combat anti-vaccine rhetoric with Science
in the interest of promoting a discourse more robust around the importance of regular vaccinations for serious but preventable contagious infections, MHA @ GW is hosting a series of client in honor of the national consciousness immunization Month (NIAM). Throughout the month of August, we present leaders of opinion pieces and advocates in the field who have been invited to write about the importance of vaccination in 2015. Learn more about the project in our after the introduction.
By Jennifer Raff, metaphors Violent
These parents are motivated by a common concern for their children and the community. They know that vaccines prevent many childhood diseases, and that by maintaining high immunization levels in their communities, they maintain herd immunity. they may have seen the comparison of morbidity in the era of pre and post-vaccine and understand the significant impact vaccines have made in preventing the most serious childhood diseases. They may have been worried about the outbreak of measles among families who took their kids to Disneyland earlier this year, which hit unvaccinated people the hardest. No matter how they came to that decision, the vastmajority parents understand the risks of vaccines are low relative to their huge advantage.
This is good news for the health of our communities. It is essential that we continue to talk about vaccination because vaccines are implacable opponents -. See comments on my piece here many examples of bad science and inflammatory rhetoric they employ
Speaking Up is the most important step, parents let know that their decision to vaccinate is the safest and most common way for people to protect their children. The anti-vaccine minority is disproportionately high, in part because vaccines are so safe, effective and ubiquitous they become part of the landscape of parenting in the background. Fortunately, in response to the scaremongering and events like the Disneyland harmful pseudoscientific epidemic, people are motivated to speak in favor of vaccines.
It is important how we talk about vaccines, too. That's where the most room for improvement is in 2015. The authors want the discussion to be dramatic and often try to paint "anti-vaxxers" as evil or vile. Or they try to use the debate on the vaccine as a weapon in the great wars of culture. This leads to the media (and many well-intentioned science writers) giving too much weight to vaccine opponents, creating the false impression that there is a "movement growing." Another problem is that the default image related stories on vaccinations are often distressed children and threatening needles. such approaches may have the unfortunate effect of recruiting more people to the anti-vaccine community as Dan Kahan noted in his piece in Science . magazine and on his blog
so we need to carefully examine our approaches to discussing the importance of vaccination and to ask ourselves some questions: Will it increase or decreasing vaccination rates? what is the parents who are undecided on this issue need to make an informed choice? what parents hesitant vaccination need to hear to allay their fears?
The approach I take is on my blog cope with bad science being spread directly on vaccines and to provide resources to parents who wish to train and communities. Resources include a guide to reading and understanding scientific papers and a guide to the "games of conversations" between critics and parents who vaccinate vaccine hesitant parents.
The objective is not only to improve the scientific culture in general, but also to get the message that parents vaccinate predominate and their decision is supported by the community, as well as other parents from all sides of the political spectrum and social .
Jennifer Raff is assistant professor at the University of Kansas with a joint PhD in genetics and anthropology. She has published numerous scientific articles on population genetics, and ancient DNA Amerindian prehistory. it conducts ongoing research in anthropological genetics, especially the peopling of the Americas and the Midwest and the Arctic prehistory. Raff has a keen interest in improving public scientific literacy and writing about pseudoscience and other controversial topics on his blog violentmetaphors.com, where she hosts lively scientific discussion of the environment. It is a martial artist and former Golden Gloves boxer passionate in currently focusing on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and MMA. Jennifer tweets on science, absurdity and combat sports in @jenniferraff.
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