Letters to the Editor
-
Still disturbing
You're right of course, that the availability of information is good on the whole. It's just still disturbing to see the crazy stuff people believe out there and the fact they can easily broadcast to converts.
I checked out some of the vaccine videos. I have trouble understanding how anyone with at least two brain cells can swallow it up. I went through about a dozen such videos and rated and commented them accordingly. If only a bunch of others did the same! It didn't take long for the anti-vaccine videos to start to link to other conspiracy theories, including a depopulation conspiracy where all the world governments are planning to eliminate 90% of the population and the 9/11 conspiracies.
The number one thing we need to improve in our school system: teaching skepticism and critical thought!
-
Just my $0.02
One does not have to look very hard to find self-serving behavior in the medical profession. Pharmaceutical companies paying "kickbacks" to doctors for prescribing certain medications is one example that comes to mind. IMO, these things make people more likely to believe reports that are contrary to what the medical profession tells us. Perhaps there would be less distrust if the medical profession did fewer things to earn it.
-
Learning Process
I think we can hope that the internet is so chock full of nonsense that people can gain a healthy sense of skepticism with even a relatively small dosage.
It's like what they found about people growing up with siblings versus people growing up as only children: people who had siblings instinctively understand the relationship (or lack thereof) between truth and what people say, presumably because their siblings lied about them (and vice-versa) a great deal.
-
People believe what they want to believe
and it's a lot easier apparently to believe that your kid has autism because of something someone else did than because of just random chance or genetics. When students pick a topic for a paper in my Abnormal Psyc class, every semester someone chooses autism and vaccination and invariably the scientific literature shows no connection.
The interesting thing is that in the US, thimerosal has not been in many vaccines for years. Ask the FDA:
http://www.fda.gov/cber/vaccine/thimerosal.htm#t1
Currently it's mostly in influenza vaccines. It was more important when multiple injections were sourced from a given bottle of vaccine. Now vaccines are usually provided in single-dose vials.
BUT there is nothing, nothing, you can tell a certain core out there to convince them. NOTHING. I just try to educate the people I can and hope it sticks.
-
People are morons
More people on the internet are morons
-
Self selection bias
I would worry that, as in political blogs, people are most likely to seek out information that confirms their own beliefs and ignore contradictory evidence. In this specific case, I'm of the "where there's smoke, there's fire" mentality, but I'm reserving final judgment until I see compelling statistics.
-
People are morons...
To piggyback off that statement, I think it's possible you're giving "people" too much credit. I bet the majority of people will say they saw it on YouTube and call it verified. In-depth digging is possible, just unlikely (or I find it so). I don't really have a point, other than the unlikely probability of confirming work actually being done.
-
This Subject Only Scratches The Surface
There are an enormous number of quacks on YouTube, and the majority of them don't even have a medical license. One individual who specializes in health, diet and medical "advice" said with a straight face that saturated fats are good for you, especially COCONUT OIL. This person offered as evidence the "fact" (try looking it up) that in the 1950s hog farmers tried to fatten up their livestock by feeding them saturated fats, only to discover that the hogs - wait for it - slimmed down, developed greater muscle mass and had shinier coats.
This kind of horseshit is everywhere on YouTube, but then don't hold your breath waiting for them to police these loons. While showing the zeal of Soviet-era Apparatchiks when it comes to copyright, nobody at YouTube gives a damn about anything else. A perfect example is the Hater Phenomenon (yes, folks are starting to capitalize it in recognition of its singularity and significance), wherein scads of Haters hailbomb newbies videos with nasty comments, spamming other's nice comments, down-thumbing comments, one-starring videos irregardless of their quality, leaving nasty comments on people's channel pages and, when things really get ugly, creating sock puppet channels that feature mash-ups of other people's videos. It's become such a huge problem that YouTube recently created a "Council" of five random YouTubers to try and solve the problem. I haven't a clue what these people are supposed to do other than field complaints. That's the totality of YouTube's response, despite the fact that everything I described above is a violation of YouTube's Terms of Use.
So, again, don't hold your breath.
-
Who?
So, pretty well given up on objective pronouns, have we?
Just asking.
-
youtube vs wikipedia
No offence to the many youtube lovers out there, but I hardly think that it is the first internet resource an intelligent person would go to in order to get information about a medical condition.
The sort of people who are looking up autism and vaccinations on youtube are the sort of people who were probably already believed in a link, and are using youtube to confirm the beliefs they already held.
A sane person who was genuinely searching for information on the topic would almost certainly venture onto google or wikipedia before diving into the shifting quicksands of facts presented on youtube.
The truth is that youtube isn't making people dumb, its just reinforcing dumb people's already dumb beliefs. Much like the museum devoted to intelligent design. If you're getting swayed by the quacks on youtube, you're probably a bit gullible to begin with, in which case, the rot presented as 'facts' on youtube is no different from the rotting 'facts' the MSM tries to cram down our throats. Lets not pretend outlets like fox news or current affairs programmes like 60 minutes are any more factual and balanced than the interwebz.
-
Assembly Line Medicine
My wife used to take "Mothering" magazine, which is a hotbed of second-guessers of modern medicine. I think all of this "anti-rationalism" is just part of the larger medical meltdown. We have a huge, modern, assembly line-style medical system which is brilliant sometimes and Kafkaesque at others. One of the casulties of factory medicine is tea and sympathy. And anything without a heart is bound to raise suspicion.