Vaccines and climtae change. Are scientists failing to communicate science properly.

steddyeddy

Court rulings are not scientific evidence and have no bearing on the scientific credibility of anything whatsoever.

Harry Palmr

wakka12 wrote: »

It just boggles my mind that grown adults will put their childs life at risk, theres no evidence to believe that vaccines do anything other than cure diseases, like literally none, so why is there even any sizeable group of people who believe this rumour for no apparent reason? just everything about anti vaxx is insane

What was particularly interesting about the MMR vaccine rate drop off was that it was most pronounced in post codes which had the highest incomes and level of education. The guardian/times reading middle classes thought they knew better than the NHS and the medical science establishment and that Wakefield was some sort of rogue hero for exposing a supposed truth - 'clever enough to know just enough to be quite wrong'

Special Circumstances

steddyeddy wrote: »

Court rulings are not scientific evidence and have no bearing on the scientific credibility of anything whatsoever.

To me it's scientifically incredible and statistically unlikely that any one vaccine/medicine is absolutely safe for everyone.

I'm perfectly happy with the less warm and fuzzy descriptions of vaccine risks.
Statistically likely that a miniscule number of people will suffer some something else coincidentally.
Statistically likely that a miniscule number of people will suffer an actual side effect.

If they just said "you'd be more likely to win the lotto every week for a year than suffer a side effect to established vaccines" it might work better than "it's absolutely safe, and even if it wasn't you can't prove it, shut up and take it"

RDM_83 again

steddyeddy wrote: »

But it's one thing to go from that, which seems to have empirical evidence behind it to the anti- MMR vaccine movement which has zero evidence behind it. It is quite right to say that the claims by Andrew Wakefield and some anti-vaxxers have no scientific basis.

Oh I completely agree with nozzferrahhtoo's point that we tend to be rationally irrational, my view is that we have to make sure the "logical/scientific" makes a much higher standard of statement/claim all the time because if we don't people will seize on the tiny amount of cases to disprove in their minds the entire field.

Also at times peoples skepticism of governmental statements on health issues is justified, I was a kid for the BSE/CJD stuff but its a good example of financial interests taking precedence over public health. I know CJD didn't turn into an epidemic but AFAIK thats only because we're more resistant to Prion diseases than previously thought there was legitimate fears of 100,000's of deaths considering the amount of infected carcasses that entered the food cycle.

Dohnjoe

Special Circumstances wrote: »

To me the "everyone should buy diesel to help combat climate change, diesel is clean" hype

What hype?

It's just known as slightly less polluting than petrol. And even that's up for debate now

The Backwards Man

Scientists are like soccer bores in the pub, you never see them scoring but they are always on hand to tell you why someone else didn't.

Special Circumstances

Dohnjoe wrote: »

What hype?

It's just known as slightly less polluting than petrol. And even that's up for debate now

:pac: :pac: I like it! Post factual world indeed!

Harry Palmr

The Backwards Man wrote: »

Scientists are like soccer bores in the pub, you never see them scoring but they are always on hand to tell you why someone else didn't.

Yeah, that's why we are living in caves with scurvy of course....science in our lives is like air - invisible and all around us.

GLaDOS

The Backwards Man wrote: »

Scientists are like soccer bores in the pub, you never see them scoring but they are always on hand to tell you why someone else didn't.

Einstein was notorious for his affairs, while Steven Hawking has married 3 times.

Scientists are filthy animals :pac:

andekwarhola

There's never been a time in history where information has been more freely available to people of all social classes and incomes.

The problem is that large swathes of the population are retarded.

ancapailldorcha

I think the problem is a combination of Homophilous sorting by which people customise their various feeds and information they're exposed to to information which suits their tastes as opposed to anything that might challenge their opinions and prejudices. The other factor is what Nobel prize-winning author Daniel Kahneman refers to as "Cognitive ease" whereby people accept whichever explanation is simplest. It's much easier to believe that in a lab somewhere is a syringe full of magic, side effect-free cancer cure than to learn about the complex, tightly regulated process by which cells divide and why targeting tumours is so difficult when one wishes to minimise side effects.

Podge_irl

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

Sure, they are bad at communicating their findings at times but they are also guilty of misusing them and deliberately misrepresenting them too and mostly for profit

I'm sure some of them are, because ultimately they are people after all and some of them will happily fudge science for money. This is the point of things like peer review but no system is infallible. And peer review doesn't really cover how you explain a scientific finding which leaves room for deliberately misrepresenting it.

However the vast majority of scientists who sensationalise or somewhat misrepresent their research do it because of the completely non-functional funding system we have in place where funding is based on immediate results and decided by non-scientists. If they don't discover a monetisable idea, or something that can somehow be spun that way, they will often find themselves with no means to do any research at all.

Science communication is flawed because it is being disseminated often by people who do not fully understand it. And those that do often struggle to describe it in ways that are comprehensible (and that is actually fine - as Feynman supposedly said "Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn't have been worth the Nobel prize."). But beyond that, we are in serious danger of having a flawed scientific system in general.

Kurtosis

steddyeddy wrote: »

Court rulings are not scientific evidence and have no bearing on the scientific credibility of anything whatsoever.

But the problem is most people are not able to critically appraise evidence or differentiate between reliable and unreliable sources. These are skills which take time and effort to learn/develop. I think we need to do a better job at educating people about the scientific method and research more generally, ideally starting in school.

Anita Blow

I think with the likes of antibiotic resistance it's a case of tragedy of the commons. People can generally see the broader dangers of overuse of antibiotics because there's various education campaigns and have been told by their GP at some point about its risks, but when it comes down to it they only care about their own situation. So they might know why it's important to finish a course of antibiotics but when they're actually on a course and start to feel better then continuing to take them feels like an inconvenience so they stop. Or they may know that antibiotics shouldn't be required for throat infections, but if they develop an infection then they feel they're an exception and really need it for XYZ. No amount of education is going to change that because it's a case of blissful ignorance.

nozzferrahhtoo

steddyeddy wrote: »

But it's one thing to go from that, which seems to have empirical evidence behind it to the anti- MMR vaccine movement which has zero evidence behind it.

It is a huge leap indeed, and a fallacious one. But it IS one people are prone to make. RDM_83 again does have a point. When people read a statement, that in 30 seconds they can show to be false, they start to doubt the rest of the message.

So yea I was PEDANTICALLY, if not statistically, incorrect to say that vaccines do not cause long term side effects. They likely do in a tiny MINORITY of cases. And I take the point we should be careful with our language there as if doubt can be called into the language I use, then doubt can be called into the entire message I would be using it to spread.

But it is an issue with our language, but that is a different topic, that we TALK in absolutely when we are CLOSE to that absolute. For example I might say, off the cuff, "There is no god" and someone might (rightly) call me on the fact I have no evidence for that. At which point I would have to go into nauseating length that I mean there is no evidence for a god, no reason to think there is one, and we have plenty of evidence that goes AGAINST the idea there is a god or after life.... even though we can not conclusively say there is not one.

And people are prone, sometimes genuinely and sometimes maliciously and contrived, to mis-read into absolute statements as suits their agenda and narrative.

Special Circumstances wrote: »

To me it's scientifically incredible and statistically unlikely that any one vaccine/medicine is absolutely safe for everyone.

Indeed, given that even the things we consider most conducive to life.... say water or sunlight..... are not "absolutely safe for everyone". If everything from Aquagenic urticaria to Photosensitivity show us that not even the basic units of life are not safe for "everyone".... then it would be ludicrous to expect artificial vaccinations would be either!

The Backwards Man wrote: »

Scientists are like soccer bores in the pub, you never see them scoring but they are always on hand to tell you why someone else didn't.

Yea because scientists never deliver anything, never show results, never advance our knowledge or technology.... and are just all round ineffectual in every way, right?

Maybe we should get a priest to pray over us instead or something, because mumbling on your knees.... now THAT shows results.

andekwarhola wrote: »

There's never been a time in history where information has been more freely available to people of all social classes and incomes. The problem is that large swathes of the population are retarded.

Disingenuous to say the least. The problem is not the mental failings of the masses, but the educational failings of our state. We get people in our education curriculum to learn details by rote. We never seem to teach them how to obtain, parse, interpret and process information.

Making information freely available is great. It is the wonder of our age and is the mecca of the intellectual.

But it is pointless and a lame horse in a race if we do not teach people what to do with that data. All the data in the world will do nothing for someone who does not know what to do with it.

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

I think the problem is a combination of Homophilous sorting by which people customise their various feeds and information they're exposed to to information which suits their tastes as opposed to anything that might challenge their opinions and prejudices.

Indeed, that is why I worship.... if I can be said to worship anything.... the art of discourse and debate. Because I enter into debate not to go "Look how right I think I am" but to say "please show me where I am wrong by challenging the robust defense of my preconceptions that I make".

Through debate with others we do the exact opposite of selecting "feeds" that conform to our already held biases.

penguin88 wrote: »

But the problem is most people are not able to critically appraise evidence or differentiate between reliable and unreliable sources.

Exactly and that is tragic because teaching at least the basics of this is not difficult. It should be a foundational corner stone of our early educational curriculum. There really is no reason why it should not be.

But we seem to prefer to teach people facts, rather than teach them how to find, parse, interpret, and process facts.

Elliott S

FURET wrote: »

The problem is that people are stupid.

There something more to it than this that I can't put my finger on because some anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers are evidently far from stupid. It's not stupidity but I don't know how to categorise it. I think to dismiss it as stupidity only means that we can't take high profile people in these movements on.

endacl

Everyone's an expert. An Internet full of information + a dollop of dunning-Kruger effect = https://pics.onsizzle.com/well-son-when-you-were-a-baby-the-internet-and-2582445.png

Sam Kade

Elliott S wrote: »

There something more to it than this that I can't put my finger on because some anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers are evidently far from stupid. It's not stupidity but I don't know how to categorise it. I think to dismiss it as stupidity only means that we can't take high profile people in these movements on.

Nobody denies climate change the climate is always changing.

Elliott S

Sam Kade wrote: »

Nobody denies climate change the climate is always changing.

That's weather you're thinking of. Many people deny the greater trend of climate change or rather than it is being hastened by manmade causes.

It is a good question, but it needs to asks why are individual attracted to the non scientific explanation in the first place.

Special Circumstances

Sam Kade wrote: »

Nobody denies climate change the climate is always changing.

Elliott S wrote: »

That's weather you're thinking of.

Climate IS always changing... it just depends on your window. Unless you're saying the ice ages and times between them were just a spot of weather.

Dohnjoe

Elliott S wrote: »

There something more to it than this that I can't put my finger on because some anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers are evidently far from stupid. It's not stupidity but I don't know how to categorise it. I think to dismiss it as stupidity only means that we can't take high profile people in these movements on.

It's when a strong belief trumps reason

We all have it to some extent. Some just have it more than others, regardless of intelligence

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Dohnjoe

mariaalice wrote: »

It is a good question, but it needs to asks why are individual attracted to the non scientific explanation in the first place.

Can be emotion based

e.g. I know an intelligent person who believes in the supernatural.. they are titillated by the notion, so they have reinforced the belief in themselves

They are more attracted to the belief than the logic against it. In these situations psychologists have shown that factual arguments against strongly held views/beliefs can actually have the adverse effect of making said belief stronger

Dohnjoe

Dohnjoe wrote: »

Can be emotion based

e.g. I know an intelligent person who believes in the supernatural.. they are titillated by the notion, so they have reinforced the belief in themselves

They are more attracted to the belief than the logic against it. In these situations psychologists have shown that factual arguments against strongly held views/beliefs can actually have the adverse effect of making said belief stronger

The anti vax lot I would just consider nutters especially in the US, what is interesting is how in the US anti vax is largely associate with the fear of government/the religious right, yet in europe it is associated with alternative living, alternative medicine, liberal thinking.

How has climate deniers become associated with the right in the US?

endacl

endacl wrote: »

Everyone's an expert. An Internet full of information + a dollop of dunning-Kruger effect = https://pics.onsizzle.com/well-son-when-you-were-a-baby-the-internet-and-2582445.png

Yes but why don't individual look at : The evidence based in all issues thy might be considering, for example if I went to a doctor for treatment I would ask what is the evidence for this treatment working, that does not take a huge amount of intelligence as an approach to an issue.

Crea

Regarding the vaccine issue, it's simplistic to say that people are ignoring the science and listening to quacks. Vaccine injury is a fact. GS have admitted that the Swine flu jab causes narcolepsy eventhough the people in this country who suggested a link at the time were derided. There is a list as long as your arm on the side effects of the HPV vaccine eventhough the list given by the HSE only lists 5 mild ones. There is no mention by the HSE that subsequent doses should absolutely not be given if the child has a reaction after the first and now we have REGRETs allegations being dismissed by the state without them doing a serious medical investigation.
I think that telling people that vaccines are completely harmless damages the scientists message as it's a lie. We can see this in the drug companies own literature. We know there are side effects so scientists need to point to independent large scale research to tell people how rare these actual cases are.

silverharp

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

based on a survey of my kids friends schools in Dublin at any rate are only doing a hour a week of religion...shhh! don't tell the inspector :pac:

Crea

Crea wrote: »

Regarding the vaccine issue, it's simplistic to say that people are ignoring the science and listening to quacks. Vaccine injury is a fact. GS have admitted that the Swine flu jab causes narcolepsy eventhough the people in this country who suggested a link at the time were derided. There is a list as long as your arm on the side effects of the HPV vaccine eventhough the list given by the HSE only lists 5 mild ones. There is no mention by the HSE that subsequent doses should absolutely not be given if the child has a reaction after the first and now we have REGRETs allegations being dismissed by the state without them doing a serious medical investigation.
I think that telling people that vaccines are completely harmless damages the scientists message as it's a lie. We can see this in the drug companies own literature. We know there are side effects so scientists need to point to independent large scale research to tell people how rare these actual cases are.

Every thing has side effects if I take an a pain killer it has a side effects, I take a risk when I get on a bus use the dart or drive my car everything in life involves some risks: In the case of vaccines the befits out weight the negatives by an enormous amount its as simple as that.

silverharp

As far as vaccines go, no issue with the standard ones, they have been out so long that very obvious side effects would be apparent. However when they rushed out the bird flu one for kids a few years back we opted out for our kids because it was rushed and as a few neighbours had the flu and didn't think much of it the balance of risks was in favour of not taking it. As it happened a good call given the narcolepsy cases it through up.

As for manmade C02 climate change , it lends itself to some scepticism as its a modeling exercise with a large open system which doesn't have the same exactness as one would see in the harder sciences, so you are kind of stuck with it I am afraid.