals. How do you know they are safe to use if you haven't verified the science behind them by doing the experiments yourself?
Even worse, they also emit electromagnetic radiation. It's well known that gamma rays are electromagnetic radiation too and even experts say that they are dangerous. So please, until you have done the experiments yourself to confirm that computers are safe to use please stay away from them. You aren't just risking your life but your electromagnetic emanations may also risk the lives of others too.
So you're an elitist then. How cool and edgy. You advocating for a return to only property owners being able to vote, while you're at it?
No, it wasn't. Stop parroting memes based on FUD & bullshit.
Back in the day (the early 1960's?), a person had to get a stuff-ton of "shots" to travel to Europe. Today, it is hard to understand regarding Germany and Italy as being that level of "Third World", but you have to remember that was barely 15 years after the WW-II devastation.
How about "to reenter the U.S. after leaving it, you have to be current on the measles and other vaccines?"
The main problem is that in the 1960ies and 1970ies, Global Cooling was a threat.
You'd think for all the times science deniers trot this out they'd have found something to back up their delusion by now, but, being a delusion, there really isn't anything to support that claim. They all point to one news article written by the same media they claim to be dishonest and unbelievable. Why don't you do yourself a favor and produce some published research that claims global cooling was a threat and has the data to support it. Try to do it before one of us dies.
Yes, it's annoying when your kids question you all the time, and I feel for teachers who have to deal with everyone else's kids... but maybe we ought to stop with the Santa and Tooth Fairy and all the other 'cute and harmless' lies we tell kids.
If it wasn't hurting critical thinking in the past, there's no reason to believe it's hurting critical thinking today. What is hurting critical thinking is teaching to the test and turning schools into social indoctrination camps.
It's a little over 100 a year dead (and another 2000ish hospitalized or severe effects) as self reported by doctors to the CDC VERS voluntary system which the CDC says is underreported by up to 90% (but mostly the more minor cases)
We need to put more more into tests to determine which children we shouldn't vaccinate. We know now for sure that there are blood pressure drugs that you just shouldn't give to certain people with certain genetic markers.
We have to do this because just for Diphtheria alone, we were losing 15,000 children each and every year.
But it has interesting parallels to the death penalty. In the case of vaccination, we are giving the state the power to mandate actions which kill about 100 random children per year so it will save about a quarter million children per year.
In the case of execution, we don't want to give the state power to kill people because some of them have been shown to be innocent and we find that horrific.
And in 1984 the government was actively advancing the position that anti-vaccination data should be censored for public health reasons.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
We use the wrong language on vaccine deniers. Here's what we need to be saying:
"There's a secret, and Big Pharma and Big Medicine doesn't want you to know about it. You can be completely immune to [Smallpox/Measles/Diphtheria/whatever] and it's easy! But with just one low cost immunization, Big Pharma can't sell you a lifetime of drugs to treat your symptoms! The conspiracy is vast but the Truth Is Out There! Now can I interest you in some healing Tibetan Shaman crystals? How about a miracle magnetic bracelet?"
The sad part is that deniers need a message that is 180 degrees reversed from the message everyone else needs.
Let's say my work environment exposes me to an international population that crosses borders at regular intervals within the year, and there is a lot of pressure to not take any days off over large multi-week intervals -- to play-through-the-pain as it were. Whatever vaccine there is, inject me with it!
Over the course of my career, I remember a time when I had to lobby really hard to get my health care provider to give me, not in a high-risk group (not a small child, old person, or health care provider) the flu vaccine. Standing in front of a phalanx of coughing, sneezing people or being required to meet face-to-face with same coughing, sneezing persons, many who just got off a plane from parts of the world where flu epidemics are bred, this didn't count as "high risk."
This has changed -- these days there are at-work stand-in-line-to-get-your-flu-shot clinics staffed by volunteer nurses to give the flu shot to anyone who flashes their employee health-insurance card or a 10 dollar bill. One year a lady in line behind me forgot her health insurance card and I just pulled a 10 out of my wallet and handed it to the nurse -- not out of altruism but out of self interest and "herd immunity."
I got a vibe that earlier on, "they" didn't really want non high-risk people vaccinated for flu on account of the vaccine-risk vs flu-risk tradeoff. The memory of the "Swine Flu" scare was such that the Swine Flu was the Comet Kohoutek of pandemic flu but the vaccine was blamed on killing people through Guillain-Barre Syndrome as some mysterious auto-immune reaction to the vaccine. I got a severe scolding from a speech-therapist colleague on a collaborative research project, "You got the flue vaccine? You haven't seen what I have seen of paralyzed people coming into my clinic for swallowing therapy in the aftermath of the flu vaccine!"
Now, the vibe is the flu vaccine is perfectly safe and everyone who wants it should get it.
Long story short, the flu vaccine is a bad example of "something that is good for you and entirely irrational to pass up." There was a time within my work career when others than crazy new-age-ie medically ignorant people had vaccine skepticism.
because it doesn't seem practical. You generally teach critical thinking with English and humanities courses. But more and more we're cutting back on those because of expense. Sure, you can teach critical thinking in math & science to the smarter kids, but it's not the smarter kids you're worried about, is it?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
A big part of the problem is how the results a presented. Sometimes that was due to scientists. Sometimes that was due to journalists. For example: no credible scientist was claimimg that cities would be submerged. Temperatures increasing, certainly. Sea levels rising, yes. Increased chances of flooding in coastal areas, sure. But submerged cities, well the closest thing that I have heard to that are a handful of Pacific islands at high tide. Even then I seem to recall increased erosion being the dominant factor.
Of course, the simplification of data is a more mundane and significant problem. Amongst each other, scientist tend to discuss how confident they are that results fall in a particular range. Journalists like to fall back on a singular number. The more sensational they want the story to be, the more likely they are to choose one of the extreme values of the range.
A CDC whistleblower proved that the CDC knew about the link between MMR and autism and did everything they could to bury the evidence. He was the guy responsible for the destruction of the evidence. He called out to an "anti-vaxer" to tell him exactly which documents to request in a freedom of information request to get the documents out before they were destroyed forever.
My friend's son was a perfectly normal and talkative little boy before his SECOND MMR vaccine. After the injection he had a seizure. The doctor said it's perfectly normal and not to worry. He was forever changed that day, and was later diagnosed with autism.
Issues like these are why I cannot take the "mythbusters" seriously. They are willfully ignorant and are a danger to society.
Politicizing any issue is the best way to ensure no progress is made. I see you are still helping do that.
If you keep saying that mercury based preservatives (now removed) were good for us, maybe we'll believe Bin LAden had something to do with 9-11 too! Don't let the scientific facts of mercury being bad and 9-11 being a controlled demolition stop the propaganda meisters! Hitlary could still become president !!! ae911truth dot org
What has Usain Goring, the Klimate Primate, got to do with vaxx vs anti-vaxx. Nothing apart from sponsored pseudo-scientific fud.
Big Pharma OWN your doctor and health provider network. Just as 1 in every 10,000 Toyotas, Mercedes Benzes or Teslas is going to be a lemon, 1 in 10,000 vaccinations can "go wrong". This is just the nature of such things.
That said, it really sucks if YOU buy that specific Toyota, Mercedes Benz or Tesla. And more so if YOUR kid is that ONE in 10,000. You can dump the car lemon, you have the child until they die. I personally know of one such extremely tragic case, so the pro-vaxxers should just shut up and admit to the reality of the stats.
Santa and tooth fairy? It's glowing panels that fill them with bullshit.
love is just extroverted narcissism
It's like someone being wrong on the internet, just ignore them
love is just extroverted narcissism
Its fine to non vax. Monoculture can wipe a species. Let the ones who decide to vax, the non vaxers non vax, and the genetically endangered take the needed precaution. Its life, so everyone is gonna die at some point. We just dont need you pretending it will be on nice terms. Vaccines kill also.
...more evidence of evolution doesn't change the opinion of people who don't believe in evolution. More evidence of Holocaust doesn't change the opinion of Holocaust deniers. Some people refuse the axioms of the scientific method, they've decided what the truth is and will ignore or alter the facts to preserve their belief. To the paranoid, everybody is out to get you and only pretending otherwise. To the conspiracy theorists, if it contradicts the theory it's part of the conspiracy. Also if it's not working, you're not doing it right or it's not a proper implementation of your ideology or religion. And if nothing else works call it fake news and muddy the waters as best you can, if the signal doesn't support your case bury it in noise.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If that's true, it's just more evidence that the right is a plague on this country, and planet. Seriously, pride over planet? Grow some fucken balls.
So why don't you stop fucking politicizing it, dipshit?
Like you literally said the problem, then proceeded to emulate the problem. You're either trying to make people not believe in it, or you're so stupid and partisan that you'd rather score insults.
If that's true, it's just more evidence that the right is a plague on this country, and planet.
So? Politics is a fact of life. Are you ok with destroying the planet as long as it is someone else's fault? Advocates of climate action knew (or should have known) that using a partisan politician as their champion would have a strong negative effect on building consensus and actually getting anything done.
Too bad we can't come up with a vaccine for stupidity; talk about a huge market need with that one.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
GP poster it looks like I put my comment in the wrong place and it was not aimed at you.
I call that BS. Way before Al Gore became the spokesman for climate change republicans were already steering away from it because... lobbying.
Wrong and wrong. Republicans tended to be more opposed to action than Democrats, but there used to be support on the right. Cap-and-trade was a right wing idea (but maybe not a very good one). Also many Democrats opposed action, especially from industrial states like West Virginia and Michigan ... and yes, West Virginia and Michigan were once Democratic states.
Now let's talk about lobbying. Liberals tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to blame every Republican issue on "lobbyists" and "big money". That is nonsense. Sure the Koch Brothers and Exxon spent money undermining action on climate change, but it is mostly a grass roots issue. Working class people see it as just another issue where ivory tower intellectuals are pushing them down, and Al Gore is not going to appeal to these people. You might want to try actually talking to some Republicans.
Look, erasing false myths is hard. If it were easy, it wouldn't be a problem.
Just because the three methods tried all failed does not mean another is possible.
Often these attempts are based on seriously flawed reasoning.
The anti-vax meme is not based on science, yet they attempt to combat it with science. They tried charts and facts. The anti-vax people have already been exposed to a ton of science. If that worked, we would have no problem.
Similarly, mere pictures of sick children do nothing. It can't compete with the many many bullshit lies people tell.
They don't need a chart, or fact, or even a picture of a sick kid. I would try an angry mother sobbing about her dead kid. Or a re-enactment of the scumbag Wakefield's first lie, and how many ways he made money on it. With him laughing at the idiots that fell for it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
*I personally know of one tragic coincidence.
FTFY.
Unless you're not talking about autism. There are a handful of actual risks with vaccines. But they're all listed on the paperwork Walgreens make you sign beforehand.
As someone who grew up in the 1970s, I can assure you the climatology talk which filtered out to the general public back then was about whether or not we'd enter another ice age.
The explanation given in your link (that the mass media was hyping global cooling, but climate scientists were publishing papers about global warming) doesn't really help. It just confirms the belief that the mass media will hype whatever they want rather than report accurately.
Instead of trying to teach these people a new way to think, reach these people via the way they already think. They're into the anti-vaxx stuff because:
Back before GPS navigation became ubiquitous, I read that men tend to navigate using road names, women tend to navigate using landmarks. So I started giving directions with both road names and landmarks. I got a lot of comments from people that they really liked my directions. There's no reason to limit ourselves to just one method of teaching people.
It hasn't helped that climate science, for example, has been wrong so often.
Don't confuse the findings of climate scientists with the outpourings and antics of climate activists. Scientists do change their minds over time as new data comes in, while activists, being the kind of people described by this study, remain stuck on hysteria. They are like that on every subject of controversy.
The entire model of the dreadful site Ars Technica is pay-for-play. This means the outlet offers its services as a public facing propaganda outlet to any corporation with a large PR budget- and the 'articles' on the site are litterally written by the PR departments (after a very large amount of cash trades hands).
While many pseudo tech sites online are corrupt to a large degree- this site has no non-corrupt aspect. A little while ago Monsanto had a giant advertorial on Ars Technica disguised as an internal article attacking anti-GMO folk. Attacking with 'science' of course.
The drug companies are the most ruthless on the planet. And vaccinations have become their 'go to' cash cow. Each new widely promoted vaccine makes BILLIONS of dollars a year- and a good chunk of the profits go into the pockets of the key politicians who have the power to effectively mandate the vaccine.
What scum like Ars Technica and Slashdot will never mention is the horrifying scandal of the 'flu vaccine'. The biggest money maker by far and the most useless and pointless vaccine even when correctly 'designed'. But a couple of years ago, WHO (the ultra-corrumpt UN medical division) screwed up entirely and made a 'guess' for that year's flu virus that was 100% wrong. Within months it became apparent that the vaccine targeted a strain of flu that was never going to appear in the Human Population. From a science point of view, this meant the vaccine should have been scrapped- destroyed.
However, this would have meant a loss of more than TEN BILLION dollars. So the UN advised that the vaccine still be used, with the excuse that by doing os the ordinary population would be GROOMED into expecting a yearly flu shot. Every vaccine damages a certain percentage of people that take it- and some of the side effects are life changing. When the vaccine is provably helpful, social engineers claim the ends justify the means. But in this case no-one could be helped by the vaccine. Yet WHO still demanded governments force it on their populace.
Rolling out a useless vaccine meant the drug company execs could still afford to hire high profile pop stars for their kids' birthdays that year- all that really matters in the end. But every medical worker I've met refuses to take the vaccine anyway, so certain are the flu like symptoms it always causes. But who cares, eh- Clinton loving Slashdot tells you that only fools doubt the words of their masters. But then again Clinton has been the greatest cause of premature death in places like Libya, with the full approval of the 'editorial' staff of Ars Technica- so we can certainly see how pro-Human these people really are.
maybe they showed them how much money is paid out yearly to settle vaccine injury claims by the government.
or maybe they told them that big pharma pays 2 billion USD per year to settle lawsuits on regular drugs
or maybe they showed them the actual scientific studies that show vaccines are safe, where the control group and the variable group are the same (less 1 vaccine)
maybe they told them that the entire vaccination schedule is not studied for safety and that vaccines are studied individually
(like comparing 2 pack a day smokers to 3 pack a day smokers)
..that you can't fix stupid.
Blaming Al Gore doesn't make sense if what you say that republicans agreed prior to that. Why do republicans get to have good ideas but democrats just make it politicized?
This, we can only hope that the internet brings some fragmentation in the information sources.
truth is like poetry, most people hate poetry.
People want a thrilling story, not the boring truth. Would it help if the story is brought differently?
Ingesting heavy metal particles causes autism. This is well-accepted.
Many (non-US) studies are finding significant heavy metal contamination in vaccines.
Nope - there was one - ONE - paper that thought that it was possible, that got taken out of all proportion, who's findings are still being used today to support anti-global warming denial. The problem is that the basic premise of that paper has long since been proved wrong - (that global temperature will follow the sun's activity/output directly, as we headed into a period of low activity which would therefore lower the global temperature, causing global cooling - the fact that such activity has happened and the global temperature has INCREASED (thanks to a basic 'greenhouse effect') debunks it completely.)
Doh - *global warming denial. Serves me write ( ;) ) in trying to edit my text in a hurry...
Nuff said.
Most vaccine science is junk science. Go look at any studies and see for yourself. Here's one example, directly from Merck's website. http://www.merck.com/product/usa/pi_circulars/g/gardasil/gardasil_pi.pdf
Notice on Section 6.1 / Page 4, they use saline as the placebo in only one study. The control for the other FIVE controlled studies is Amorphous Aluminum Hydroxyphosphate Sulfate (AAHS). It seems to me if they wanted to remove any doubt, they would stick to saline instead of using one of the controversial vaccine components as the placebo for the control group.
But wait, there's more. On pages 4 and 5, they have the results for mild reactions from the Saline and AAHS-controlled studies broken out separately...until Page 6, where they get into the more serious and the severe options. Then hocus pocus, the Saline and AAHS results are grouped together. Any 6th grader trying this level of shenanigans would get an F or an I for this project. Yet all of of you jackasses just line up and call this rubbish "science".
This series is devoted to people with drivers licenses who cannot drive. Can't park without hitting another car and driving off. Can't stay in their lane. Routinely step on the gas when they want to brake. Can't see, but won't get glasses. Have totaled many cars. Who are afraid of driving in traffic. Who cut everyone off. Who stop in the middle of intersections. Who make right-hand turns from the innermost of 3 lanes. Who don't understand what traffic signals mean. Who talk on the phone while eating and doing their makeup in the rear-view mirror while driving (that one was a real estate agent who claimed she could multitask, but missed stop signs). Who thought the maximum speed limit was just a suggestion, and you could go as fast as you wanted. Who somehow got their license and have never driven since because they KNOW they can't drive.
And it's in Canada you say? Not New Mexico?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If that's true, it's just more evidence that the right is a plague on this country, and planet.
So? Politics is a fact of life. Are you ok with destroying the planet as long as it is someone else's fault? Advocates of climate action knew (or should have known) that using a partisan politician as their champion would have a strong negative effect on building consensus and actually getting anything done.
No, it wasn't. Stop parroting memes based on FUD & bullshit.
It may not have been a threat but it was certainly reported as being a threat (source: my memory of reading articles in serious papers and magazines - albeit I was doing that reading in the 80's).
However, it was not 'considered' a threat in the same way, or to the same degree, that AGW is 'considered' today.
Not being vaccinated, if everyone else has been, is a rational course of action. Why run the risk of side effects (of whatever probability) if the herd immunity of everyone else will keep you safe?
This leads to a tragedy of the commons, where more and more people will opt out of vaccination until that herd immunity breaks down.
There's no easy answer. Mandatory vaccination? I cannot think of a worse violation of the sovereignty of my body than that.
Penalties for failure to be vaccinated? Random stop and "Vaccination papers, bitte" in a public place? Denial of services, fines, imprisonment for non-conformists? Also creepy.
The best way would be to educate and incentivise uptake. Get vaccinated? You get a tax refund. Your kids get to go to the good school. Other kids invite them over for playdates. Your friends don't ostracise you, like they would if you drink and drive, or don't recycle.
Natural selection always finds new ways of pruning the tree of life.
Big Pharma vaccine pushers: 'These industry funded studies show that adults do not develop autism when given single doses of vaccines, which no longer are made with mercury in the form of thimerosal.'
Concerned, thoughful vaccine skeptics: 'Obviously that does not begin to address the issue of infants receiving many times the safe dose of aluminum, which you are now using as an adjuvant in nearly every vaccine, nor the cause-and-effect nature of aluminum overdoses and brain inflammation, nor the recent research showing that some cases of Autism appear to be the result of brain inflammation. '
Big Pharma Vaccine pushers: 'Antivaxxers like you cannot be reasoned with!'
Brainless, credulous liberal twits: 'Tuberculosis and measles are back! The outbreaks are among nonvaccinated people! It's all your fault, antivaxxers!"
Thoughtful conservatives: 'Thanks for pointing out that Somalis and other immigrants are arriving unvaccinated, often with active tuberculosis, measles and other communicable diseases, and that these people often fail to vaccinate their children years after arriving. Had we limited immigration years ago, less of this would be happening."
Brainless, credulous liberal twits: 'Racists like you cannot be reasoned with!'
Stupid people taking themselves and their spawn out of the gene pool.
Do you actually have kids? Because you don't seem to have the remotest idea of what it involves,
In most cases, it's precisely "showing them where they've made errors" that engenders the fear of being wrong. You need to pick your times to teach those lessons. "Total, uncompromising honesty" is the sort of battle plan that simply will not survive first contact with the enemy.
Perhaps it's just me not paying attention to American celebrity culture, but across the pond it sure sounded like the vast majority of celebs were on the side of Hillary.
Cant we just stop caring, and let the stupid people not get vaccinated, and then weeded out?
I call that BS. Way before Al Gore became the spokesman for climate change republicans were already steering away from it because... lobbying.
Wrong and wrong. Republicans tended to be more opposed to action than Democrats, but there used to be support on the right. Cap-and-trade was a right wing idea (but maybe not a very good one). Also many Democrats opposed action, especially from industrial states like West Virginia and Michigan ... and yes, West Virginia and Michigan were once Democratic states.
Now let's talk about lobbying. Liberals tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to blame every Republican issue on "lobbyists" and "big money". That is nonsense. Sure the Koch Brothers and Exxon spent money undermining action on climate change, but it is mostly a grass roots issue. Working class people see it as just another issue where ivory tower intellectuals are pushing them down, and Al Gore is not going to appeal to these people. You might want to try actually talking to some Republicans.
Are you freaking kidding me? Did you read the article from 1997! 20 years ago, way before Al Gore went on campaign, one of the biggest problems was lobbying and by that time GOP was already dancing by that tune. You can't miss it, it's chronologically impossible for GOP to be politicized before Al Gore goes on campaign... you know, cause and effect, and effect can't come before cause?
Practice your reading skills and chronology awareness and do the math....
Not to worry- as soon as their children get sick and die from some easily-preventable disease then maybe they'll get a clue.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
You might get a lemon car but in case of van you are the lemon.
This is exactly right.
You could lay some of the blame at people's credulity and some kind of willful desire to believe alternative opinions because they're alternatives, but the bottom line is that the volume of manipulation and misinformation aimed at the public is relentless. Advertisements, sales and marketing, public relations, politicians -- the list of people with agendas and no regard for anything like the truth is endless.
And unfortunately this list includes traditional authority figures generally associated with agenda-neutral factual truth.
“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
George Carlin
Here's the problem. As kooky as the anti-immunization crowd may seem there is a certain logic in their actions when looked at as a game. The probability of a negative reaction to the vaccine is very small, but not zero. The probability of contracting one of these diseases is also quite small as long as everyone else is getting the vaccination (herd immunity). So it comes down to what you believe these probabilities are, and since they are admittedly very low there is a lot of room for error. For example if the probability of a negative reaction is 1/100K but the probability of contracting the disease is 1/1 million, you are 10x more likely to have a negative vaccine reaction than contract the disease. What these numbers really are is not as important as what people believe they are.
As long as you believe that most other people are getting the vaccination it makes completely logical sense to avoid the vaccination. Yes, of course if enough people think like this we lose herd immunity for the people who "really need" it, but if you are behaving completely selfishly, you don't care. To effectively combat the anti-vaccine crowd you need to convince them that the odds are in their favor to get the vaccine.
The CDC reported a measles outbreak in a 100% documented vaccinated population.
Historical trends show that deaths caused by childhood illnesses had already
declined as much as 90% before vaccine programs were ever initiated.
Evidence indicates that an improved standard of living, better
nutrition, and increased sanitation, caused this drop in disease, not
vaccines
These studies should always include the correlation with a belief in god and/or holy scripture.
Same bias shown by Anthropomorphic global warming crowd! No evidence dissuades them! In this case, the vaccine packaging itself warns of the same side effects people protect their children from. Not so with climate zealots. The true way to combat disease isnt thru chemicals, it is mechanically killing them. Royal Rife discovered UV microscopy almost 100 years ago to image virus and bacteria alive in culture. Then using radio waves and resonance he could essentially cause the organisms to harmlessly explode. He identified numerous causes of disease and could cure many. Problem was drug industry and GE with their electron microscope. Which only looks at dead cells but was a cash cow for decades. MIT "discovered" UV microscopy a couple of years ago. So maybe once big pharma buys up all patents on that we can get true cures for illness not just symptoms. Nah! More money in chemo and opiate pain mgmt!
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke
Just as 1 in every 10,000 Toyotas, Mercedes Benzes or Teslas is going to be a lemon, 1 in 10,000 vaccinations can "go wrong". This is just the nature of such things.
That said, it really sucks if YOU buy that specific Toyota, Mercedes Benz or Tesla. And more so if YOUR kid is that ONE in 10,000. You can dump the car lemon, you have the child until they die. I personally know of one such extremely tragic case, so the pro-vaxxers should just shut up and admit to the reality of the stats.
Yes, the reality is every once in a while a child has a really bad reaction from a vaccine but the reality of the flip side is A LOT worse. I don't know how accurate your 1 in 10000 number is but that sounds like REALLY good odds to me. Before vaccines, 1 in 3 kids didn't make it to adulthood. Which odds would you rather have for your kid? A 1 in 10000 chance of dying from a vaccine or a 1 in 3 chance of dying from not getting a vaccine? Sure, because most people are vaccinated today, your odds are a little better than 1 in 3 even if you don't get a vaccine but it's still not as good as with getting the vaccine. When the odds of complications exceed the odds of catching the disease, that's when we discontinue the vaccine. That's why no one gets vaccinated for smallpox anymore except for a few soldiers going to a few high risk areas.
As a data person, the one thing I wish that the pro-vaccine people would start doing is listing the odds of complications of the vaccine right next to the estimated odds of catching the disease. I think some antivaxers might respond to that if you said "odds of bad reaction 1/10000, current odds of catching disease 1/1000, historical odds of catching the disease 1/100, odds of dying if you catch the disease 1/3"
The laws of thermodynamics are really only up for dispute in the most abstract sense. The germ theory of disease has definitely won out. Plate tectonics is solid. The big bang has blown away competing theories.
So yeah, there is settled science.
Do not hammer a nail into your head.
Do not hammer a nail into your head.
Do not hammer a nail into your head.
And so on and so forth.
Gets popcorn.
Or we should all not vaccinate to avoid the 1 in 10 000 bad vaccine vial. Really?
Indeed, we should teach kids critical thinking instead of filling their heads with fairytales.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
Back when the Web was created it was thought to bring on a new age of enlightenment.
The creators of the Web and Internet were highly educated and enlightened individuals, who suffered from a confirmation bias, since most of their immediate peers shared their level of sophistication.
A first reality check came when the AOL and Compuserve crowds invaded the Web.
Now we have a full on self re-enforced vicious circle as the ignorance feeds on itself in an ever more connected world.
Unfortunately, ignorant and uneducated people are far more numerous, not even trained in the most basic skills of discerning the truthfulness of information.
Inevitably scientific facts will be drowned out.
I'm OK with fairy tales... so long as their adult authority figures present them as stories and not fact.
As I told my kids, "Santa's a fun story, enjoy it. Play along and you also get extra presents under the tree".
Associate anti-vaxxers with pedophilia.
This seems to have become a pseudo-religious issue, which is absurd in a free-country.
For the record, I vaccinate the hell out of my family -- cats and dogs and birds included. My puppy drinks from every puddle in the dog park, which is value in-and-of itself.
But I would never say that anyone, myself included, should be forced to take a given vaccine!
Think about it. As Slashdot readers, how many science fiction (and non-fiction, and actual history) have we read about faulty vaccines (or propaganda or security patches, or feature updates) pushed to unwitting masses only to create more peril and doom?
There's got to be a line drawn between "educating and encouraging" and "obligating and forcing". I think that line-of-invasion is quite correctly drawn at the skin. Invasive is invasive, mind body and spirit.
A parent's simply got to be able to make their own educated decision about whether or not their children should be subjected to something. That freedom, as an adult and as a parent, is paramount to freedom.
Of course we're talking here about a population that includes dumb adults and irresponsibly parents. But hasn't that always been the price of freedom? Simply put: that everyone gets that freedom?
How long until there's a vaccine that you think is unsafe? Would you want to be forced to take it? To give it to your children? Would you want to explain to them why you're giving them something that you think is terrible? And what about the vaccine that's 99% safe, and seriously injures the other 1%? Would you want someone else to draw that line for you?
In this case, we're definitely fighting against stupid people. 100% Agreed. But they are actually the ones fighting for our future right to be smarter-than-the-system.
Some still are directly associated with developmental disorders such as autism
It's not always about the celebrities. Just look at the food guides that have been issued by many governments over the past 50 years. They are highly affected by lobbying of the food industry. This was much worse in the past relative to today, but I remember being floored when I learned that it wasn't 100% based on nutritional science.
Anti-vax = Pro disease. End of fucking story.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
The only difference to the Global Cooling hype and the current Global Warming hype is one has the internet to spread it rapidly, the other did not.
And yes, there was a big deal about global cooling, hence the sci-fi books in the late 70's and early 80's about global cooling.
Critical thinking involves looking for the best information and making your own decisions based on it. Giving up one trust chain and randomly adopting another isn't critical thinking.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I agree Al Gore being spokesperson politicized it further, but Republicans supporting it is completely rewriting history . Republicans have been vehemently opposed for decades.
In a news magzine. Not a science magazine, much less peer-reviewed journals.
So, FUD & bullshit. Just like I said the first time.