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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”

#101

Post by Terr_ »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #44
suprgeek wrote: post #36

I think we should be making a financial/societal incentive to do the right thing if the science is settled enough. The trouble with the view presented here is that sure the children get the vaccine due to this hypothetical rule. what happens when later the children get a severe cold (say) and the mom who remembers the previous visit thinks - bloody doctors I will just keep my kid home and pray for him to get better?…

> At school: "Sacha your kids are not vaccinated and we do not admit any students not vaccinated." I thought this would perpetuate social stratification. But my hypothesis, that poor families are less likely to vaccinate their children than rich families, was incorrect. The National Network for Immunisation Information finds that "compared to fully immunized children, unvaccinated children were more likely to be non-…

Alternate theory: "Poor families" are more likely to be aware (either directly or "institutionally") of the impact of the various preventable diseases or conditions.

Reminds of of a Bujold quote. The character is referring to how over time people forget how hard things were:

> "They like to play dress-up and pretend being [noble-class] ladies of old, rescued from menace by romantic [noble-class] youths. For some reason they never play 'dying in childbirth', or 'vomiting your guts out from the red dysentery', or 'weaving till you go blind and crippled from arthritis and dye poisoning', or 'infanticide'."

> "Well, they do die romantically of disease sometimes, but somehow it's always an illness that makes you interestingly pale and everyone sorry and doesn't involve losing bowel control."

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

#102

Post by danielweber »

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.

There are plenty of avenues to overrule someone's medical decision. You could require vaccinations for school or even get a court order to overrule a clearly bad decision. None of those are "you made a bad argument so your kids are now subject to my decision-making process instead of yours from now on."

A super-majority of doctors don't understand the math of the screening tests: https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/doctors-flunk-quiz-... Can we say doctors aren't allowed to math anymore?

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

#103

Post by shurcooL »

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…

> 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...

Did you read the part where the doctor tried the same thing and she cut him off?

> “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.”

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

#104

Post by Spooky23 »

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…

The question to respond back to such a person is: "Can you assure me that you will get little Willow home safely after this appointment?"

Demanding a yes/no answer to a question that isn't yes/no doesn't make a point, except that you already made an opinion and are paying a copay so that you can ask a doctor rhetorical questions. The fact is, likelihood that the parent in this story smashes the minivan into something on the way home is probably higher than the chances of any ill effect from the vaccine.

There is a line that can be crossed where you take away people's ability to make decisions. This happens via court order for folks with religious convictions against blood transfusions, for example. Anti-vaxing is certainly reckless and IMO ignorant, but I don't know if it crosses that line.

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

#105

Post by VikingCoder »

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.

It definitely puts them at additional risk:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/23/mn-measles-outbreak-tr...

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

#106

Post by bane »

yellowapple wrote: post #82
bane wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well yeah, but from a disease vector standpoint, they're exactly the same.

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

#107

Post by [deleted] »

kstenerud wrote: post #100
Jtsummers wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

Yes, that's what I mean by UX. UX is about the intellectual AND emotional experience. We have the psychological knowledge. It's just a question of putting it into practice instead of taking these knee-jerk reactions of "they'll never come around. Better to just force it".

[deleted]

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

#108

Post by VikingCoder »

gloob wrote: post #24
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…

> So, please forgive us our gallows humor about this. Apologies for my pedantry, but dreaming about harming people is actually pretty much the opposite of gallows humour. A more appropriate phrase might be "power fantasy."

Warning: This response is for pedantic purposes only.

This is someone who is putting a gun to my daughter's head.

They don't want to vaccinate their child, which increases my daughter's chance of getting seriously ill or dying.

This is a fantasy about retaliating against the people who threaten lives. That's gallows humor.

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

#109

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

kordless wrote: post #78
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?

It makes Nature look overzealous, while failing to teach the lesson. You can find less heavy handed parables in the bible. The dystopia isn't that exciting either.

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

#110

Post by Jtsummers »

kstenerud wrote: post #100
Jtsummers wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

Yes, that's what I mean by UX. UX is about the intellectual AND emotional experience. We have the psychological knowledge. It's just a question of putting it into practice instead of taking these knee-jerk reactions of "they'll never come around. Better to just force it".

It's like you didn't read what I wrote. I was responding to your claim that people are rational. People are not, inherently, rational. Emotions hold far more sway over them, presenting them with evidence isn't sufficient because they don't want to be persuaded or because they can't rationally consume the evidence and draw conclusions from it.
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