[bdhe]

How are others processing this horrific backsliding in scientific trust, literacy, and straight up lack of compassion for the most vulnerable in the US?

Folks can surely see the connection between dropping vaccination rates and the rise of measles in Texas for example. Why aren't more people outraged and how are they allowing unprincipled politicians to impact their lives so drastically in pursuit of power?

[dogleash]

> How are others processing this horrific backsliding in scientific trust

Tragic, but we sleepwalked into this state of affairs by downplaying the severity of epistemic failures in academia and science communication.

Oh it's just a little publish or perish here, replication crisis there. Nobody really believes the clickbait headline. Overall we're on a solid foundation. Science means rigor, right? So the word science means rigor was done. Getting mad at someone for over-correcting won't make them feel more righteous.

We have failed our fellow countrymen.

[watwut]

No, this is result of intentionally and well paid propaganda. It has nothing to do with failure of science or academy. Even less with publish or perish.

This is happening because some rich people radical right on republican side wanted to happen. Smart conservatives worked for this for years. They knew they are lying, but it did not mattered to them.

Blaming others is just another round of enabling. Blame shifting away from who intentionally caused this wont help anyone and does not reflect the truth.

Also, publish or perish thing is literally something the same people actively worked for.

[krapp]

This seems like a bit of a retrofiction. People weren't pushing the anti-vaccine narratives because of the replication crisis, rather they used the replication crisis to justify their pre-existing mistrust of vaccines.

The science around vaccines is actually sound, there's was no "replication crisis" or failure of rigor in that regard. Yes, even the covid vaccine was tested and went through clinical trials.

[aredox]

Polls show there isn't an exceptional loss of trust on confidence in the medical system:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.as...

What happened is that the minority of contrarians and FUD spreaders have managed to hitch a ride on Trump's train and be promoted to governance.

[tpm]

This has nothing at all to do with academia and science.

[Dig1t]

I am surrounded by people in my daily life who are celebrating this change, I can tell you exactly why.

The establishment has done very little to try and address concerns from vaccine skeptics. Their response is mostly one of condescension and derision. Rather than using kindness and education, many establishment folks simply refuse to meet these people where they are and instead continue to act as though it’s completely insane to question the things that are being injected into their children.

There are completely valid questions for normal people to ask that don’t receive much of a response often, things like “why are vaccines immune from lawsuits?” and “why has the standard vaccine schedule increased so much?”.

Instead of providing good clear answers to these questions, skeptics are marginalized. How can this behavior not create distrust in scientific experts? The more you talk down to people, the less likely they are to trust you.

Note: I myself am not a vaccine skeptic, but I know many and I hear their reasoning often.

[LexiMax]

I am also friends with a fair few anti-vaxers and have attempted the reasonable and kind approach based on the facts. After many, many attempts, the conclusion I finally came to is that there isn't truly a gap in communication, but in culture.

This can take many forms, be it religious, political, or just whatever social groups they are a part of, but I believe that this form of motivated reasoning isn't necessarily something you can reason someone out of. To that effect, I don't believe trying to inform them is productive, but rather asking probing questions that attempt to reveal _why_ they believe what they believe.

In my own personal experience, I've found that nearly all of the anti-vaxxers I've talked to root their dismissal for vaccinations in religious reasons or in grievance politics.

[NoGravitas]

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into in the first place.

[LexiMax]

It's not so much that they didn't reason themselves into a position, as much as that they actually _do_ have a reason - just not the one they're telling you.

If anything, it reminds me of an X-Y problem. They don't really believe Y, but they are a single issue voter on X, so if their party takes Y position they feel obligated to take it as well.

And often, if you dig enough, the X that I keep encountering is the desire for a christian nationalist ethnostate. It's something they'll readily admit to if you aren't combative and just keep asking questions in the tradition of socratic irony.

[fzeroracer]

> The establishment has done very little to try and address concerns from vaccine skeptics.

For decades, the argument against anti-vaccination skeptics was to try and educate them. We've put them on TV, thrown our most well-reasoned arguments against them, showed them the data and proved to them multiple times over that their arguments are wrong. We argued over and over and over again that Andrew Wakefield, a literal fraudster who kicked off a large part of things and who aimed to profit from the anti-vaccine sentiment, was wrong.

Frankly the only argument and patience I have now for anti-vaccine skeptics is extreme derision and insults. They deserve nothing and should receive zero respect.

[Dig1t]

I can tell you that whatever education you think has been put out there, it’s absolutely not reaching its intended audience, and much of what does land is actually doing the opposite of what it intends to do. Example: Colbert’s “The vax scene” episode did more to damage the reputation of vaccines than I think anyone realizes.

Yes discrediting Andrew Wakefield helps, but you have to fight the incorrect ideas about the vaccines themselves not just one of the people who pushed these ideas.

One example: many skeptics ask the question “if vaccines are so safe then why are they immune to lawsuits?”. This is a very reasonable question for people to ask! And honestly, responding to this common sense question with derision and insults hurts your cause. The establishment needs good responses to questions like this and they need to be repeated in a non-hateful way.

99% of media and online conversation is just condescending. Like look at the comments in this HN post, most people are extremely unkind.

“Extreme derision and insults” is going to make the problem so much worse.

[mr-wendel]

Let's also recall that almost nobody changes their mind when engaged in these types of conversations, and the more confrontational the more likely you cement existing biases.

Where you do stand to make a difference is with more casual observers and people on the fence. A show of patience and respect bolsters a good argument better than perhaps even the argument itself.

What does tend to change people's minds is forming good relationships with people who hold differing opinions and their desire to make the relationship work. Logic and rationality are secondary considerations. Hopefully they will accept better conclusions for these reasons, but it's quite unlikely without adopting the kind of approach espoused by Dig1t.

[aredox]

>Colbert’s “The vax scene” episode did more to damage the reputation of vaccines than I think anyone realizes.

Oh yeah, perfectly rational to make health decisions based on a mediocre skit by a comedian you don't like and almost never watch... The people around you are perfectly sane people who are not trying to find any excuse to justify their tribal, cultish beliefs.

The solution is easy: vaccine proponents, whoever they are must be absolutely perfect in every way, shape and form.

Otherwise vaccine sceptics will instead prefer to believe the rich son of a political dynasty (who is certainly not a member of the establishment!) who had a brain worm and dumped a dead bear in central park and who has been proven a liar dozens and dozens of times.

Really wonder why vaccine "sceptics" apply a double standard... What could be the motivation behind this inconsistency? Truly a mystery. We should engage them in debate, we could certainly convince them (if we, and everyone and anyone who could be linked to vaccines, are perfect).

[bdhe]

> One example: many skeptics ask the question “if vaccines are so safe then why are they immune to lawsuits?”. This is a very reasonable question for people to ask!

I hear this point cited and I googled it and it took me like 3 seconds to get this answer: https://www.chop.edu/vaccine-education-center/science-histor...

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Inj...

Seems like a reasonable answer to me! The question is, why don't vaccine skeptics just look things up and try to educate themselves?

===

Why are vaccine manufacturers shielded from liability? A 1982 TV news report entitled Vaccine Roulette suggested that the whole-cell pertussis vaccine was the cause of permanent brain injury. Subsequent studies indicated that while the whole-cell vaccine was associated with febrile seizures, it was not associated with long-term brain damage. However, those studies took at least 10 years to exonerate the vaccine.

In the meantime, as vaccine manufacturers were flooded with lawsuits, some decided to stop making vaccines rather than face continued legal pressures. Consequently, production dropped, leading to concerns about vaccine supply and subsequent vaccination rates.

By shielding vaccine manufacturers from liability, Congress assured that future generations would be protected from devastating diseases. A common misconception is that this process completely shields vaccine makers. However, a plaintiff may file a civil court claim against vaccine companies after filing a claim in the VICP if they reject the vaccine court's decision.

[aredox]

Will Dig1t reply to this? Will he try to show this to the many vaccine sceptics he knows of and update us on how they reacted?

Because usually that's what happens when you "debate" with vaccine sceptics: they just accuse you of being mean/pretentious/know-it-all/arrogant/etc., they move goalposts, they switch subjects, or they completely ignore you, disappear and come back later elsewhere asking the exact same "questions" as if your discussion never happened.

Because they have reached a point where hey are so much wrong that admitting it would be admitting they have been very stupid, very unjust and very bad people. And it requires a lot of backbone to own such a personal failure. So instead they double down.

[Dig1t]

So yeah if you read that explanation but can’t understand why that isn’t convincing these people, then I would say you are not really trying to understand these people’s concerns. This explanation is basically making the anti-vaxxer argument for them. An uncharitable/skeptical interpretation of their explanation is one that hurts the cause. It basically sounds something like “drug companies couldn’t show their vaccines were safe enough like other drugs, but the government still wanted a supply of them anyway so they had to give them special protections”.

Basic question: so why does this stable supply concern apply to vaccines but not any other types of medicine? If you have concerns that one of these vaccines has some serious side effect, why is it important to have a stable supply of it?

I just feel like asking these types of basic questions leads to such vitriol like in your response, it’s no wonder nobody trusts you.

[ryandrake]

All of these questions get answered over and over and over, with good answers, often backed by decades of medical research, delivered by everyone from the Surgeon General to contagious disease experts, all the way down to individual people's family doctors. If the evidence and research is not getting to people, it's because they are deliberately blocking it out. You can't bop people on the head and force them to get educated. And you can't "meet these people where they are" because where they are is a fortress that is specifically built to repel knowledge and expertise.

And, of course, when you point that out, it's attacked as condescending and derision. I, too, live in a community surrounded by these people. There is no reaching them, sadly.

[fzeroracer]

I don't care. I've spent likely far more time than you trying to argue against and correct these anti-vaccine behaviors and ideas. They always start with 'reasonable questions' that lead into insane nonsense and there is no correcting that stance no matter how much evidence you give to the contrary. People are extremely unkind because they're matching the same level of vitriol and shit spewed out by the anti-vaccine nuts and frankly most people are tired of it.

[tstrimple]

This is it quite frankly. Platforming anti-vaxxers creates more anti-vaxxers no matter how thoroughly their arguments are discredited. Just the fact that conspiracy theory lunatics are put on the same stage as actual fucking experts elevates the opinions of the ignorant masses to the same level as actual research and results.

You saw the exact same thing when big name scientists started debating religious zealots on the TV. It literally does not matter how many facts are presented or how logically outmatched the Christians are. Just the fact that there is a Christian apologist on the same screen as Bill Nye makes the Christian claims more credible and has proven to be an incredible fund raiser for them. Same thing happens when we entertain debates with flat earth believers. Doesn't matter that in every debate and in every experiment the flat earthers are proven to be completely ridiculous people. The more their ideology is exposed and debated the more morons who think there must be something to it.

The "great marketplace of ideas" is full of spam and outright lies and the majority of the population aren't equipped in the slightest to navigate it.

[aredox]

>There are completely valid questions for normal people to ask that don’t receive much of a response often

Wrong, wrong, wrong. These perfectly valid answers have received again and again perfectly valid answers, and vaccine "sceptics" refuse to engage with the answers.

It is all FUD as a way of life.

Your repeated use of "the establishment" shows perfectly well that they don't want to hear the answer anyway. It's "us against them". Any official data - even from the CDC, or the media - that may show vaccines cause harm is blindly trusted and paraded. Any official data - from the same sources - that shows vaccines don't cause harm is manipulated, fake, censored by everyone: doctors, scientists, statisticians, officials, the Media...

[intended]

Please lay no hopes in the establishment. There is NOTHING that will get past the FOX barrier, unless it serves a political purpose for the Republican Party.

There is no “establishment” here.

When Fox began targeting environmental efforts against global warming back in the day, they happily platformed cranks to spread FUD. Eventually it got so bad that scientists went to FOX to try and bring the case to the audience and explain things. At which point they were fed to the lions.

There is no fair fight in the media space. There can be no profitable trade in hard to produce facts, when the other side is able to sell cheaper emotionally salient content.

[riahi]

Because they are disingenuous in their “just asking questions”.

They don’t want to vaccinate due to literal decades of propaganda campaigns turning anti vaccination into a tribal identity.

They just want some “reason” to blame others for the way they want to behave. It reminds me of the Matt Bors comic

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/9/30/1981821/-Cartoon-...

[pstuart]

This will be a classic case of FAFO (Fuck Around and Find Out). It's a pity that innocent children will likely bear the brunt of the finding out.

[cosmicgadget]

It's quicksand. The more you tell people RFK is a quack, they more they'll believe him and that you are working for 'them'.

[atomicnumber3]

Decades of disinformation and partisan politics being brought to its ultimate conclusion.

[throwawayqqq11]

I wonder if the less manipulated have lasting moments of "what if they called us dipshits for a reason". We only see the extremes here. I wish those more reasonably right leaning internet victims would speak up as loud and as long as they could.