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.
7 thoughts on “MMR and autism”
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I’ve had people tell me that if I was a parent I would feel differently about the risks, that doctors don’t immunise their kids (except for all the ones I know), that measles, whooping cough, polio etc are all diseases of poverty and if you live in a nice middle class community you are not at risk. People can convince themselves of all kinds of things, and be remarkablly resistant to evidence to the contrary.
As I’ve said before I think it is not only socially irresponsible not to immunise, but irresponsible as a parent. Measles and mumps undeniably can cause brain damage, polio can cause long term paralysis, not to mention death…
However, I am not sure it’s safe to say that science always operates with precision, Morgue… As you know, you should always read scientific reports critically, even if they come from supposedly reliable sources. There’s no such thing as an impartial observer. Two “experts” given the same set of data can produce wildly different interpretations depending on their backgrounds and prior experience, and you reading their reports may come up with a third… Yes, we can design experiments to test and discount possibile explanations, and sometimes interpret the results with absolute certainty, but the answers are only as good as the software in the electronic or organic computer that analyses the data… I know mine’s not infallible(-:
Point taken – but what I’m getting at is that what these parents want is something that science categorically can’t give them.
The best evidence science can give – which is also the best evidence we can have – is always going to be nuanced, aware of its fallibility, and in ‘clever language’.
In other words, these activists are *never* going to be satisfied. They may as well be wishing for the moon and whisper the truth in their ear before they accept there is no link.
Oops, did I labour the point a bit… sorry… scientific objectivity or lack of is one of my favourite rants… maybe I’ll have a rant on my own blog instead of yours…
On the mmr, circumstantial evidence can be a powerful thing… and since the obvious developmental divergence of autistic kids often occurs at about the same time as the vaccine is given, and that is probably the most significant external event that parents can remember, and when they talk to other parents, those parents also began to notice the autism at about that time… Do they believe a report from someone who doesn’t know their little darling, or the evidence of their own eyes (filtered through the need for there to be a clear single cause, a simple explanation, rather than an unfortunate, poorly understood combination of genetics and womb environment and possibly home environment and brain chemistry and other factors that we don’t know about yet)?
I can understand it… and sympathise, but even with impending parenthood, even if I believed in the 1 in 10000 risk of autism that people were still touting when I was in the U.K., I WOULD get my kid immunised… at those odds, the risk of them contracting measles or mumps and the possible outcomes of those diseases are worse. Maybe this is the approach that health authorities should be taking… releasing statistics of children killed or brain-damaged in measles epidemics in the U.K. (can’t measles also cause heart problems?)… ads like that horrible rubella one they had on NZ telly when we were kids (the “This is X, his mummy had rubella one”), guys rendered sterile from mumps… fight them with their own weapons… a media campaign to get parents stampeding to their gps for vaccinations… maybe it is unethical, but the alternative is worse!
Sorry, I think I’m being a pain… I am all full of opinions and there’s this guy at work who I keep accidentally arguing with who totally doesn’t affirm my word view, or even add to it in ways I can use(-:
We have had all our kids immunized, and despite the fact that I beleive wholeheartedly that any link is tenuous at best, when Zeke reacted badly to the medication I couldn’t help but fear the viceral tug of fear.
That’s what we are dealing with here.
But, living in India I see the effects of polio every day and I would not wish it on my kids. I don’t see autisitic kids every day in NZ.
I am reading a book called “The New Tolerance”. It’s looking at post modernism from a christian perspective. What you describe morgiue is exactly what happens when postmodern attitudes are confronted with modern attitudes (ie. that science might actually be able to say something useful, or even indicated that something might be true).
To say that their is no link between MMR and Autism is intolerant to the feelings of those parents who think there is. And because there is nothing remotely resembling objective truth in a post modern world then those parents feelings are entirely valib because that’s what they feel!
The incoherance of this position is lost on them because even logical incoherance relies on some ideas of objective truth.
So, like you, I expect that soemone might have taken this guy aside and said “Y’know that’s not how science works” but it would have been like speakking greek to him. It’s not a language that is understood in post modern thinking because it’s based on such ideas as proof and truth and objectivity (and yes I take Karens point about ‘objectivity’ in science, but that’s really a caution that we should be careful, not a denial of the possibility of things actually being true [well, that’s how I read you Karen]).
Further to this, the kind of post modern attitude that this guy is speaking from is most probably assumed uncritically in that it is taught in school, it is presented in the media, our society is swimming in it. People absorb it without thinking about the cohearnce of it.
…
Anyway I’ll stop ranting now. I know people back home who haven’t immunized their kids and it’s hard to resist the temptation to go down town and take photos of people crippled by polio and send them to them saying “This could be your child”.
Opps, I said I’d stop ranting.
Yeah Matt, I’d be the last person to deny that scientific findings can be true… the phrase shooting oneself in the foot springs to mind(-: As you say, I was just urging caution when accepting scientific interpretations as fact. After all it is not so very long ago that respected scientists were interpreting smaller average brain sizes to mean that women were less intelligent, or that criminal tendencies could be inferred from skull shape… and we still have corporate scientists who skew studies to give favourable outcomes. Careful experimental design or selective analysis of data can do amazing things!(-:
P.S. do you guys have any thoughts on the stories for teaching kiddies morals thing on my blog at the mo…