Reading the article, the community backed off from vaccination following two kids having a bad reaction to an MMR vaccine.
It wasn't "personal choice" or "religious exception." They had a bad experience and were scared away.
It wasn't "personal choice" or "religious exception." They had a bad experience and were scared away.
There is no shortage of educated doctors, former employees of drug companies, and data from CDC etc that is used for the anti vax argument. To convince someone of a point, one needs to not start from the position the other person has any of these stereotype labels. You need to start from educating yourself of their opposing argument and realize it is supported by real data. Then the discussion becomes more appropriate around the validity of data, its interpretation etc.
1. They cause autism.
2. They contain nasty, toxic chemicals.
3. They are unnecessary.
4. They are unsafe (in some unspecified way) and are just pushed for profit by big pharma.
The only one that comes even close to being supported by data is #1, and that's completely fake data.
I mean, most people just don't take time to post all the evidence they have acquired in short posts.
You post all of these are false, yet you post no data either. I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm just pointing out that if you are reading blogs and message posts they don't often come with evidence.
One of the key criteria for effective debating is to first attempt to convince yourself of the opponents argument by researching it from their perspective. Actually seek out the evidence to prove their point. What you will often discover if you have never done this is that reality often lies somewhere in between where you started and where they are. But by being able to have dialog from a mutual understanding of concerns you as well as your debater can likely reach a greater understanding of truth wherever it may lie.
Bottom line, if you can appear more knowledgeable of their perspective, they are more likely to listen to what you have to say.
You're right that most people won't post data regardless. The difference is that you won't find it even if you go looking for it. For example, the "chemicals" argument is rooted in magical thinking, not data. It goes something like, vaccines contain chemical X, X is used for nasty purpose Y, therefore X is bad in all circumstances and you'd be mad to put it in your children.
The fundamental problem is that people don't know how to think. They don't know how to differentiate between "this vaccine contains small amounts of aluminum which is harmless for the following reasons" and "this vaccine contains aluminum, which is known to cause dementia and Alzheimer's disease."
Maybe I do need to appear more knowledgeable of their views to be convincing. But I can't "realize it is supported by real data" when it clearly is not.
But this is somewhat my point. When you say "clearly is not", have you really tried to find it? or assume it is not there. You acknowledge you have seen some data such as the toxic ingredients. So in this case you could have a discussion around the interpretation of the data etc.
My point is that we shouldn't assume the other side are always ignorant, uneducated or just following Jenny McCarthy etc. You will find plenty of doctors, neurosurgeons etc that also have issues with vaccines. Dr. Wakefield became famous for the autism issue; however, you should be aware that since then there are many educated doctors that find some issue with vaccines. Of course being a doctor doesn’t make you automatically correct, it is just once again being aware that the person you are debating may have what appears to be credible information.
It would be best to ask where the person is coming from in a non hostile way. Just ask, so what have you discovered and what led you to your decisions for example. That is friendly and opens up conversation. From then you can discern if this person made decisions based on credible sources ( but maybe not accurate ) or they have not actually educated themselves.
When I say credible sources, I mean to say at least they are referencing other doctors, scientists, studies vs some blog. Credible in this instance doesn't necessarily mean correct or wrong, but acknowledging they did their research will allow conversation to continue. Then you can share counter research etc as conversation progresses.
Just be aware, within the scientific community, these topic still are being researched and it is not as if they are completely closed. For example investigations still continue into mercury and autism. Being aware of such is always a plus when having such discussions as you will appear to at least know something about where they are coming from. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24995277
So? There are further investigations into whether climate change is real and man made, when the overwhelming evidence point to - yes and yes.
It's same with this thing. One douchebag claims Vaccines caused autism, twenty three works then disprove his claims.
If you go to sciencedaily you can find plenty of studies that raise many questions about the nature of climate change.
An intellectual debate requires one to not simply dismiss the other side outright. If your goal is to piss people off and to have your base cheer on, then by all means go ahead. If you want someone to listen to you and your goal is to educate, then you will not get very far with your approach.
http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/antiv...
In addition to impugning the credibility of the authors (which maybe we can wave our hands in the air and say isn't fair), that blag says silly things like this:
For example, for the Verstraeten study, the Geiers reference an article that is more of a summary, and complain that it shows no data. In fact, the real Verstraeten study, published in Pediatrics, included all of the data. The Geiers absolutely cherry-picked a short summary of the Verstraeten study rather than examining the fully published article.
It takes time to investigate everything, and one shouldn't just stop when they find the answer they like. You need to always dig deeper for the rebuttals of both sides of an argument.
Its quite easy to recognize, just see who funded the study and you see a trend of results supporting the funder.
Almost nobody takes the time to investigate a study. You are assuming the person knows the study is flawed to begin with.
How do you know the critique of a study is accurate? The critique deserves as much scrutiny as the original until it can be verified. Otherwise it would be cherry picking data to simply stop when we find an answer that fits our beliefs without doing the same investigation of its statements and sources.
You think I haven't asked people where they're coming from in a non-hostile way? I've had tons of non-hostile conversations about this stuff.
If you want to present some data for that side, then I'd be happy to see it. Otherwise, stop insisting that it must somehow be there, because as far as I can tell it's not, and I'm not just assuming this is the case.
I mean I'm not here to try to convince you of their argument. However, the 1 pubmed article I referenced mentioned there are over 165 studies supporting issues with mercury in vaccines. Is this not interesting data? The researches behind the article seem to think so as their objective is to undercover why there are discrepancies with these results vs those that have said there are no issues.
I mean it takes time to follow all this stuff. Certainly more than I have, yet with a little effort it seems easy enough to see the source of information is not all coming from some personal blogs as I just pointed out.
In any case, you might recall that I said I'd never seen any data for these arguments except for the supposed autism link, which is based on fake data. Considering the tone of the paper I think it might be in that category. Maybe not. I'll hold off on spending time investigating until some anti-vaxxer actually mentions one as support for their ideas, because "X argues Y" and "there's data to support Y" does not imply "X argues Y because of data supporting it."
I doubt the manufacturer would place such a warning unless they had data to back it up.
Data? Yes. Usable? No.
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> What you will often discover if you have never done this is that reality often lies somewhere in between where you started and where they are. But by being able to have dialog from a mutual understanding of concerns you as well as your debater can likely reach a greater understanding of truth wherever it may lie.
People tried that, and there was no evidence. I mean autism caused by a vaccine... Suuuure. Only way if that happened if someone REALLY botched up the vaccine, as in forgot to make a vaccine and just put measles inside it. If that happened you'd be reading it on news channel by now.
I mean it causing autism is a perfect way for parents to remove guilt from themselves. It's not my genes - it's the vaccine. If I was a parent I'd be jumping on that particular train as well. Nothing so far corroborates any claims made by anti-vaccination groups.
I don't know if those terms are justified, but if they are then that's rather different from "two kids having a bad reaction to an MMR vaccine."
One thing we need to educate people about is that just because you get sick after getting a shot doesn't mean the shot caused you to get sick, and that even if it is, an occasional bad reaction is worth it if the rate is sufficiently low and the consequences sufficiently mild.