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

[owlboy]

It's really infuriating and sad that some people are so afraid of autism that they will literally put their own child's, and other people's children, in physical danger, just to avoid the mere possibility of it

[kerravonsen]

Confirmation bias is a real doozy to fight against, alas.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

a) You can't fix stupid.

b) You have mis-identified the problem. The root of the anti-vaxxer thing is one (1) paper which is known to have been faked. The reason facts don't work is that it's not about facts.
A great many people have never learned to distinguish between the functioning of their emotions and the functioning of their reason. "You can't reason someone out of something they weren't reasoned into."

[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.

[a-phoenixdragon.livejournal.com]

Well, I'll be the first to say that I didn't like the new vaccine (I say new, but it's been a few years) for girls and women against cervical cancers. I was rather suspicious of it, but only because they felt the burning need to advertise it on the telly. I hate this idea of commercialising healthcare and it brings immediate suspicion and a sense of mistrust when they 'advocate' for something on the television. I talked with a doctor about it after spouting my distaste and learned otherwise - but I can see how easy it is to naysay vaccines and other lifesaving medications with how they handle 'informing the public' about them.

But then, I never was a genius, lol!!

*HUGS*