Dept. of Face Palm Isn't Enough

[kaffy_r]

So: Just How Do We Fix This?

A depressing little story from Mother Jones about the obstacles medical science faces when attempting to change the minds of anti-vaxxers.

When facts fail, do we look at how we deliver them? Do we look at what makes people reject them? Do we try to see the world from the nay-sayer's point of view in hopes of finding an argument or fact that might change her mind? Do we do all of those things?

Well, that's easy, I suppose. We do all of those things. But, lord, it's depressing to realize yet again that facts won't change peoples' minds.

(And it's depressing to realize that as a human, I could easily fall prey to the same blindness in other areas. Science? Not so much; but other areas? I'd better be willing to acknowledge my own biases.)

Comments

[jessalrynn.livejournal.com]

Too many people have jumped on this bandwagon for the wrong reasons. Sadly, most of those reasons are the same reasons as why Snopes.com doesn't successfully stop chain emails.

The freak out isn't dependent on truth or science. It's depending on panic. There's always a line in these discussions that some vaguely ominous sounding someone "doesn't want you to know" about it. They literally nip our attempts to use reason with that one sentence. We, trying to explain the true facts, become part of the conspiracy.

Then there's the various religious aspects, and the various naturalist aspects, and we're now fighting against enemies who've found a way to pitch their bivouack together.

Finally, it's always an uphill battle against the "then it can't happen to me" front. The condition, being over-diagnosed as it is, terrifies people, because it effects their children. But if they don't make the same "mistake", it can't happen to their kid.

Send out a spam email that the "insert random letters here" doesn't want you to know that the report was faked, that it was on Oprah on an unspecified date, and that this saved some celebrity's child, and you'll probably make better headway. I'm sorry, but humanity is just LIKE this.

There was a crazy bitch who purported to cure kinds of cancers in the 80s with fallacious logic and fake medical supplies. My husband's genuine science company still gets at least one call a month from people wanting to buy her stuff from them. She was struck off, here and in Mexico, but her victims are panicked people desperate for any answer that isn't "I'm sorry".

Hope you guys have better luck.

[kaffy_r]

The freak out isn't dependent on truth or science. It's depending on panic. There's always a line in these discussions that some vaguely ominous sounding someone "doesn't want you to know" about it. They literally nip our attempts to use reason with that one sentence. We, trying to explain the true facts, become part of the conspiracy.

It's in the same horrible space as trying to overcome not being able to prove a negative: "You can't prove xxxxx doesn't exist/didn't happen/isn't out there/aren't conspiring against us."

She was struck off, here and in Mexico, but her victims are panicked people desperate for any answer that isn't "I'm sorry".

That's the tragedy of it. There's a chapter in Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World," called The City of Grief. In it, Sagan quotes sections from letters he'd received from people, talking about their belief in the afterlife, or their belief in UFO landings, their beliefs in higher beings or what-have-you. And a heart-breaking number of these comments illuminate the great longing that people have for comfort, for surcease from grief, for a Great Father or Mother to soothe hurts. In many cases, it's not spelled out, it's just a hint - but when he presents comment after comment after comment, the weight of the grief and fear is just ... well, illuminating and heart-breaking, as I've said. And that desperate desire for an answer that isn't "I'm sorry" is too often behind attitudes like the anti-vaxxers, as superficially different as they might be from people who believe in angels.