In the papers today, the Lancet’s report on the MMR-Autism link. Or absence of link, actually.
The huge public suspicion of these innoculations is driven by the human tendency for magic thinking. This can cause real problems, undermining the health of whole populations. And the only way out is not to provide more evidence, but to properly educate people as to what the evidence demonstrates and how science actually works.
Here’s the problem in action, the reaction of Bill Welsh of Scotland’s Action Against Autism pressure parents group, to the news that the Lancet study found no convincing evidence of a link between MMR and autism:
“They may have found evidence that did show a link, but they did not find it convincing . It is just clever language and we have had enough of it. What parents want to know is what causes autism, not what does not cause it.”
Someone needs to take this guy aside and explain that:
(1) unconvincing evidence is not evidence
(2) that sort of clever language is needed to talk about the process of science, which operates with precision
(3) it is impossible to demonstrate what causes something – science works by ruling out things that are not causes, and saying what’s left is the most likely explanation.
I suspect someone’s already tried to do this, of course. Probably their clever language was dismissed in short order. Clever language can’t stand in the way of magic, after all.