Western medicine talked me out of many vaccinations. When I was preparing for a round the world trip, I figured vaccines are safe and I only get one chance so give me everything you’ve got. The SFO travellers clinic talked me out of many of the vaccinations, telling me that the risk of side effects was greater than the benefit. This is science in action.
I cringe when I hear people say “don’t worry vaccines are safe” because they are nowhere near absolutely safe. If someone doesn’t define safe, they don’t know what it means. Even the CDC wants you to know there life threatening side effects, some of which are considered common:
Science can help weigh two risks but it can’t declare something “safe” with no qualification. The statement “vaccines do not cause autism” is much more true than “vaccines are safe”.
Not getting vaccinated is not perfectly safe either.
It’s not safe for the person not getting vaccinated, and it’s not safe for anyone they come in contact with whose immune system is susceptible to disease.
There is of course a 4. and by my reckoning far more interesting possibility:
There is no such things as doctors singular and not all doctors agree on what is right. This is where things really get interesting. Medicine as it is today is learning slowly to listen to what patients experience and finding ways to incorporate it into medical knowledge. There are many facets of medicine where patient knows best.
All I know is that I often read posts by Cory that make it seem like something is settled by science that actually isn’t so settled, and I would hate for him to go to jail.
Fraud is actionable in the USA as a civil matter, but criminalizing bad science (or even lies posing as science) would taint just about everyone in government who attempts to use scientific arguments.
Both of those links specifically outline that the scientific method relies on questioning previous research (and anyone that understands the scientific method, understands this is one of the core tenants of the process).
Your wiki link:
The scientific method – the method wherein inquiry regards itself as fallible and purposely tests itself and criticizes, corrects, and improves itself.
Your Oxford link
A method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses
[Emphasis my own in both cases.]
Measurability, Validity & Reliability are important for each piece of individual research to ensure the research is sound; but the method itself goes beyond any single piece of research, and at its core requires research to build upon, and/or correct what came before, i.e. ‘Standing on the shoulders of giants’.
Measles is super-duper contagious. With the lower vaccination rates that are probably going to keep going down until there is a body count to reverse them there is a very good chance there will be measles outbreaks in lots of places. The vaccine gives 99% immunity (I take this with a grain of might-be-rounding salt). The disease is about 1 in 250 fatal and sometimes has permanent complications when not fatal. One of my children is probably at significantly higher risk for problems because of other medical complications. All-in-all, I’m probably looking at something like a 1 in 5000 to 1 in 10000 chance of one of my children dying because of moronic assholes. That’s rivaling the top causes of death in children (motor vehicle accidents, the normal #1 cause of death in children are more like 1 in 3000 but we have).
A serious measles outbreak, with our current vaccination rates, could kill hundreds of children in my city alone. An outbreak on that scale is unlikely because we have good measures in place to try to minimize it, but this is really not nothing, and that’s just measles. Andrew Wakefield’s fraud about MMR has extended anti-vaccination to other vaccines as well.
If someone thinks there is such a thing as “absolutely safe” then they have no idea what safe means.
The reason we can talk about “doctors” when it comes to vaccines is because the vaccine schedule is a group effort and has a broad consensus. My point is that we should look at the situation objectively and ask ourselves, “Am I likely to be able to provide any useful input to this,” before we start engaging as if we can. I am, at this very moment, ignoring a doctor’s advice on how to handle a problem one of my children has and doing things a different way, but that’s because of the specifics of the problem. What I’m tired of is people being so convinced that they know everything that they think they should be involved in every decision that is made.
That is of course relevant and correct, but is not what differentiates the scientific method from other methods of truth finding i.e. critical thinking. Critical Thinking is per se “standing on the shoulders of giants” and cannot be equated with the the scientific method–to suggest otherwise is to overlook millennia of Indo european philosophical tradition not to mention the rest of the world.
See e.g. dialectic method Dialectical method - definition of Dialectical method by The Free Dictionary for which all the quotes above can be applied except that the testing is not according to the scientific method but through test of logic and fact. You can look up Socrates, Plato and all other Philosophers following them to explore the endless variations of the theme Dialectic - Wikipedia.
The uniqueness of the scientific method is the manner in which repeatable experiments are designed / a simplified reality is fitted into small enough chunks to be experimented on in search of universal laws. Anyone and everyone with the same information / resources and skills should be able to repeat the experiment and be able to prove or disprove the findings.
Here the relevant quote from Wiki on the scientific method >
carrying out experiments based on those predictions.[4][5] An hypothesis is a conjecture, based on knowledge obtained while formulating the question. The hypothesis might be very specific or it might be broad. Scientists then test hypotheses by conducting experiments. Under modern interpretations, a scientific hypothesis must be falsifiable, implying that it is possible to identify a possible outcome of an experiment that conflicts with predictions deduced from the hypothesis; otherwise, the hypothesis cannot be meaningfully tested. Scientific method - Wikipedia my emphasis
We are getting into deep waters here, but some aspects of life and the universe are less suitable to the scientific method than others (Vaccination clearly is among the ones most suitable to the scientific method). A good example of that is Aristotle’s easy to disprove, ridiculous theory that women have fewer teeth than men. He failed to test his hypothesis by looking into a woman’s mouth. However when it comes to Aristotle’s thinking on e.g. the nature of knowledge the scientific method is pretty limited in bringing clarity. Here we are 2000 yrs later and 300 yrs of scientific method and our understanding of human consciousness is pretty marginal still.
I sympathise with the sentiment. But knowing little and being involved in decisions concerning oneself are not mutually exclusive.
Part of the solution is explaining to the public (i.e. a public health campaign) that many decisions we make for ourselves have impacts on others. I wish those arguing for the value of vaccination would spend more time explaining concepts such as herd immunity to a largely unknowing public and less time sending everyone to the devil who ever utters a critical word on vaccines. In a time of unrestrained individualism it is of course a political act to publicise the impact personal decisions have on the community. After all thanks to Thatcher and Co we are living in the “there is no such thing as society” world.
But maybe, especially in the aftermath of Ebola is a good time for a public campaign on infectious diseases and the impact personal decisions can have on a community.
I would hope that as a side effect people might stop going to work while ill with the flu and stop sending their kids to school while infectious…moan finished.
This, presumably, is what I’m actually really annoyed by.
I mean, where I live the government does do PSAs that say, “Wash your hands” and “Stay home if you are sick” but then the same government treats its own employees to a draconian attendance management policy if they actually do end up calling in sick.
It’s in English North American culture to not be responsible for anyone but yourself (and, apparently, especially to be in it only for your own child), and without the culture an anti-vaccine movement might not have been able to take root. It could be that’s the real target, rather than the science of vaccines, but the culture of looking out for number one is quite the goliath to go after.
It’s good to know about SV40 not doing much to us. Was there really pathology on this entire population? Tell me where this data is because I’m not privy to it. Could it be that death rates are low because the weak ones are dead? The survivors of various traumas are always stronger and live longer than the controls. People exposed to nuclear radiation and contamination in and around Nagasaki and Hiroshima have long life spans. The weak ones are gone. Forget lifespan: Germans eat lots of sausage and red meat but are viral and scary strong because the food kills the weak ones. I was commenting on how the CDC took down information that is of value further fanning the flames. I get it that accidents happen and there is scary scientific data that tells me that there’s arsenic in my water, asbestos in my air but I want to know about it. Hiding the facts says there is something to hide. You want to get everyone on board you got to be open.
Also, lumbercartel, according to the NIH SV40 has been detected in human cancer tumors. Maybe you have not read the literature because they took it down. Look at < http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16288015 >. I don’t think NIH would say that SV40 is detected in human tumors if there was “Nothing showing up”. Probably why people without advanced degrees in math believe the hand waving magic math explanation of why GMO BT corn it just the same as a natural product - basically because it could possibly in a trillion years occur in nature once naturally, Wither it would survive on its own is not taken into consideration. Thinking about killing the weak ones off with toxic vaccines and GMO food might not be such a bad idea for those who dream of making it to Gattaca. Maybe I’m weird but if you can’t do things perfectly, don’t say you can. Don’t hide the mistakes and don’t prevent open research and discussion of the imperfections. The risks are worth it with vaccines, not with GMO food.
