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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”

#81

Post by kstenerud »

sliverstorm wrote: post #59
kstenerud wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So when it comes to anti-vaxxers, the problem is simply that the scientific community simply hasn't been accommodating enough? It's good to know that, yet again the fault does not lie with the common man. It is always someone else's fault.

It's not a question of accommodation; it's about accessibility. The anti-vaxxers offered better UX for many who felt shut out from scientific knowledge.

The fault does technically lie with the common man in the sense that he behaves the way he does. But we KNOW that he behaves a certain way, and further we have the knowledge necessary to mitigate the effects of those deleterious behaviors and grant the people knowledge despite them. And yet many in the scientific community still refuse to take those psychological lessons to heart, preferring to blame it on "the willful ignorance of the masses".

When you continually run up against failure, blaming the object of failure is not a path towards solving the problem.

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

#82

Post by yellowapple »

bane wrote: post #58
DanBC wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love it if schools and nurseries started to disallow children who were not vaccinated. Unfortunately there are enough parents to make "no vaccinated children allowed" (you are not allowed in if you've been vaccinated) schools viable. See "Measles parties" and the sending of items infected with chicken pox through the post for examples.

I generally agree, but some people really are allergic to some vaccinations. They present the same exposure risk as somebody who chooses not to be vaccinated for stupid reasons. Should they also not be allowed in?

That would be a viable medical reason, and could probably be exempted with a doctor's note or some other documentation of a medical condition (at least it should be). That's not comparable to deliberately denying otherwise-healthy children the means to stay healthy and not die of horrible and easily preventable diseases.

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

#83

Post by mpweiher »

ddalex wrote: post #35

This is beyond stupid. You can't explain something, so you ban the person from having a say so. I'm terrible afraid of people thinking that this is the way to go. As a doctor, which I am not, I would've said: the danger of your children dying or being crippled by a preventable disease is about 1000 times the risk of having an adverse reaction to the vaccine. Furthermore, I can guarantee that the vaccine will not caus…

You didn't get the point at all.

"You can't explain something,"

That's exactly not it. The doctor wanted to explain the facts, with the leaflet. Sacha wanted a simplistic assurance that wasn't possible, and refused point blank to have it explained to her.

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

#85

Post by Spooky23 »

bane wrote: post #64
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.

That's interesting, the MMR vaccine is a normal vaccine here in the U.S. as part of the normal shots infants get. There's usually a booster shot as a young adult and again in middle-late age. edit apparently I forgot reading comprehension, I see now that you were talking about Chicken Pox vaccines. I didn't know either, I just know the MMR. AFAIK people just have Chicken Pox parties for their kids and make sure they…

Chicken Pox used to be a seperate shot, and in the 80s there was a well-publicized round of them that were defective.

I got hit by that one... I got chicken pox at 15 despite vaccination, and it was miserable, I was on by back for about 5-7 days.

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

#87

Post by Jtsummers »

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…

> 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.

This is not accurate. Have you ever tried to discuss evolution with a creationist? The US Civil War with a "The South Shall Rise Again!" sort (the kind that call it "The War of Northern Aggression")?

Many people are rational, but people are also emotional. They get emotionally tied to their particular views for a number of reasons, but those emotions inhibit their ability to consider and evaluate the alternatives in anything approaching a rationale frame of mind. When you're trying to explain a concept to someone that shatters their present world view, you're pretty much always talking to a brick wall. The only approach I've found successful is to hit them in those same emotions, and work back to the rational arguments. Or play the long game, whittling away at it over the course of months or years. But you can only do that for a handful of people.

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

#88

Post by mpweiher »

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…

"Medicine is an inexact and continually evolving science and a good doctor should always be willing to talk over the options with you and engage with you on a level beyond just parroting the current recommendations."

Exactly. The doctor tried to have that discussion, and tried to explain the pros and cons. Using a leaflet is a good starter and basis for discussion, because it contains those facts and pros/cons. Much better than just making things up as you go.

Sacha refused to engage, refused to be informed, refused to inform herself, instead wanting a simplistic black/white assurance that this would not harm her children, an assurance which is not possible given the facts. The facts that Sacha did not wish to be informed about.

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

#89

Post by mpweiher »

api wrote: post #63
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…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#Contamination_co... I'm not at all anti-vaccination, but I am anti-authoritarian and anti-closed-science. People have a right to know what they're putting in their bodies. The SV40 contamination turned out to not be that serious, but it was a close call. Had SV40 been potently carcinogenic, we would have had a medieval plague of cancer. In the end it reduces to the problem…

"People have a right to know what they're putting in their bodies."

Right, and the doctor was trying to give her that knowledge, and she refused.

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

#90

Post by danielweber »

This sat poorly with me. I thought "you're not allowed science any more" would mean that no one has to ever listen to her in any scientific debate. Instead, it meant that she got overruled about a medical decision.

Congratulations, you've amazingly found a way to be even worse than the antivaxxers. I didn't think it was possible.

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