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Vaccine skeptics actually think differently than other people:
In 2000, the measles virus was declared eliminated from the United States. Despite cases coming in from outside the country, there were few outbreaks because most people were vaccinated against measles. And then 2019 happened.
The U.S. saw 1,282 confirmed cases in 31 states -- the greatest number reported since 1992, with nearly three-fourths linked to recent outbreaks in New York, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most cases were among people who were not vaccinated against measles.
After events like this, many people express confusion about others' hesitancy or unwillingness to get vaccinated or to vaccinate their children, a concept called vaccine skepticism. As vaccine skepticism has become increasingly widespread, two researchers in the Texas Tech University Department of Psychological Sciences have suggested a possible explanation.
In an article published recently in the journal Vaccine, Mark LaCour and Tyler Davis suggest some people find vaccines risky because they overestimate the likelihood of negative events, particularly those that are rare.
The fact that these overestimations carry over through all kinds of negative events -- not just those related to vaccines -- suggests that people higher in vaccine skepticism actually may process information differently than people lower in vaccine skepticism, said Davis, an associate professor of experimental psychology and director of the Caprock FMRI Laboratory.
"We might have assumed that people who are high in vaccine skepticism would have overestimated the likelihood of negative vaccine-related events, but it is more surprising that this is true for negative, mortality-related events as a broader category," Davis said. "Here we saw an overestimation of rare events for things that don't have anything to do with vaccination. This suggests that there are basic cognitive or affective variables that influence vaccine skepticism."
[...] "Do some people encode scary stories -- for instance, hearing about a child that has a seizure after getting vaccinated -- more strongly than others and then consequently remember these anecdotes more easily?" he asked. "Do they instead have certain attitudes and search their memory harder for evidence to support this belief? Is it a bit of both? How can you counteract these processes?
"I'm excited that we're finding basic, cognitive factors that are linked with vaccine skepticism: It could end up being a way of reaching this diverse group."
Mark LaCour, Tyler Davis. Vaccine skepticism reflects basic cognitive differences in mortality-related event frequency estimation. Vaccine, 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.02.052
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday April 17 2020, @09:22AM (8 children)
Since the term “sceptics” is increasingly used for people who are not at all sceptic, but outright reject the scientific consensus (which is the polar opposite of being sceptic), and there's no sign that this usage can be successfully fought, we need to find a new term for true sceptics, so that they are not lumped together with those lunatics. Any ideas?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday April 17 2020, @11:29AM
While you're at it find a new term for "conspiracy theory".
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2020, @03:57PM (2 children)
>but outright reject the scientific consensus (which is the polar opposite of being sceptic
Rejecting scientific consensus is one, of the many, parts of the scientific process. Please do not misuse other terms in an attempt to say that some other term is being misused. Thanks.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday April 17 2020, @05:32PM (1 child)
No. Doubting scientific consensus is. Rejecting is not. Note that overthrowing scientific consensus based on empirical data is not an instant process either, as also the new empirical data will at first be doubted. The new empirical evidence will cast doubt on the scientific consensus, but the scientific consensus will also cast doubt on the evidence, and there will be a process of trying to evaluate and replicate the evidence, as well as evaluating possible explanations of the evidence, and if the evidence is valid, eventually there will be a new consensus. But if everything goes according to the scientific method, at no point in the process the scientific consensus will be actively denied. There will be a phase where the old consensus is dissolved and the new one forms.
Note also that not all scientists are sceptics. I was describing what a sceptic does, which is not necessarily what every scientist does.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2020, @04:34PM
>But if everything goes according to the scientific method
Right.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday April 17 2020, @04:07PM
How about "monimism", named after Monimus [wikipedia.org], a skeptical Cynic? It has the bonuses of being hard for people to pronounce and spell, easily confused with minimism and monomial expressions.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 17 2020, @04:51PM (1 child)
While that generous use of "skeptic" is going on here, your proposed solution (make yet more terms) would be abused. Let's suppose for the stake of argument, that we decide on "smartics" for people who are skeptics in the genuine sense, and "dumbtics" for people who outright reject the scientific consensus. Out of the gate, people are going to abuse these phrases in the obvious ways with my side always being the smartics and your side, the wrong-thinking side, being the dumbtics. It doesn't actually solve anything because the people abusing the present terms will in turn abuse the new terms.
Reminds me of a common reaction to blatant lawbreaking is to make more laws. But if I'm already blatantly ignoring laws, then what's going to keep me from blatantly ignoring more laws?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2020, @07:24PM
I knew it! Khallow is a global warming dumbtic!! (And, oh, BTW, "smartic" is the new SJW, after the failure of NPC.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2020, @12:13AM
it doesn't get respect from those who don't get paid.
The public is not so ignorant as to not know how grants system works.