Complex Numbers

Denial is More than Just a River in Egypt

Seems to me I encountered the author of this article somewhere before. Perhaps a different article, or a YouTube video. He seems to be quite prolific, so it's hard to tell. Anyway, the background is Sean B. Carroll here is an evolutionary biologist; I seem to run into them a lot even though biology isn't my main scientific interest.

But the article isn't about biology; if anything, it's about sociology or, as I like to put it, how some people love to wallow in ignorance.

The Denialist Playbook  
On vaccines, evolution, and more, rejection of science has followed a familiar pattern

The article is dated last November, so it was quite timely when it came out, considering the other denial that ran rampant at the time.

I won't quote from the beginning, which goes into the history of polio and the vaccine developed to prevent it -- as well as the denial that such a vaccine even worked.

One group in particular did not welcome the vaccine as a breakthrough. Chiropractors actively opposed the vaccination campaign that followed Salk’s triumph. Many practitioners dismissed the role of contagious pathogens and adhered to the founding principle of chiropractic that all disease originated in the spine.

If it ducks like a quack...

Look, I'm not ragging on chiropractic in general here. There are things it helps with. I had a good friend who's a chiropractor, and have benefited from their treatments myself -- for back and neck pain. In general, they have to be pretty smart and go through intensive, long training in anatomy and technique. The point is they're not usually what I'd call ignorant -- and yet, this happens.

Opposition to the polio vaccine and to vaccination in general continued in the ranks such that even four decades later, long after polio had been eradicated from the United States, as many as one third of chiropractors still believed that there was no scientific proof that vaccination prevents any disease, including polio.

Often, once a person believes a certain thing, no amount of "proof" will convince them otherwise; they will instead dig in and fortify their position, rather than admit being wrong.

The vaccine is widely viewed as one of medicine’s greatest success stories: Why would anyone have opposed it? My shock turned into excitement, however, when I began to recognize the chiropractors’ pattern of arguments was uncannily similar to those I was familiar with from creationists who deny evolutionary science. And once I perceived those parallels, my excitement became an epiphany when I realized that the same general pattern of arguments—a denialist playbook—has been deployed to reject other scientific consensuses from the health effects of tobacco to the existence and causes of climate change. The same playbook is now being used to deny facts concerning the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is where we get into the meat of the article. The rest of it summarizes, and then expands on, the six pillars of the "denialist playbook," which I won't reproduce here; the article is there to read or skim.

If we hope to find any cure for (or vaccine against) science denialism, scientists, journalists and the public need to be able recognize, understand and anticipate these plays.

And it's worth reading because, as I said, it's timely and pertinent to a lot of the stuff that's going on today. There are other issues people have raised regarding the Covid vaccines besides the general denialism, usually based on fear instead of actual evidence. For example, there was some concern about blood clotting issues from one of the vaccines. This was studied, and determined to be Not An Issue. But once the "blood clotting" thing got in peoples' heads, fear took over.

My take on it? No treatment is, or can be, perfect. But people generally suck at risk management. Yes, it is possible, in general, to die or suffer ill effects from a vaccine. But if the chance of a negative outcome is 0.0001%, while the chance of a negative outcome from the disease itself is (just pulling a number out of my ass here) 10%, that's a huge difference, and I'll take my chances with the vaccine, thank you very much.

I see that sort of thing as an Applied Trolley Problem. You know the Trolley Problem; it's been spoofed enough by now, but the basic conundrum applies: If you do nothing, five people will die. If you do something, one person will die. No, you're not allowed to think outside the box on this one; stop trying to find loopholes right now. Those are the choices, period. Only with vaccines, it's maybe a hundred thousand people on the "do nothing" track and one on the "do something" track. The ethical logic is clear, at least to me. Fucking do something.

That said, this article coming up today (the chance was about 1 in 50) is serendipitous; I got notified yesterday that I finally have an appointment to get my Trump Mumps vaccine. True to form, the universe had a small chuckle at my expense; the only time I could do it was Thursday. And I've had oral surgery scheduled for Thursday afternoon for a month now.

Sure, I was able to schedule the vaccine for the morning while the surgery is in the afternoon. And it's the first dose, so it probably won't kick my ass. But now I have to go get my shot in the morning and then sit through agonizing dentistry for most of the afternoon.

All of which is to say that either a) the vaccine will go fine and I won't have a problem getting my mouth cut up, which will then knock me on my ass for a while; or b) I'll have an adverse reaction to the vaccine, which will knock me on my ass for a while, and won't be able to get the surgery done, thus forcing me to wait another month or more for the next appointment and pay a no-show fee..Consequently, either way, I expect to be utterly useless (moreso than usual) on Thursday night, so don't expect the usual blog entry first thing after midnight Friday.

Still.

It's worth it.