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“You're not allowed science any more”

nature.com

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Re: “You're not allowed science any more”

#71

Post by dnautics »

waffle_ss wrote: post #42
spindritf wrote: post #3

I have spotted this totalitarian streak among some of my friends who went to med school. We should ban smoking, force everyone to do this or that. As bad as they can be, we're probably better off with lawyers in charge.

There are people who cannot be vaccinated (very young, very old, those with immune deficiencies) who rely purely on herd immunity to prevent getting certain illnesses. If all the healthy people who could suffer through the flu opted-out of the vaccine, most of them would get through it just fine, but the illness would pass through the population and kill off a lot of weaker people. Smoking obviously causes lung cance…

There are studies that suggest voluntary vaccination programs are better at achieving a higher level of penetration than mandatory ones.

Re: “You're not allowed science any more”

#72

Post by xrange »

dictum wrote: post #55
tormeh wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would be better off if nobody smoked, but let's not expand the war on drugs. I'm actually OK with a bit of this kind of totalitarianism, but not when it doesn't actually work.

Well, keeping the trains running on time did work. — The nice thing about mentioning Mussolini is that there's no Godwin Police to immediately point at you.

Did the trains actually run on time, or did anyone who pointed out that they were late end up with a bullet in the brain? And of course the best way to prevent late arrivals is to minimize the number of trains running.

Re: “You're not allowed science any more”

#73

Post by maxerickson »

cbhl wrote: post #66
JonnieCache wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are really measels parties? I've heard of chicken pox parties, which makes sense because there's no vaccine and the adult form is vastly worse than the infant form. But measels parties, that's just medieval. EDIT: apparently there is a chicken pox vaccine, but it isn't administered to the general population in the UK, only NHS workers. Interesting.

IIRC it's fairly common nowadays to administer the vaccine to children in Canada/US. The main trade-off I've seen is that a small percentage of people who get the vaccine end up with pox at the age of 20-30 where the complications (pox on internal organs) can require hospitalization and/or cause death. The flip side being, of course, that a small percentage of people infected with chicken pox as kids also require hos…

Are you talking about something other than shingles? This study seems credible enough (the Web MD article even manages to discuss how they dealt with several obvious confounding factors):

http://www.webmd.com/children/vaccines/news/20131202/chicken...

The CDC says shingles is less common in vaccinated individuals (under "Other safety information"):

http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/vaccines/varicella/

Re: “You're not allowed science any more”

#74

Post by Jtsummers »

jstanek wrote: post #28
VikingCoder wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but you're wrong. You're right - we shouldn't celebrate alienating people who need help. You're wrong, because there is no argument that can convince someone who doesn't care about evidence. So, please forgive us our gallows humor about this. After all, these people are content in risking the health of MY child on their Jenny McCarthy-inspired HUNCH that vaccines are bad. If anti-vaccine folks were only…

If your child is vaccinated, they aren't really at significant risk of catching a preventable infection from an unvaccinated child, since that's the sort of thing vaccines are designed to prevent. This isn't to say that anti-vax is a rational position, but I don't think (disclaimer, I'm not a medical professional) it puts vaccinated children at additional risk.

> This isn't to say that anti-vax is a rational position, but I don't think (disclaimer, I'm not a medical professional) it puts vaccinated children at additional risk.

1) Vaccinations aren't 100% effective.

2) All unvaccinated kids aren't unvaccinated because of anti-vax parents. Some can't receive them for medical reasons, others are exposed to the disease before they could receive the vaccines.

3) The effectiveness of vaccines decreases over time, this is why adults with or around children are being encouraged to get boosters for things they were vaccinated for 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.

4) Sometimes vaccines don't take.

5) Sometimes immune systems are compromised (ever gotten sick and then, right when you were getting better, a cold takes you out for a week or more?). This can happen to both adults and children.

Ultimately, we need to achieve a high rate of vaccinations in order to minimize/eliminate the disease. The anti-vax movement is doing all it can to destroy our herd immunity and bring back diseases that we should've been on the verge of destroying (at least within certain regions of the world). The more the disease is around you, even if you're vaccinated, the higher the chance that you'll contract it or become a carrier of it. In the end, we're all less healthy as individuals and a species because of these morons.

Re: “You're not allowed science any more”

#75

Post by falcolas »

kstenerud wrote: post #46
falcolas wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arrogance, which I'd call exasperance in this case, in the face of repeated ignorance of reality, is justified. You can only deal with willingly ignorant people for so long before giving up on the human race. And the doctor in the tale did try and educate the mother before she was cut off. She just didn't want to listen.

It's fine to feel exasperated. It's not fine to treat people in such a condescending manner. People are rational, and want to understand, but unless you make the information properly accessible in the UX sense, your exasperation is due to your own fault. The doctor did not try to educate the mother. He tried to lecture her. He offered her a bad user experience, which she naturally rejected. People are not machines. Y…

“As I said, there is always a small risk, but if you look, you will see that this is less than the probability of...”

Sacha held up her hand.

“Please, Doctor. Don't try and confuse the issue.”

---

Education attempt, and rejection of such education, in three sentences. After previous education attempt (plus a pamphlet) and rejection of such education.

What more should the doctor have done?

Re: “You're not allowed science any more”

#76

Post by Infinitesimus »

lazyant wrote: post #17
spindritf wrote: post #3

I have spotted this totalitarian streak among some of my friends who went to med school. We should ban smoking, force everyone to do this or that. As bad as they can be, we're probably better off with lawyers in charge.

People die because some idiot parent didn't vaccinated their children, so I say yes, enforce it or don't live in society, go to some isolated island because you are causing harm, it's as totalitarian as allowing people to play Russian roulette with other people's children (actually you'd go to jail so I think we're too lenient with these parents).

Yes, but people also die because someone miscalculates something in science. A totalitarian world will never be the answer to either problem.

Re: “You're not allowed science any more”

#77

Post by vonklaus »

jeffbr13 wrote: post #65
spindritf wrote: post #3

I have spotted this totalitarian streak among some of my friends who went to med school. We should ban smoking, force everyone to do this or that. As bad as they can be, we're probably better off with lawyers in charge.

Doctors aren't really scientists, although some might think so -- they're taught the results of scientific research, and how to apply that to diagnose and treat patients. There's a reason that "evidence-based medicine" isn't just called "medicine". Most of it is pattern-matching on learned knowledge. The result is that some of this knowledge becomes outdated as the underlying body of scientific knowledge evolves, whi…

I take your point. The semantics to me aren't really that important. Good doctors who have made a lot of observations and read the results of many medical experiments and research are probably pretty qualified people. In a sense when they do "pattern matching" they are performing micro-experiments. They take in synptoms as data, draw out a hypothesis and then treat as an experiment. If the treatment is a success it proves their illness hypothesis.

Re: “You're not allowed science any more”

#78

Post by kordless »

micro_cam wrote: post #50

Things like this makes me ashamed to have my name on papers in Nature. First, lets set aside the hypocrisy of a non open access journal publishing this[1]. (What happens if Sacha wants to inform her self by reading a few old nature papers?) I am pro vaccine but far too many doctors have this fantasy that they should have unlimited control and articles like this just serve to validate that view point. Medicine is an i…

It's called a parable. The universe allows them, and evidently so does Nature. Why would you be ashamed of publishing a paper you worked hard on anywhere? Are you implying you believe others would be judgemental of you because the magazine ran a parable that taught a lesson about dismissal of a concept without consideration?

Re: “You're not allowed science any more”

#80

Post by logfromblammo »

Look, science, you can't have it both ways. You can't release knowledge into the wild and also keep it caged up under your control. It is no more possible than setting the barn afire then ordering the flames to go back into the lamp.

If you cannot tolerate the idea that everyone benefits from science done well, even including those who behave destructively towards scientific progress, then why are you doing science in the first place?

Screaming from the mountaintops, "No! No! You're doing it wrong! All wrong! You idiots! You morons! Stop what you're doing immediately and do as I say!" is not likely to help your cause. That is, after all, what people have been yelling at each other for centuries, even long prior to the development of modern scientific inquiry.

There may even be a branch of science that deals with social norms and cultural shifts, and perhaps the intentional guidance of groups towards given institutional goals. You could probably take the socio- prefix and append an -ology to it. Maybe ask a sociologist what usually happens when you strip a person of the ability to make their own choices, even if you are certain they are making those choices based upon flawed premises.

Applying force or coercion does little but change the portion of the behavior of a person that is visible to you. You cannot use it to change someone's mind, no more than you can make a person love you by smashing their ankles with a sledgehammer. You have to coax them to it, convincing them to change their own minds. But you can't do it for a non-rational person using only rational argumentation. It does not compile. You have to use other means to even get them close enough that argument will work.

You have to advertise. Use rhetoric. Flash some sideboob. Blow dragon smoke from your nose using cookies dipped in liquid nitrogen. Write a catchy jingle. Go viral. Write a hoax about cool teenaged kids getting electrotetanized by their musical Tesla coils. Get Bill Nye slimed on Nickelodeon's Kid Science Awards Show as he introduces the new Mr. Wizard, wingsuiting down to the venue from an orange zeppelin.

You have to make people want science to like them. And you're not going to get there by acting like a condescending know-it-all prick--even if you do actually know it all, and the other person is a clueless, drooling moron.

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