Is this a similar comparison to what I've said (or implied), in the slightest? Might your imagination have added a bit of extra color to your reading of the actual words I wrote?
It may be enjoyable to mock lesser intelligent people, but if the intent of pro-vaxxers was purely concern about the prevalence and risk of vaccine misunderstanding throughout society, I would expect more willingness to understand what is really happening within the community you're worried about, and less (apparent) glee at simply telling people they're stupid.
At the end of the day, you will reap what you sow.
> It may be enjoyable to mock lesser intelligent people,
No. But if you want to discuss epistemology, let's start with an easy example were we all agree that is false in spite there is no hard evidence. Sorry if it looked as a mock, but it was not my intention.
There are zealots and ridiculous claims in both sides, but at the end of the day smallpox is eradicated, polio is cornered (I hope to see the eradication day), meleases is reduced to very small levels (eradication looks more difficult). All of them used to kill a lot of people.
And by what means has any correlation been studied? What specific data is used?
Has a machine learning approach that examines all vaccination records and compares it to all subsequent patient medical issues, of all kinds, not just autism? Does the necessary data for this even exist? I wonder if that fact could even be determined from reading any official websites on vaccine safety.
> let's start with an easy example where we all agree that is false in spite there is no hard evidence.
a) I wonder how unanimous the agreement really is. I have a feeling expressing dissent in the slightest would be about as good for a doctor's career as it is for one's karma on social media sites.
b) Have there ever been cases in the medical field where "all people agreeing" turned out to be less impressive than it sounds?
https://www.nature.com/articles/437801a
"Marshall and Warren went on to show that patients with ulcers can be treated with antibiotics. Unlike patients given acid-suppressing drugs, their ulcers do not return."
"But gastroenterologists resisted the idea. Francis Mégraud, a bacteriologist at the Victor Segalen University in Bordeaux, France, remembers attending the 1988 meeting of the American Gastroenterological Association in New Orleans and hearing outraged physicians. “They seemed insulted, saying, ‘we are being asked to treat stomach ulcers with antibiotics, as if it were gonorrhoea!’” he says. “It was hard for them to accept that the disease could be a simple infection.”"
> There are zealots and ridiculous claims in both sides, but at the end of the day smallpox is eradicated, polio is cornered (I hope to see the eradication day), meleases is reduced to very small levels (eradication looks more difficult). All of them used to kill a lot of people.
True, however:
a) were vaccines the only factor involved in this improvement
b) relative (net aggregate) vaccine safety and absolute safety are related, but distinct subjects. If I'm taking my children for vaccinations, I am interested in absolute safety, not net aggregate safety.
b) Absolute safety is imposible. Let's make some calculation: There are 1.3E8 newborn per year, each one get vaccine in about 10 occasion (sometimes multiple shots), let's assume that the round trip to the hospital is 5 miles and the accident rate of cars is 1.25E-8, and in a car there are 2 persons (a child and an adult). So there are
1.3E8 x 10 x 5 x 1.25E-8 / 2 ~= 40
death of children going or returning to the hospital to get the vaccines per year. (Not everyone get to the hospital by car, but even walking has risks.) If we eliminate vaccination we can save 40 children per year.
>> a) were vaccines the only factor involved in this improvement
> a) Yes
Once again, a confident binary answer to an extremely complex problem.
How did you form this conclusion? Do you have anything you could show to substantiate it? Something like some charts demonstrating that incidents of all of these illnesses were essentially constant, and then only upon introduction of vaccines they began to decline? I've done some reading on this specific topic, I am interested to know if you have. (I happen to have great philosophical interest in the actual vs self-perceived basis of knowledge among zealous advocates on any matter.)
> b) Absolute safety is imposible.
I notice you kind of jump between two conversational styles, the first style ("a) Yes" above) is confident proclamation of a specific truth with no substance to back it up, and then now more of a highly rhetorical, subtle changing of the subject style. And to make it even more interesting, you then include a mathematical formula to give an impression of certainty, but in the process you've completely removed the actual point of contention (harm due to vaccines) from the discussion. Things like this are what I am looking for in these conversations: how do pro-vaxxers come to believe ("know")the things they believe.
Even if absolute safety isn't possible (something you have no way of knowing), safety isn't a binary, it's a continuum.
Have we done everything we can to study vaccine safety? Are there any flaws in the current system? Have you even done any reading on what the system actually consists of?
I will offer you a second chance to demonstrate how much you know about this, by reminding you of a question in my earlier comment that you seem to have accidentally missed:
>> In both cases we only can show that the correlation is so small that we can't reject the null hypothesis.
> And by what means has any correlation been studied? What specific data is used?
> Has a machine learning approach that examines all vaccination records and compares it to all subsequent patient medical issues, of all kinds, not just autism, ever been performed? Does the necessary data for this even exist? I wonder if that fact could even be determined from reading any official websites on vaccine safety.
I'm interested to know your answer to this - perhaps you are aware of something I am not, and I can learn something new. (Also, please do not accidentally overlook the questions earlier in my comment, and if I happen to have failed to answer any of your questions, please point that out that failing as well and I will rectify it.)
> These sorts of comment lack epistemic humility/awareness. We do not know that vaccines do not cause autism. Science does not say this.
This is technically correct, but it's very difficult to discuss against FUD. Let's try another example:
Do vaccines cause earthquakes? Nah.
Is it 100% scientifically proved that vaccines don't cause earthquakes? It looks very difficult to prove, perhaps you can pick some areas in an earthquake prone country and only give vaccines in some areas and placebos in other areas, and see if the earthquake ratio change. I guess you will never get an approval for an study like this.
So the conclusion is that scientist say that perhaps vaccines cause earthquakes? [What is a good answer here?]
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It may sound weird that someone think that vaccines cause earthquakes, but some people believe[d?] that playing an instrument in the wrong season can cause big frost. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erke
> Traditionally but not commonly, only adult men play the erke, and it is considered profane to play the erke outside of a ritual context. The erke is commonly played during winter, as it is believed that playing it in spring or summer can bring snow.
The English Wikipedia says "snow" but the Spanish Wikipedia says "frost" or "ground frost" like the ones that can destroy crops.
I know the story because part of my family is of a nearby area, but I guess that most cultures have similar stories.