If the vaccine/autism controversy has taught us one thing, it's that once science messes up (in this case, the journal Lancet publishing the conclusions of a poorly conducted study) it is difficult to retract damning conclusions even when subsequent scientific inquiry shows the original science was completely bogus. Even as subsequent studies continue to show there is no link at all between vaccines and autism, and the study has been withdrawn from the journal in an unprecedented move, it continues to be extremely difficult to eradicate the belief among the public that there is some correlation.
I understand it becomes more difficult to make decisions about vaccines when science seems to be at odds with itself (especially when children impacted by a parent's decision), but it begins to make little rational sense to deny children vaccines when the negative study has been proven incorrect an EVERY OTHER study has shown there is no link between vaccines and autism. Of course, if at any point multiple studies do show that childhood vaccines are related to autism, I will change my tune, but until then, I am going to go with science over pseudo-science, even if I end up disagreeing with Jenny McCarthy.
3 comments:
This is so true that we should have a term or phrase or law that describes it, like Hobson's choice, Buridnan's ass, Catch-22, Morton's fork, Sophie's choice or Zugzwang. Perhaps, … 'McCarthy's Mistake' or 'poisoned Halloween candy': the tendency to believe a startling reported error despite all subsequent evidence.
As chance would have it I just watched Absence of Malice which explores the same principle.
Apparently, there are extraordinary people and organizations which do combat this phenomenon which I'm calling 'McCarthy's Mistake'. This American Life made a very public announcement that they are retracting their episode dealing with Mike Daisey's description of working conditions at Foxconn. They are devoting a whole episode about the errors and how they were made.
All this could have been avoided if only we could have gotten Steve to write his account of his factory tour (and This American Life and the rest of the world visited our web site). Just two small "if's".
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