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Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

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Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#111

Post by tim333 »

taurath wrote: post #75
rany_ wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why the whole "vaccine causes autism" got started. We need to improve science literacy before we could say things like that to the general public. When a layperson hears this, they'll think that there's a small but possible chance that vaccines do cause autism; when what the scientist means to say is that "it's highly unlikely that vaccines cause autism."

I think it’s okay to mean what you say. Part of improving literacy is also respecting the intelligence of your audience and not talking down to them. Treating everyone like buffoons makes people act like them - treating them as beings capable of thought and reason tends to show the better side.

I'd say being realistic about the intelligence of your audience. "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people".

I got sent some looping tik tok anti vax thing with a pretty woman saying sincerely vax bad, with no sources and links. The people influenced by that are not going to look up the papers in Nature.

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#112

Post by rayiner »

lapcat wrote: post #87
rayiner wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think it would work symmetrically like that? Say you trust your spouse. Then they admit they cheated on you. Years later they say, actually, that earlier statement was a lie. What do you believe now?

> What do you believe now? Obviously you should be skeptical of anything they said. There was indisputably one big lie, whether then or now. If you really want to know which is the lie, you'd need to get independent confirmation. The explanation of the lie matters. If it's, "I lied about cheating on you, and now I want you back", then lolno. If it was more like, "I was just sick of you, but you wouldn't have left me…

I’m not asking what someone should do, but what your average person would do. They would believe the spouse had cheated, and was lying when the spouse retracted the statement. Even though that requires believing the first statement by the spouse and not the second.

To circle back to the point, people aren’t capable of understanding any independent confirmation, nor are the capable of understanding the explanation for the change in position. The operation of science is incomprehensible to most people.

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#113

Post by plqbfbv »

kikki wrote: post #46
carom wrote: post #24

Ok, hold up. This study came up on Reddit a few weeks ago and my wife linked it to me. A lot of the comments were similar about how vaccine skeptics will never be convinced by it. So, being a vaccine skeptic, I went and read it. >In this primary analysis, except for Asperger syndrome (hazard ratio, 1.13 [CI, 0.89 to 1.44]) and atypical autism (hazard ratio, 0.94 [CI, 0.79 to 1.12]), estimates for the individual outco…

What exactly is a vaccine skeptic - in your opinion? What are you skeptical of?

I would guess people that don't know how stuff works or what they're talking about, but still feel entitled to disregard medical science progress because they don't see the effects directly.

Seeing my father in law daily is a very good reminder to me as to why we thought eradicating polio (and creating vaccines) was a good idea: his left leg is 30% the size of his right leg, and he's had trouble walking since he was 7yo (he's now 65), with no way of fixing it.

People don't understand what life used to be like before 60y ago because they didn't live through it, and even then they're tempted to dismiss the death or permanent complication rates because "nobody died"... that they knew/recall of.

It's true that in general better sanitation, clean water, better food availability have helped in reducing the death rates in general and also complications (because better prepared immune system, better symptoms management, ...), but vaccines allowed to eradicate stuff that killed or altered lives permanently on a regular basis.

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#114

Post by amai »

I suffered from whooping cough/pertussis as a child because vaccines weren't available at that time. Not vaccinating against it nowadays borders on bodily harm in my opinion.

Shouldn't we actually study the link between not(!) being vaccinated and any bad health conditions in later life much more?

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#115

Post by kiliankoe »

efavdb wrote: post #58
SubiculumCode wrote: post #32

I am an autism researcher. While we cannot say 'vaccines never cause autism' we can say with confidence 'Other potential causes of autism have much better theoretical foundations, empirical evidence, prevalence, and effect sizes. With limited research budgets, we have better research targets to pursue first before further investigating vaccines."

would you mind answering a couple questions? I'm very curiuous: Have autism rates increased recently (last few decades)? If so, what are the best theories for why?

The most recent episode of the podcast Science Vs explored this in detail: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/autism-the-real-reason...

The rise in autism rates (5x over the last 25 years) is almost entirely explained by changes in how autism is defined, diagnosed, and detected. Not by an actual surge in underlying cases or any specific environmental trigger like vaccines, air pollution, heavy metals, plastics, or screen time.

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#116

Post by SirFatty »

efavdb wrote: post #58
SubiculumCode wrote: post #32

I am an autism researcher. While we cannot say 'vaccines never cause autism' we can say with confidence 'Other potential causes of autism have much better theoretical foundations, empirical evidence, prevalence, and effect sizes. With limited research budgets, we have better research targets to pursue first before further investigating vaccines."

would you mind answering a couple questions? I'm very curiuous: Have autism rates increased recently (last few decades)? If so, what are the best theories for why?

Ah.. like Joe Rogan, you're "just asking questions".

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#117

Post by lapcat »

rayiner wrote: post #112
lapcat wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you believe now? Obviously you should be skeptical of anything they said. There was indisputably one big lie, whether then or now. If you really want to know which is the lie, you'd need to get independent confirmation. The explanation of the lie matters. If it's, "I lied about cheating on you, and now I want you back", then lolno. If it was more like, "I was just sick of you, but you wouldn't have left me…

I’m not asking what someone should do, but what your average person would do. They would believe the spouse had cheated, and was lying when the spouse retracted the statement. Even though that requires believing the first statement by the spouse and not the second. To circle back to the point, people aren’t capable of understanding any independent confirmation, nor are the capable of understanding the explanation for…

> I’m not asking what someone should do, but what your average person would do.

I guess I misunderstood your question then. I thought you were responding to, "Logically, distrusting The Lancet means distrusting Wakefield's paper too."

I think we've already established what an average person would do: not revise their beliefs in light of new evidence.

> To circle back to the point, people aren’t capable of understanding any independent confirmation, nor are the capable of understanding the explanation for the change in position. The operation of science is incomprehensible to most people.

I think this overcomplicates the situation, which is just about beliefs, evidence, and changing your mind. And people do change their minds in light of new evidence... about topics to which they're not emotionally attached. It's the emotional attachment to beliefs that causes people to perform mental cartwheels and stand on their heads just to avoid admitting the obvious truth.

For the most part, professional science, its complex math and statistics, operates in a parallel universe to our daily lives. A paper is published in a scientific journal? Shrug. A paper is retracted? Shrug. It may be interesting, a curiosity, but it's largely irrelevant to the average person. They're not emotionally committed to any of it. The problems occur when professional science somehow overlaps with something that they do care deeply about. And their interaction with that scientific work is not even an attempt to analyze it; rather, they simply want to cherry pick scientific results that agree with their preconceived notions, and use (abuse) scientific authority in order to argue for their preconceived notions.

But independent confirmation is not that difficult to understand. Is Jane lying or telling the truth about a particular situation? If you're skeptical of Jane's claims, then you ask John, someone else you know who also has first-hand knowledge of the situation. Average people can't design a scientific experiment, but they can certainly dig deeper into some question. However, you've got to be motivated to dig deeper. Some people want to be lied to, because the truth would be uncomfortable.

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#118

Post by sorcerer-mar »

rayiner wrote: post #85
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting theory but anecdotally doesn't fit with my experience. The most compliant, least critical, and laziest thinkers in my acquaintance are all squarely "anti-institutional" now. > Alt-media arose in maybe the last 10 years. Most of these anti-vaxxers were fully baked (intellectually) by then This isn't true. There was definitely a crunchy left-wing anti-institutional anti-vax cohort that's very old, but the m…

The anti-institutional left educated what became the anti-institutional right. If you teach kids to “distrust authority” and “think for yourself,” you’ve taught a meta-principle. You can’t predict which direction they’re going to go with it.

But again: Alex Jones' and Limbaugh's hugely popular shows pre-date that. So does the libertarian strain on the right. Modern MAGA definitely spun out of the Tea Party which didn't originate at all in leftist education.

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#119

Post by NoGravitas »

efavdb wrote: post #88
rtkwe wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the largest reasons is probably we're just looking more. It's a relatively new diagnosis, just 50 years ago it'd just be "oh yeah Uncle Joe is a little weird he only eats hotdogs and knows everything ever about trains".

There are severe cases of non verbal children etc

Yes, and 50 years ago, those high-support-needs children would be the only people diagnosed as autistic, unlike today.

Re: Danish Study: No link between vaccines and autism or other health conditions

#120

Post by ifyoubuildit »

plqbfbv wrote: post #113
kikki wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is a vaccine skeptic - in your opinion? What are you skeptical of?

I would guess people that don't know how stuff works or what they're talking about, but still feel entitled to disregard medical science progress because they don't see the effects directly. Seeing my father in law daily is a very good reminder to me as to why we thought eradicating polio (and creating vaccines) was a good idea: his left leg is 30% the size of his right leg, and he's had trouble walking since he was…

I wouldn't call myself a vaccine skeptic, and I don't have a problem with anything else you said, but "feel entitled to disregard medical science progress" puts my back up. We are in fact all entitled to that.

I think a not insignificant part of the skepticism problem stems from well meaning authoritarians who believe they have the right to shoot everything that has a pop sci press release behind it into everyone else's bodies.

It's like the opposite of the naturalist fallacy: if it's man made and has a sciency name, let's assume it has no glaring flaws until we get the class action lawsuit recruitment commercials a decade later telling us we might be entitled to 5 dollars compensation if we're on our deathbeds because of some horrible complication.

Even better if your political tribe has tied its identity to the thing.

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