Peer Review and the Scientific Process

ATTENTION: You are viewing a page formatted for mobile devices; to view the full web page, click HERE.

Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

<< < (28/47) > >>

40hz:
Moving away from the science of vaccination, and over to the socio-political side of the debate, I found this article excerpt to be something to think about. It's by obstetrician gynecologist Dr. Amy Tuteur M.D. And the rest can be found on her blog The Skeptical OB.

What everyone gets wrong about anti-vaccine parents

We told them this would happen.

We told them that it was only a matter of time before a childhood disease that had nearly been eliminated from the US would come roaring back if they failed to vaccinate their children. And that’s precisely what has happened. Measles has come roaring back, but not simply because a child incubating measles visited Disneyland.

Twenty years ago, if the same child had visited Disneyland, the measles would have stopped with him or her. Everyone else was protected — not because everyone was vaccinated — but because of herd immunity. When a high enough proportion of the population is vaccinated, the disease simply can’t spread because the odds of one unvaccinated person coming in contact with another are very low.

Of course, we told them that. We patiently explained herd immunity, debunked claims of an association between vaccines and autism, demolished accusations of “toxins” in vaccines, but they didn’t listen. Why? Because we thought the problem was that anti-vax parents didn’t understand science. That’s undoubtedly true, but the anti-vax movement is NOT about science and never was.

The anti-vax movement has never been about children, and it hasn’t really been about vaccines. It’s about privileged parents and how they wish to view themselves.

1. Privilege

Nothing screams “privilege” louder than ostentatiously refusing something that those less privileged wish to have.

Each and every anti-vax parent is privileged in having easy and inexpensive access to life saving vaccines. It is the sine qua non of the anti-vax movement. In a world where the underprivileged may trudge miles to the nearest clinic, desperate to save their babies from infectious scourges, nothing communicates the unbelievable wealth, ease and selfishness of modern American life like refusing the very same vaccines.

2. Unreflective defiance of authority

There are countless societal ills that stem from the fact that previous generations were raised to unreflective acceptance of authority. It’s not hard to argue that unflective acceptance of authority, whether that authority is the government or industry, is a bad thing. BUT that doesn’t make the converse true. Unreflective defiance is really no different from unreflective acceptance. Oftentimes, the government, or industry, is right about a particular set of claims.

Experts in a particular topic, such as vaccines, really are experts. They really know things that the lay public does not. Moreover, it is not common to get a tremendous consensus among experts from different fields. Experts in immunology, pediatrics, public health and just about everything else you can think of have weighed in on the side of vaccines. Experts in immunology, pediatrics and public health give vaccines to their OWN children, rendering claims that they are engaged in a conspiracy to hide the dangers of vaccines to be nothing short of ludicrous.

Unfortunately, most anti-vax parents consider defiance of authority to be a source of pride, whether that defiance is objectively beneficial or not.

3. The need to feel “empowered”

This is what is comes down to for most anti-vax parents: it’s a source of self-esteem for them. In their minds, they have “educated” themselves. How do they know they are “educated”? Because they’ve chosen to disregard experts (who appear to them as authority figures) in favor of quacks and charlatans, whom they admire for their own defiance of authority. The combination of self-education and defiance of authority is viewed by anti-vax parents as an empowering form of rugged individualism, marking out their own superiority from those pathetic “sheeple” who aren’t self-educated and who follow authority...
--- End quote ---

I didn't see anything in any of the above that contradicted my observations and impressions when attempting to have a rational conversation with those who identified themselves as part of the anti-vax crowd. Their overwhelming sense of social privilege and innate mental (and moral) superiority was almost painful to witness. In many respects, those were their most defining traits.

Dr. Tuteur has a series of well-argued posts on the whole anti-vaxxer issue, all of which are well worth reading IMO. Go look. :Thmbsup:

tomos:
Isn't this getting off-topic?
I will say:

1) I read an article lately that claimed that 92% of non-vaccination was due to poverty. It referenced this report:
Safety and adherence: Issues that hinder childhood vaccinations by Jamie Michelle Womack, PA-C
http://www.web.archive.org/web/20130308044156/http://media.jaapa.com/documents/12/vaccines0110_2845.pdf (PDF)
relevant quote:Barriers to adherence
Although increasing in numbers, families who seek exemptions from vaccination are by far in
the minority. Among families who are not opposed to vaccination, adherence rates are influenced by factors related to both characteristics of the parent and child and the health
care system structure. Race, education, socioeconomic status, access to health care, family demographics, and attitudes towards health care all affect vaccination adherence rates.32,33 Among parents with concern about the safety of vaccines, 72% nonetheless vaccinated their child primarily because of the risk of their child getting the disease and 17% cited state laws for enrollment into school or daycare.34 In a large-scale study of parental health beliefs about the vaccination process, 74% of parents found nothing difficult about the process. Concern about
side effects was the most commonly reported barrier (22.6%) followed by concern over the number of immunizations required at a single visit, but these concerns did not impact immunization rates. One study concluded that only 8% of underimmunization is related to parental perception of the immunization process.

2) Re previous post: That's all well and good 40, but I *know* that vaccine implementation over the years has been very high-handed - the system (for want of a better term) has done itself no favours there. As me & Ren said already:

Tomos hits exactly what we should be concerned about:

(FWIW I'm broadly pro-vaccine myself, but dubious about the methods used to force it on the populace, and dubious about relations between the FDA and the corporations developing the vaccines.)
-tomos (February 05, 2015, 02:13 PM)
--- End quote ---

But, those issues are about 1) forced medication, and 2) corruption, which while a degree in philosophy or law is certainly an advantage in discussing them, there's enough wiggle room for input from others. :)

However, that's off topic.-Renegade (February 05, 2015, 06:49 PM)
--- End quote ---

3) I suggest starting a thread (in the basement would be a good bet) to discuss, but FWIW I really dont think it's worth persuing...

tomos:
3) I suggest starting a thread (in the basement would be a good bet) to discuss, but FWIW I really dont think it's worth persuing...
-tomos (February 09, 2015, 12:39 PM)
--- End quote ---

In the wake of of a comment like that I hardly feel like discussing this much more either. Later! :) :Thmbsup:
-40hz (February 09, 2015, 12:50 PM)
--- End quote ---

just in case: I didnt mean that personally against you or your views. I just think it's a topic that's with a high probability going to end up in the basement anyways.

(A bit rich of me though, to make those points you quoted, just after having written about the topic myself...)

40hz:
3) I suggest starting a thread (in the basement would be a good bet) to discuss, but FWIW I really dont think it's worth persuing...
-tomos (February 09, 2015, 12:39 PM)
--- End quote ---

In the wake of of a comment like that I hardly feel like discussing this much more either. Later! :) :Thmbsup:
-40hz (February 09, 2015, 12:50 PM)
--- End quote ---

just in case: I didnt mean that personally against you or your views. I just think it's a topic that's with a high probability going to end up in the basement anyways.

(A bit rich of me though, to make those points you quoted, just after having written about the topic myself...)
-tomos (February 09, 2015, 01:28 PM)
--- End quote ---

Ok. Since you were courteous enough to reply, I feel I should return the courtesy and respond back. :)

I'd like to suggest that in any thread alleging deliberate malfeasance, such that the validity of the scientific method along with the process of peer review are brought into question, you can't avoid a discussion of the people (on either side of the debate) behind it - or - the motivations and agendas driving at least some of the debate.

This is not a scientific crisis. It's a people problem. So I can't really see where it's off-topic to raise questions about people's behaviors, or their unsupported assertions and arguments, as they relate to the larger issue. Nor do I see where doing so should automatically point the discussion towards the basement.

Sometimes the scientific quest for truth raises uncomfortable questions. And while some respect is due almost any position if it is well-considered and well intentioned, there's nothing that says such a discussion has to leave everyone feeling good by the end of it.

Scientific progress is often disruptive and uncomfortable. Few people enjoy having their most strongly held beliefs and understandings challenged or (even worse) proven conclusively wrong. The recent theories of the multiverse and dark matter have dumped half of established cosmology and physics into the dumpster leaving those working in the field scrambling to re-examine and re-test all their former understandings. Just as Einstein's theories did a generation earlier. And as did Fermi's, Pasteur's, Galleo's, and a very long list of other scientists stretching back to antiquity. Growth is often painful - and intellectual growth often doubly so.

And since science - and science reporting - is done by humans, you can't simply ignore the vagaries of human psychology, and it's often hidden agendas, when evaluating arguments against (and for) the process of scientific discovery and peer review.

Let's take a closer look at the so-called scandal surrounding temperature data...

Ars Technica had an interesting article recently that looks at the whole temperature data "controversy." They've come to the conclusion that not only is this NOT the "scandal" that the news media has been hyping - it's a rerun of a debunked accusation that was made a few years ago by Fox News. And at the bottom of it this time is a bona fide professional contrarian (and non-scientist) by the name of Christopher Booker.

...We knew this already; we knew it two years ago when Fox published its misguided piece. But our knowledge hasn't stopped Booker from writing two columns using hyped terms like "scandal" and claiming the public's being "tricked by flawed data on global warming.” All of this based on a few posts by a blogger who has gone around cherry picking a handful of temperature stations and claiming the adjustments have led to a warming bias.

Why would Booker latch on to this without first talking to someone with actual expertise in temperature records? A quick look at his Wikipedia entry shows that he has a lot of issues with science in general, claiming that things like asbestos and second-hand smoke are harmless, and arguing against evolution. So, this sort of immunity to well-established evidence seems to be a recurring theme in his writing...
--- End quote ---

Read the full Ars Article here.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page

Go to full version