Sum ergo cogito, cogito ergo dubito: A nascent guide to talking to a vaccination denier.

Saturday 23 August 2008

A nascent guide to talking to a vaccination denier.

(last updated 18 September)

Okay, it seems as though my next exercise in science education (while I should be educating myself in Defamation law as it relates to the media), is going to have to be the spurious "link" between vaccines and autism.

I got into a "discussion" at work with a support worker who made just about every error possible, from thinking that caring for a group of people gave him an insight into how they got that way, to thinking that a chronological coincidence between vaccination and onset of autism is evidence. From taking doctorsaredangerous.com seriously to thinking that maintaining an open mind means something.

I felt my brain melting from the committed stupidity.

Unfortunately, although many, many bloggers with, you know, qualifications, have been talking about the issue, there does not seem to be any real definite collation of evidence, and of refutations to arguments, in the theme of How to talk to a climate change skeptic. Although the Autism Wiki looks promising. So, for my own use, I'm going to have to do it. Not spell out the science myself, I don't claim to have that thorough an understanding (at least not yet...) but just a list of resources.

It's going to have to grow quite a bit over the weeks in order to be useful, and short of time to do some deep digging, it'll grow as things appear or are suggested to me.

But, here it is, in roughly alphabetical order:

(P.S.: If the formatting of this is a little off, it's Blogger's fault for being different every time I come back to edit it).

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