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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
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.
Nice lie you got there. The science has been settled about a century ago. Unfortunately, the vaccine against stupidity still eludes us.
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.
What choice did the other kids have that your kids gave polio and measles to?
...repeated often enough becomes the truth - Joseph Goebbels. I could have saved them a bunch of time.
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.
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 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.
WTF? I got the flu like every other year in college. Then I got a job and they gave out flu shots every year for free, which got me in the habit. Haven't caught the flu since, including when I went back to grad school and congregated with those same disease bags. My conclusion is that flu vaccines work just fine.
The choice to be vaccinated.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
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
Fascinating.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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
You have no clue how Science works. Here is a hint: It is pretty easy to "buy" something that is actually true, but almost impossible to buy an obvious lie in Science. Of course, in public opinion, things are a bit different.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I haven't personally verified relativity myself, but my GPS still works. Just like vaccination, it's been repeatedly tested and proved over decades by scientists and statisticians from countries all over the world, and peer-reviewed papers for each of these experiments are freely available to those who care to look.
I'd cite you some links, but that'd probably just strengthen your belief in the myth.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
You seem to be unable to understand anything but black and white statements. Flu vaccines have a probability of working that is pretty good compared to what they prevent and what they have in residual risk.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
No, most of us rely on professional scientists to do studies and perform experiments. That's why we have more confidence in the results, rather than listening to theory and speculation from amateurs. It's no different than how we rely on professional engineers to build our bridges and skyscrapers, rather than try to build them ourselves.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Science is never settled.
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.
"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.
Yes. And they work as advertised, which is: not perfectly on every individual, so the whole society needs the herd immunity. Which anti-vaccers are endangering, in fact they outright destroyed it in some areas of Europe (for measles, at least). So, we have to thank the anti-vaccers in Europe for killing children and endangering everyone to prove a point that did not need any more proof in the first place.
Heck, you don't even need to be a scientist, you only need to go into areas where people who did not get vaccinated from endemic diseases are getting ill all the time, and you and your family, who did get vaccinated (and got bitten by the !@#$!@#$ mosquitoes just the same), don't get ill.
Jeez, even the optional H1N1 vaccines, which are in the very end of "low effectiveness" -- you often end up getting slightly ill, instead of seriously/dangerously ill -- can be easily seen working when you have a major outbreak, like we had in Brazil two years ago. More than 8000 people *DEAD* among the non-vaccinated, less than 100 among the vaccinated, plus a very sharp decline on hospitalizations (and deaths) two weeks after the massive vaccination campaigns *AND* no outbreak on the next year (the government started vaccinating people two months in advance, there was some spillover from the previous year, and much much more people got vaccinated).
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.
Nice lie you got there. The science has been settled about a century ago.
Thimerosol wasn't used in vaccines 100 years ago, so your claim is impossible.
To be clear I know that there is abundant evidence that Thimerosol, in the quantities used in vaccines, at least, does not cause autism or any other problem, and that even though vaccines aren't risk free, not vaccinating is vastly more risky. But to say that all possible concerns about modern vaccines were laid to rest 100 years ago is ridiculous. 100 years ago, we still thought smoking tobacco was fine, if not actually *good* for you.
It would not be shocking to learn of newly-identified problems with vaccines, particularly in newer formulations. Though it would be shocking indeed to learn of problems worse than polio, measles, mumps, rubella, etc. because we know that without vaccines those will kill and maim large numbers of people every year.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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.
"The science has been settled" says the scientism expert. Did you do the experiments yourself?
Here's a simple study you can do: For each of the childhood diseases we vaccinate for routinely, examine the history of outbreaks. Compute the average number of deaths and maimings for each. Then, check current statistics. Use the data to test your hypothesis (whatever it might be) about the benefits of vaccination.
Report your findings to the class.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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.
Yes but you could build a bridge across a stream in your yard if you needed to. There are countless books and resources describing exactly how to do that. If you wanted to launch a satellite? You'd have to go through gatekeeper NASA; you can't get there yourself. And I realize I'm in the minority on this site, which itself is dwindling to the minority in terms of activity.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Okay, sure: polio was dwindling when they released the polio vaccine which had the simian virus attached. They knew it, and decided to release it anyway. Now we have a soft-tissue cancer epidemic. See Dr. Mary's Monkey: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L...
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
You have no clue how scientism works these days, apparently. What about those Monsanto-purchased reports that say the mice don't have tumors, the day before they start developing them?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
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.
Why? Seriously! If you think the default government-obedient citizens are vaccinating -- then only the non-complliant children will be infected, and will infect other non-compliant children.
If you don't think vaccines work, then you'll agree that non-vaccinated children might infect vaccinated children. Which means, where'd your fucking argument go, if you don't think vaccines work!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
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.
For your second paragraph, look into the history of the US Vaccine Court. Kangaroo-court indeed.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
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
Second, "flu like symptoms" is far FAR from having the flu itself. People tend to forget just how horribly having a bad flu can affect them. You can still go to work, take care of the kids and so on with "flu like symptoms", but it is quite common for the actual flu to leave you bedridden for days. Even with routine flu infections, there is a risk of death. And the nature of the flu virus is such that we can never wholly predict when the next pandemic killer flu will appear. Remember that H1N1 has been fingered as the killer behind the "Spanish Flu", a disease that, in two years killed more people world wide than the entirety of WW1. Something close to 20% of people who contracted the disease DIED. With the vaccines we have now, mortality rate is something like 0.01% We've gone to entire families dying, to a percentage smaller than a rounding error. I'd say that very VERY effectively demonstrates the effectiveness of flu vaccines don't you?
And while I'm at it, let me say that "flu like symptoms" are not contagious, but the flu certainly is. You can contract and pass along the flu for a day or so before you even have a hint that you're sick, and you can remain contagious for up to 10 days after first noticing symptoms. Being vaccinated reduces that window of contagion a great deal, making everyone else safer as well. (that is the bigger part of the herd immunity effect. The other part is that, with far fewer hosts to replicate in, the opportunities for the virus to mutate into something more virulent are drastically reduced.)
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
Well, they've been batting a thousand for the past ten years in my experience, and I'm paying for it anyway since it's free with my insurance, so...Imma keep on getting it.
It would not be shocking to learn of newly-identified problems with vaccines, particularly in newer formulations. Though it would be shocking indeed to learn of problems worse than polio, measles, mumps, rubella, etc. because we know that without vaccines those will kill and maim large numbers of people every year.
The problem is that it's a kind of tragedy of the commons, it's pretty hard to create anything without any side effects to anyone. People can die from anaphylactic shock after a bee sting. So if everyone else around you are immunized you have a rather massive herd immunity which makes it unlikely that you will be infected. If you're the only anti-vaxxer you'll do great, you avoid the possible side effects and in all likelihood the disease itself. If a lot of people start believing it the herd immunity is gone and you'll have an epidemic. A parallel would be the military and pacifists, if people were coming to kill you would you really let them? Or did you just take the moral high ground knowing there's a lot of non-pacifists who'll get their hands dirty for you fighting for your freedom while you're way behind the battle lines? The troll in me wants to place them at the front lines, you can shoot or be shot. Then we'd see how many are truly pacifists when they can't hide behind others.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So you actually believe only Science that you have verified yourself? That is pretty stupid. Because it means you basically cannot belief anything scientific. Even only verifying basic math and very basic physics takes a lifetime. I take it you also verify every CPU down to the transistor-level before you use it? Oh, wait, you will have to verify transistors first. Pretty tricky and expensive for the ones used today.
The actually scientific approach is to build up a good body of basic knowledge, verify a random election of it, and then do plausibility checking on the statements scientists in the relevant fields make about things. Incidentally, scientists do lie and they do fake experiments. Reviewing papers has taught me that. But in the harder sciences, it is pretty hard to get away with this in the harder sciences and make it a scientifically accepted fact. It is relatively easy in areas that few scientists care about and that have little impact on the rest of the scientific field. These lies usually only get discovered when somebody tries to build on the claims and finds out they do not actually hold up.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
'd rather air (sic) on the side of caution. When my children are adults they can decide for themselves if they want to take that poison.
Please do so. Hopefully they will die from one of the childhood diseases that vaccines can prevent, and end the spread of your genes.
Now as for the article stating:
What seems to have happened was that the pro-vax campaign was taken by anti-vaxers as just another attempt to lie to them.
Paranoid personality disorder is almost impossible to treat, because (1) paranoid people take anything, even coincidences, as evidence that someone is out to get them in one way or another, and (2) they believe their paranoid delusions are validation of their inner self, and any attempt to point out the contrary is just more proof that their paranoia is justified.
It doesn't have to make sense, because we're dealing with people showing signs that in any other situation would be seen as a break with reality, but because of "we must give equal weight to all opinions, even the totally batshit crazy ones," you're evil if you try to do so in this case, again reinforcing their delusions.
Can anyone who isn't an anti-vaxxer deny these people are showing signs of mental illness?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
This is a long-term thing. In the short-term Science can and has been be manipulated. As I said, you are clueless.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You most certainly can do experiments yourself to prove that vaccinations work (the current topic). The same primitive techniques that Louis Pasteur used didn't die with him.
Given your ignorance of stuff you should have learned in high school but didn't, perhaps it's a good thing that you're in the minority.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
And who says that "erring on the side of caution" means *not* vaccinating them? For that to be true would mean that the risk of vaccination is greater than the risk of contracting the disease the vaccination protects from. Since the risk of vaccination is statistially very well known and *very* small, erring on the side of caution means going with the vaccination "just in case".
It would not be shocking to learn of newly-identified problems with vaccines, particularly in newer formulations. Though it would be shocking indeed to learn of problems worse than polio, measles, mumps, rubella, etc. because we know that without vaccines those will kill and maim large numbers of people every year.
And that is just my point. It requires a really huge problem with a vaccine in order for it to be worse than what it cures. That means the main risk-management part of the science has been settled long ago. And it is the risk-management angle the anti-vaxxers are attacking. (Without understanding it...) Details may evolve, but they are, you know, details.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Computers are based on logic. Have you performed experiments with OR, AND, XOR gates yourself?
Obviously the only logic they're familiar with is NOP :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Actually no, not all of them might have had that choice available depending on their condition. This is the reason herd protection is so important and the reason *everyone* able to get vaccinated should do so: to protect those who cannot on top of themselves and their family and friends.
So, would I want to be one of 8000+ dead, unvaccinated, or one of the 100 dead vaccinated.
I would rather take the latter odds.
Nothing in life is 100% guaranteed. Mitigating risk by taking vaccines helps by mitigating the risk to any given individual. It doesn't nullify it.
I would personally accept the risk of being the unfortunate 1 in a million, who die because the vaccine was not effective on my specific physiology.
Oh well, I tried. No way to cure stupid. Incidentally, there are statistics in large companies where they can demonstrate reduced sick-days when they started giving free flu-shots to people, but those would not convince you either, so I will not bother looking them up.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Fucking moron. No vaccine is 100% effective. Nobody claimed it was, so you're just another straw man with a head full of straw instead of brains.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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?
If 100 of the vaccinated died because of an outbreak of something they were supposed to be vaccinated against -- does this really support your argument that vaccination protects?
Sure: not providing 100% protection doesn't mean not providing protection at all. Claiming the opposite would be ridiculous and we all don't apply such a standard in other cases, so why applying it to vaccines?
As example, using seat belts definitely do *not* save 100% of those who have a car accident, but we consider them an effective protection still.
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.
I'll see your single article and your claim that there are no studies on how effective the flu vaccine is and raise you SEVENTY NINE THOUSAND FUCKING EXAMPLES of scholarly studies on flu vaccines found with a 12 second Google search. Read that again you muppet, seventy nine thousand studies by educated and trained researchers who have done studies and have put them out for peer review, granting other experts an opportunity to poke holes in their findings, results and conclusions if at all possible. Every type of flu vaccination, every possible combination of flu vaccine and patient, ranging from pediatric to geriatric, including workplace, school and pregnancy situations.
Your entire article, clearly so well researched and thoughtfully written is entirely based on "viewing with alarm" one line of warning text in the insert from one single example of flu vaccine. IT DOESN'T SAY THERE ARE NO STUDIES ON FLU VACCINE EFFECTIVENESS, IT SAYS THERE HAVE BEEN NO CONTROLLED STUDIES SPECIFICALLY WITH FLULAVAL And that is largely because all of the individual ingredients in the formulation HAVE been tested and been found to be safe in these kinds of applications. Then there is the fact that you can't really test vaccine for flu A until flu A hits your area and makes a whole lot of people sick and kills a few. What researchers do instead is infer results to some degree. E.G. previous vaccines A, B and C have been tried, we now know how well they worked in the real world, so based on that, we can come up with next years vaccine based on those findings.
The only part of warning insert that is actually a semi-legitimate concern is the use of thiomersal as a preservative agent. Yes, Thiomersal contains mercury, albeit in truly minuscule amounts. The scientific consensus seems to be that, since it is such a tiny amount and NOT in the form of elemental mercury, it is safe to use it in vaccinations. (certainly the amounts of mercury in a vaccine are infinitesimal compared to what was routinely used in dental amalgam for fillings.)
That said, if you want to play it safe, there ARE non-thiomersal formulations available.
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
the flu vaccine is filled with mercury and asbestos isotopes
PLUTONIUM! You forgot plutonium. And little spy cams that migrate to your eyeballs so they can see what you see. And each dose has a different RFID tag that's injected into you that can be tracked by satellite. Must remember the satellites!
For what it's worth paranoia strikes deep, into your life it will creep, it starts when you're always afraid, step out of line the man will come and take you away.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
You mean, the science has been *bought* by big pharma a long time ago.
You don't need much science to accept the validity of vaccination: everyone knows that once you get measles you become immune to it, assuming your immune system is functional and you survive it. There is no way to accept that and discredit vaccination since they operate on exactly the same principle.
And what's so bad about that again? :-) Except that now you have one more person telling you to put the damn seat down when you're finished!
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Have 40+ controlled trials demonstrating reduction of flu intensity after vaccination:
Bridges CB, Thompson WW, Meltzer MI, Reeve GR, Talamonti WJ, Cox NJ, Lilac HA, Hall H, Klimov A, Fukuda K. Effectiveness and cost-benefit of influenza vaccination of healthy working adults: A randomized controlled trial. JAMA. 2000;284(13):1655-63.
Govaert TM, Thijs CT, Masurel N, Sprenger MJ, Dinant GJ, Knottnerus JA. The efficacy of influenza vaccination in elderly individuals. A randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial. JAMA. 1994;272(21):1661-5.
Darvishian M, Bijlsma MJ, Hak E, van den Heuvel ER. Effectiveness of seasonal influenza vaccine in community-dwelling elderly people: a meta-analysis of test-negative design case-control studies. Lancet Infect Dis 2014; 14(12): 1228-39.
DiazGranados CA, Dunning AJ, Kimmel M, Kirby D, Treanor J, Collins A, Pollak R, Christoff J, Earl J, Landolfi V, Martin E, Gurunathan S, Nathan R, Greenberg DP, Tornieporth NG, Decker MD, Talbot HK. Efficacy of high-dose versus standard-dose influenza vaccine in older adults. N Engl J Med. 2014;371:635-45.
Talbot HK, Griffin MR, Chen Q, Zhu Y, Williams JV, Edwards, KM. Effectiveness of seasonal vaccine in preventing confirmed influenza-associated hospitalization in community dwelling older adults. J Infect Dis 2011; 203: 500–8.
Chen Q, Griffin MR, Nian H, Zhu Y, Williams JV, Edwards, KM, Talbot HK. Influenza vaccine prevents medically attended influenza-associated acute respiratory illness in adults aged 50 years. J Infect Dis 2015; 211: 1045–50.
Ohmit SE, Victor JC, Rotthoff JR, et al. Prevention of antigenically drifted influenza by inactivated and live attenuated vaccines. N Engl J Med 2006; 355(24): 2513-22.
Ohmit SE, Victor JC, Teich ER, et al. Prevention of symptomatic seasonal influenza in 2005-2006 by inactivated and live attenuated vaccines. J Infect Dis 2008; 198(3): 312-7.
Jackson LA, Gaglani MJ, Keyserling HL, et al. Safety, efficacy, and immunogenicity of an inactivated influenza vaccine in healthy adults: a randomized, placebo-controlled trial over two influenza seasons. BMC Infect Dis 2010; 10: 71.
Beran J, Wertzova V, Honegr K, et al. Challenge of conducting a placebo-controlled randomized efficacy study for influenza vaccine in a season with low attack rate and a mismatched vaccine B strain: a concrete example. BMC Infect Dis 2009; 9
Beran J, Vesikari T, Wertzova V, et al. Efficacy of inactivated split-virus influenza vaccine against culture-confirmed influenza in healthy adults: a prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled trial. J Infect Dis 2009; 200(12): 1861-9.
Monto AS, Ohmit SE, Petrie JG, et al. Comparative efficacy of inactivated and live attenuated influenza vaccines. N Engl J Med 2009; 361(13): 1260-7.
Madhi SA, Maskew M, Koen A, Kuwanda L, Besselaar TG, Naidoo D, Cohen C, Valette M, Cutland CL, Sanne I. Trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine in African adults infected with human immunodeficient virus: double blind, randomized clinical trial of efficacy, immunogenicity, and safety. Clin Infect Dis 2011; 52(1): 128-37.
Osterholm MT, Kelley NS, Sommer A, et al. Efficacy and effectiveness of influenza vaccines: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Lancet ID 2011(12): 36-44.
Frey S, Vesikari T, Szymczakiewicz-Multanowska A, et al. Clinical efficacy of cell culture-derived and egg-derived inactivated subunit influenza vaccines in healthy adults. Clin Infect Dis 2010; 51(9): 997-1004.
Treanor JJ, El Sahly H, King J, et al. Protective efficacy of a trivalent recombinant hemagglutinin protein vaccine (FluBl
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.
Science is never settled. Science is corrupted by politics and money. Science leaves out important caveats. Conclusion -- science is no more trustworthy than your taxi driver or janitor. Make up your own mind when it comes to your health and well being.
If science is trying to bully people to get a point across, then obviously they haven't made a strong enough case. Try for full disclosure instead of lies. Many vaccines are only partially or slightly effective. The UNSPOKEN hope is herd immunity. When you leave out this important information, you are committing a fraud and this perpetuates the myths.
I will NEVER TRUST a pharmaceutical company, politician or news reporter. Once you lie, trust is nearly impossible to get back.
You may most certainly launch a satellite. It just requires a lot more knowledge than building a bridge in your yard.
Keep in mind that the Engineers (launching a Satellite is not an experiment, so it is not Science) at NASA are not born there, NASA hires them. That means they have to be qualified, and to be qualified, they'll have to have learned enough to launch a satellite before applying.
There is nothing beyond a lot of learning and work that separates these other people from you. If you don't know how to do it, you just need to spend some more time in a quality library (big University, not public reading library) where they have books that push the boundaries of learning. My Alma Mater's library is open to the public, come on over.
Of course, if you had someone who could explain a little of it to you at a time, you might pick it up faster; but, in theory you could learn it all independently. That's how the original rocket makers did it.
And no, you are not a minority on this site. You are in the majority. Over half of the population comes up with ideas that are below average, and even the average person would know that if NASA held all the secrets of rocket flight, SpaceX wouldn't exist, nor would the first rockets; because, the first rockets were launched by Germany.
The mechanics behind immunization are equally as clear, but continue to think you're being persecuted while you are actually persecuting your children. Have you seen a polio child? Go google it and do an image search. Measles? Go google it and do an image search. Mumps, Rubella, Diptheria, Pertussis, Tetnus, Hepatitus B, HPV, Rotovirus? Go google them. These are diseases that you can easily avoid by vaccination.
If you think vaccination is bunk, keep in mind it was created by the same man that Pastuerized your milk, which used to spoil each day beforehand. He reduced the mortality of Peripural Fever (an infection at childbirth), he was one of the 3 people responsible for discovering microorganisims, proved germ theory to be correct, found the relatinship between molecular chemistry and crystal assemetry, as well as discovering and describing the chemical basis for racemic structures. He disproved the concept of spontaneous generation of life, and our debt to him is huge.
But hey, if you're not going to vaccinate, then don't be a bigot! Stop washing those hands, stop buying milk from the store (and the things made from it), get a doctor that doesn't wash his hands to deliver your child, and avoid most forms of medicine. Be true to your ideas, or we will laugh at you for being "true" to anti-vaccination but then crying foul when your get a doctor who doesn't prescribe to the basics of germ theory.
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.
So-called settled science is rocked by new discoveries LITERALLY ALL THE TIME.
Just a few short years ago, astronomers thought they knew everything. Big bang from a point source, expansion, stop and maybe contraction.
Now it's completely different. Big bang happened everywhere at once. Accelerating expansion. Missing 90% of matter. Unknown *fudge factor* dark matter/energy. Might as well call this ether, as poorly as it's understood.
Much of science is really just zealotry or religion in it's ability to tolerate dissent.
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
HAHAHA "trumpsweapon". Griffen also has "obamasweapon" pointed to the same site. It's impossible to take anything you might say seriously when your a fan of someone like Todd Giffen, who out-crazies Alex Jones.
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...
Well said.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Same here. Statistical optimization is not perfect (you can still get hit, even with a low probability), but it is a whole lot better than the alternatives. Especially when you take into account that a lot of dangerous things are optimized this way, because that is the main approach to risk-management.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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?
Indeed. While vaccination is pretty much irreversible, getting maimed or killed by the things you typically vaccinate children again is also pretty much irreversible. And once they are sick, it is too late for vaccinations.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
No, it wasn't. Stop parroting memes based on FUD & bullshit.
yes it does support the argument. Vaccination is not perfect, no one ever claimed it to be. Vaccination has a very high success rate and does far less damage than the diseases it is protecting against and for it to be successful you need to ensure all those that can be vaccinated are. The Anti Vaxxers risk everyones lives by breaking down the herd immunity. I would be fine for them to do this if they were happy to go live on an isolated island somewhere. Most should be put in jail for change child abuse or attempted murder as that is really what they are doing.
When was the last time you jumped off a cliff or skyscraper to test the theory of gravity?
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?"
Ah, the "scientists were wrong before, therefore they could be wrong against vaccines now" wankery. Problem; the ideas about spontaneous generation et cetera were replaced by superior ideas backed up by research and testing. Not the hand waving bullllshit employed by anti-vaxxers.
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.
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/
We continue to call it the theory of gravity because we are always open to changes if new evidence is found. Hence, science is never settled.
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
For the record, I hate the phrase "the science is settled", because it's utter nonsense. Science is never settled - that refutes the nature of the scientific method itself, in which everything is subject to questioning. History is replete with "common scientific knowledge" being not just modified, but occasionally completely overturned. Cosmology is filled with such examples, many of which are in the past century. The discovery of plate tectonics is another example. To think modern science is beyond such reproach is the height of arrogance.
That being said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. To date, as far as I'm aware, the common research cited as evidence for the link between vaccinations and autism have been rather thoroughly debunked in the wider scientific and medical communities. In some cases, there were even some very damning conflicts of interest found with the original researchers and the topics of study. The typical defense? "Conspiracy theories", which of course are impossible to disprove.
Childhood diseases and widespread outbreaks were a very real, very tragic part of life not so many generations ago. I think part of the modern anti-vax movement works simply because the past few generations haven't had to deal with the result of NO vaccinations. Moreover, it taps into a common need of people to find something to blame for life's tragedies. No one wants to be told that sometimes, unfortunate things sometimes happen because of factors we simply don't yet understand. So, a convenient boogieman is invented. Powerlines cause cancer. Vaccinations cause autism. And so on...
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
...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
... asbestos isotopes
You have made an elementary mistake...
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.
Unfortunately they won't die because modern medicine is pretty good, they'll just get crippled and become a burden to society.
Throw in the word "homoeopathic" somewhere to grab some more holdouts.
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
At no fucking time was it ever considered known. "Theory" is right in the fucking name. It's a best guess model simplified for something hardcore complex that happened billions of years ago. There's tons of examples of debunked science based on new discoveries, but don't go acting like anyone ever thought The Big Bang was a solved mystery.
Don't worry about it, the phrase is really just a polite way to ask someone to stop lying. Science is a process as you say.
Go talk to your Grandad about polio.
My parents never learned how to swim because the public pools were closed in case they were a vector spreading the large number of polio cases in the area.
GP poster it looks like I put my comment in the wrong place and it was not aimed at you.
Many people think a flu vaccine with 23% effectiveness doesn't make a difference and why bother. The benefit of doing it only needs to be like 7% effective to have a noticeable impact. The "small" percentage of people that benefit are the high risk and compromised immune systems. Any percentage in less dead through preventable means is a good thing.
Consider that Wakefield, the guy who pushed the "Thimerosol causes autism" line, was running a scam and has a patent on a different preservative.
That puts it in a different category to your examples doesn't it?
Epidemiological studies.
I didn't die of measles but some kids my age did. My parents didn't get polio but a lot of kids their age did.
... asbestos isotopes
You have made an elementary mistake...
No problem, it's a silly con anyway.
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
Why is that? You can launch a satellite yourself. As far as I know, NASA can't actually launch one for you but there are several companies, from multiple countries, who can though. Or you could build yourself a rocket. Several amateur efforts have gotten rockets into space, and there is at least one effort going on now to get one into orbit.
If you want your own visual proof the planet is round you can get it with a high altitude weather balloon. High school students regularly launch those.
Nah you get more plutonium from chemtrails.
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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.
I see you are non-rational. Okay, there's no point in talking to you.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Okay, but that's not what you said.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Consider that Wakefield, the guy who pushed the "Thimerosol causes autism" line, was running a scam and has a patent on a different preservative. That puts it in a different category to your examples doesn't it?
Not really. Though it is unfortunate that he caused so much research effort to be invested in disproving his theory, rather than more productive purposes. And it's obviously very unfortunate that it fed the anti-vaxxer movement.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I would suggest that this seem so to you due to a problem on your side.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
..that you can't fix stupid.
You're probably just trolling, but it wouldn't be a bad thing if someone stabbed a needle through your eye and twirled it around a few hundred times.
You need several pounds of lead projected through your head and the head of everyone related to you (just to be sure).
Someone really needs to take an axe to your face, and the face of every one of your relatives. Leave you on the front lawn as an object lesson for what happens when you don't vaccinate.
It started the fucking anti-vaxxer movement. I'm not sure why you are commenting when you don't even know that much. With an ID that low I thought you'd be old enough to know about it from when it was news.
My daughter was vaxxinated, and now she runs OpenVMS.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
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.
So-called settled science is rocked by new discoveries LITERALLY ALL THE TIME.
It really isn't.
Just a few short years ago, astronomers thought they knew everything. Big bang from a point source, expansion, stop and maybe contraction.
Now it's completely different. Big bang happened everywhere at once. Accelerating expansion. Missing 90% of matter. Unknown *fudge factor* dark matter/energy.
1922 (when dark matter was first hypothesises) was not a few short years ago. If you spoke to actual scientists, and not mass media popular science reports (which have to be massively simplified), you would know that's simply not true.
Might as well call this ether, as poorly as it's understood.
No, the ether made actual predictions which turned out to not happen, so it was disproven. Plus you're taking something (dark matter) which physicists will readily admit as being poorly understood at best and using it as an example of settled science being overturned.
That's silly because dark matter has never been settled science.
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.
Thimerosol wasn't used in vaccines 100 years ago, so your claim is impossible.
Thimerosol still hasn't been invented. The product you're thinking of is called Thimerosal.
To be clear I know that there is abundant evidence that Thimerosol, in the quantities used in vaccines, at least, does not cause autism or any other problem, and that even though vaccines aren't risk free, not vaccinating is vastly more risky. But to say that all possible concerns about modern vaccines were laid to rest 100 years ago is ridiculous.
That is not the claim. The claim is that we knew 100 years ago that it was safer to vaccinate than to not vaccinate. This is not to say that we should not engage in risk reduction, but only that there is no logical basis for not vaccinating. Nothing in the statistics suggests it — quite the contrary.
It would not be shocking to learn of newly-identified problems with vaccines, particularly in newer formulations. Though it would be shocking indeed to learn of problems worse than polio, measles, mumps, rubella, etc. because we know that without vaccines those will kill and maim large numbers of people every year.
Which is why "should we research improvements in vaccines" is a question completely orthogonal to "should we vaccinate", at least at this point. If there were any evidence of vaccination being worse than not vaccinating, then we could go ahead and have one argument in the context of the other.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Vaccines don't always work, which is why herd immunity is critical. If you don't get exposed, it doesn't matter if the vaccine failed — but that still depends on it working for your neighbors, which in turn depends on them actually getting vaccinated.
You must understand this by now, you've been around long enough to have been exposed to this information, why didn't it take?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
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.
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.
If this were to be the anti-vaxers' motive, then why is there still an anti-vax movement in countries where medicine is socialized?
No new vaccines have been created since about a century ago? Formulas for old ones haven't been changed? Vaccines need to be evaluated for safety individually. And not holding vaccine manufacturers responsible for harm caused by their products like you would any other medicine is not condusive to making their safety evaluations foolproof.
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...
Paranoid personality disorder is almost impossible to treat, because (1) paranoid people take anything, even coincidences, as evidence that someone is out to get them in one way or another,
THIS ^^^^ times a billion. Any attempt to help them do or learn anything is immediately viewed as "trying to get over on them" or fool them so you can then take advantage of them.
It can be something as innocuous as showing them how to use the TV's remote control- that will be seen by them as a you trying to gain their confidence so you can (later) screw them over somehow.
My first wife was a genuine paranoid, and I can tell you from experience that interacting with a paranoid is a game you CANNOT win no matter what you do...because anything you do will be cast in the light of you trying to take advantage of them in one way or another.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
"The science has been settled" says the scientism expert. Did you do the experiments yourself?
Found the imbecilic doubter.
But since you asked, yes, I have done some of those experiments myself way back when I was in school, and they all proved out to be true.
Even better is the proof of their efficacy, as seen by the drop in the kinds of diseases that vaccines treat.
But that's just some whacky coincidence in your world, right? Maybe it's the chemtrails were actually responsible for the drop in diphtheria, polio, etc etc.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
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.
Okay, sure: polio was dwindling when they released the polio vaccine which had the simian virus attached.
No, polio was dwindling because of the chemtrails that NASA started spreading after they got the secret formula from Bigfoot and Marilyn Monroe (who were hiding out in Elvis' secret Martian Moonbase on Jupiter).
Get a brain, moran!!!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
What about those Monsanto-purchased reports that say the mice don't have tumors, the day before they start developing them?
Logically speaking, that's true: they had no tumors the day before they started developing them.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Though it is unfortunate that he caused so much research effort to be invested in disproving his theory, rather than more productive purposes
NO. His bullshit "studies" literally started the anti-vaccine movement. They didn't exist before he started his program of lies and disinformation.
He did it with malice aforethought to make money, and due to the prevalence of stupid fucking people it succeeded far beyond his wildest dreams.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
George Carlin
You have a point, but there are so many cases of people who refuse to take their kids to the hospital until it is far too late, instead depending on alternative medicine and prayer, that there's a good chance at least some will be removed from the gene pool.
They serve a useful function - a warning, like the Titanic.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Go for emotion:
This year, X children died from [preventable disease] (picture of a child in hospital, picture of people carrying a small coffin). If only they were vaccinated, they would still run round and play instead of laying dead. (interview with a crying parent who says he has killed his child by not vaccinating him). (interview with another crying parent who says that his child was unable to be vaccinated, contracted the disease from some intenionally-unvaccinated child and died).
Another way you could do this would be to compare anti-vaxxers with Nazis. Interview some anti-vaxxer who says that if his child is not immune to diseases, then he should die. Or someone who says that he would rather his child died than became autistic. And if his child is ever diagnosed with autism, then the parent will kill him to preserve the intellectual and racial purity.
People respond to emotion better than facts. Just like infrequent-but-big tragic events like plane crashes may make people consider aircraft to be less safe than cars, even though, if you reported every fatal car crash in every country (like they do with airplane crashes), you would need multiple channels to be doing that 24/7, just to keep up.
Our public schools are there to teach and to protect children. Children who do not have the basic vaccine for measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, mumps, polio, chicken pox, etc are not allowed to attend school. The protection of the entire class from a child whose parents don't believe in vaccinations raises that's child to be an infectious carrier of one of the mentioned illnesses.
We can protect our children, not we can't protect idiots.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
The problem could be in the future where vaccinations are being used for less harmful diseases and suddenly it turns out that the filler is worse then the disease. As a possible example, a vaccine against the common cold that turns out, long term, to have a 1% mortality rate.
All vaccines need to be tested to make sure that they work as advertised, namely reducing the mortality/crippling rate of a disease rather then people just hand waving and saying that all vaccines including those not yet invented are 100% safe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
That's weird, I could've sworn I got vaccinated this year and I haven't been a child in decades. Not that I am pregnant but there's no reason a pregnant woman couldn't get vaccinated.
Granted, this isn't the link people usually think of (if they think at all) when talking about the link between vaccination and autism.
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"
That is not the claim. The claim is that we knew 100 years ago that it was safer to vaccinate than to not vaccinate.
Sure, 100 years ago you were vaccinating against smallpox, the ultimate low-hanging-fruit for vaccination. Vaccinating against smallpox now would surely be less safe than not vaccinating! And that is the issue, since vaccines actually aren't completely free of side effects you should not vaccinate for every possible disease against which a vaccine exists, only the ones that you are at a high enough risk of actually getting to offset the real but not very high risk of side effects. Implying this is not the case is so obviously wrong that it only adds fuel to the anti-vaxxers' flames, so please stop doing it.
Or we should all not vaccinate to avoid the 1 in 10 000 bad vaccine vial. Really?
since vaccines actually aren't completely free of side effects you should not vaccinate for every possible disease against which a vaccine exists, only the ones that you are at a high enough risk of actually getting to offset the real but not very high risk of side effects.
Very high? Citation needed. It only has to be infinitesimally riskier to not take the vaccine before you should be vaccinated.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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".
It started the fucking anti-vaxxer movement.
No, it didn't. There were anti-vaxxers before that.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
That is not the claim.
It was the claim, go back and read it.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
His bullshit "studies" literally started the anti-vaccine movement.
You're wrong. HIs BS massively increased it, but there were anti-vaxxers before.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Not taking the other side seriously will just make them respond in kind. Thinking and acting like this is why anti-anti-vaxxers have no impact.
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.
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
However, we have some scientific conclusions that we haven't changed in forever. Obviously, if things started falling up, we'd take another look at gravity (a short one, of course, since we'd all be dead within minutes).
We know some things to an extremely high confidence level, and these things are almost never changed. We believe other things with a low confidence level, and they change frequently.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
At least in the First World, we don't need thimerosal, and we generally removed it from our vaccines. This didn't stop the anti-vaxxers.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
To throw another anecdote on the pile, for decades now, every year I've gotten the flu shot xor the flu.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I've certainly never heard of them. Citation please.
In a news magzine. Not a science magazine, much less peer-reviewed journals.
So, FUD & bullshit. Just like I said the first time.
You appear to have skipped over the word "not" in "not very high".