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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

I've never seen any data presented at all except for the autism thing, and in that case the data is not real.

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.

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"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

> For example investigations still continue into mercury and autism.

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.

Actually if you had followed the link, there are over 165 other studies asserting issues with mercury in vaccines.

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.

You linked a crap paper published in some open access journal. It was written by anti-vaxers with little or no research credentials.

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.

Then great, this is the proper next step, I wasn't positioning it as a document of truth, but an example of what 'appears' to be credible. Invite discussion. I wouldn't reply that "you cited a crap paper". How about "that's interesting; however, I see there may be concerns with its validity as pointed out by..."

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.

Dude. Cherry picking data renders any discussion of validity meaningless. It is crime against science. It's means your study is worth less than paper it is written on and that your reputation is essentially right next to earth's molten core.

Countless studies are flawed. There is even the study that suggests as many as 50% of all studies are wrong, including those that are well designed. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7915-most-scientific-p...

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.

"Concerns with validity" gives it too much credit. It's crap. It's dismissible.

It is all a matter of whether you want to personally feel superior like you are crushing an argument to onlookers or do you want to make a difference in the world by engaging in a conversation in which people will more likely be receptive to learn.

Someone who brings that paper to a discussion isn't trying to engage, they're flogging a point of view.

Why do you assume that I'm assuming? I've looked into this a lot (I myself was an unvaccinated child and I've had plenty of exposure to this stuff) and these are the conclusions I've reached, not assumptions I've made.

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.

Yet I did. The link to pubmed.

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.

I didn't look at that link because you presented it as "investigations still continue" which is meaningless, considering that investigations still continue into things like general relativity and electromagnetism.

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 think you haven't looked closely. I know for a fact that the MMR vaccine itself comes with a warning (from the manufacturer!) that it may cause a reaction in some patients.

I doubt the manufacturer would place such a warning unless they had data to back it up.

You assume that any of the anti-vax arguments are based on the manufacturer's warning, which is not the case for anything I've seen.

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