Lindsay Beyerstein has a good post, specifically about Dr. Wakefield being stricken from Britain’s medical register and more generally about his work attempting to link autism to vaccination. The links between vaccination and autism have never been very credible, and Wakefield’s excommunication discredits them further.
“The investigation focused on how Wakefield and colleagues carried out their research, not on the science behind it,” according to the New York Times. That makes it sound like Wakefield’s ethical lapses had no bearing on the validity of his research, or lack thereof. In fact, some of Wakefield’s unethical behavior undermines the credibility of the study, which made international headlines when it was published in the Lancet in 1998. The report propelled Wakefield to guru status within the international anti-vaccination movement. His research went down in flames, but he’s still getting on the Today Show.
I am certain I am not immune to it, but I am always irritated where our risk assessments are significantly out of proportion. We blithely and routinely accept risks with a 1/1000 chance of happening and then completely freak out over a 1/100,000 risk that’s more exotic. And the fact that this crap gets on the Today Show is a big part of the problem. These shows have no sense of responsibility. They just know if they can run a story with Jenny McCarthy holding forth on the perils of vaccination to scare the bejeezus out of a bunch of suburban moms, they’ll have a nice demographic sticking around through the commercials.
As a population, we’re basically innumerate and unscientific. Our sense of perspective is skewed. Again, I am not immune, I’m no scientist and my math skills are decent but nothing spectacular. But, in the long run, we’re all dead; there are about a billion different ways we can die; and if we spend our lives worrying about all of them, we might as well be dead. So, you have to spend your time and resources protecting against the major dangers and take your chances with the rest. We know that the diseases against we immunize our kids were huge risks – autism from vaccination is comparatively insignificant, if there is an increased risk at all. Probably we have been so successful with immunizations, we don’t really appreciate what a problem those diseases were.
As to being innumerate, I can’t help but agree. I would highly recommend “The Numbers Game: The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, and in Life” by Blastland and Dilnot both to people who consider themselves numerate and particularly to people who are not. It does an excellent job of dissecting the way numbers are used in the news and laying out what (I think) every person of voting age should know and understand before they make up their mind about an issue.
And good for Dateline NBC’s plan to have Dr, Wakefield talk about losing his license to practice medicine, to be on tonight, Sun., at 7p.
As a population, we’re basically innumerate and unscientific. Our sense of perspective is skewed.
That is the way they want us: dumb and incurious. They keep us amused and filled with misinformation while trying to direct our attention to the innane and inconsequential. So little time is spent actually providing real information: most of the stations just spend time bloviating about speculation and covering what the other stations said. They give as much time, and gravitas, to the uninformed but opinionated as to those who actually know something, but as the press summarized Obama’s latest press conference–he knew he was in trouble when he started citing regulations and scientific facts. Yes, we want the ignorance of bush, he is our kind of guy.
As long as we are entertained so that we do not get curious about how things really are. Oh, look over there–an oil spill-who’s to blame? Why cannot it be fixed immediately? Oh, look–a kardashian in a skimpy outfit posing for pictures. Squirrel.
Most the time, the data provided by the news or politicians is not comprehensive enough to provide scope, depth, comparison or facts. They are actually told not to get too technical. Idiots.