I
recently read an article about the link between vaccines and autism, a touchy
subject for some, and it got me to thinking.
Either the claim held by many that vaccination has led to autism in
certain cases is true, false, or there is not enough information to know at the
moment. Classification into one of these
three categories is possible for all statements, but I believe there is
fluidity here well. As an example, my
statement might be this: there are bananas in my fruit bowl which are mostly
yellow, with green towards the top. I
look at them today, and the statement is true.
As they ripen, however, the statement will become false. The change in color of the tops of my bunch of
bananas is the result of a natural process that occurs over time. With information from the future, we can
discern the timeline of truth and discover when the statement became false. This fluidity of truthiness is disambiguated once
we have more information.
In the
realm of education, we start out with subjects removed from
interpretation. One plus one has been
two since the concept of two arose, and the most widely accepted pronunciation
of “knife” does not include a sounded “k” at the front. As we grow older, we are asked to go beyond
memorization and application. We are
asked to form an argument and support it with evidence. Though this two-pronged task is most often
given during English courses, it contains aspects of the Scientific Method,
which is the greatest tool we humans have ever invented to discover truth.
The
Scientific Method is robust because it is self-correcting and brutally
exclusive. Everything is up for questioning, and nothing is ever permanently proven.
This bears repeating. The
Scientific Method has yielded everything we have ever thought to be true about
the natural world since the 17th century. All
of that is up for questioning, and none
of it has been proven permanently.
What
good is a system that can never prove anything?
In the case of the Scientific Method, this quality is unparalleled in
its utility as a tool for progress and enlightenment. Any other method of describing the natural
world is fallible because it excludes data that might come from a future iteration
of the experiment. Going back to the
banana example, I would say that the statement about the color is true because
of my evidence from looking at them. If
we don’t allow for new evidence to be presented in the future, we would be
ignoring the color change that happens when bananas ripen. We would also be excluding the possibility
that it is only a picture of bananas that I see, and my mind is being fooled
into thinking that they are real. Most
importantly, we would be refusing the chance for anyone else to refute the
argument with their own evidence. The
opportunity to refute the claims exists as long as conjectures have a
probability for being true that is less than absolute. With this requisite in place for our chosen
method of discerning truth, we will not shut the door of discovery on future
scientists.
Although
nothing can ever be proven by the Scientific Method, there is a pinnacle of achievement
within the system: absolute duplicability.
Take for example a simplified version of Isaac Newton’s Theory of
Gravity: if I drop an apple, it will fall to the Earth. The result has been duplicated over and over
again, and has not once been refuted. If
this theory is true in the absolute sense, the closest the Scientific Method
can come to discovering that absoluteness is by conducting the experiment until
the end of time, and confirming the same result every time. However, if you were to ever drop an apple
with a different result, you could singlehandedly destroy Newton’s Theory. Therefore, the closest we can come to truth with
the Scientific Method is so far, so good.
The process
of the Scientific Method followed by Scientists is often ignored by the public,
and the results have been (and continue to be) devastating. This is the MMR vaccine/Autism story, in a
nutshell. One Lancet Study in 1998 described
twelve children. Nine of these twelve
were autistic, and eight of those nine had parents who believed that the
symptoms of their child’s Autism developed after getting MMR vaccines. Let’s be generous and give this study the
designation of the first experiment supporting correlation between the MMR vaccine
and Autism (I say “generous” because by modern standards, the unchecked,
unsupported beliefs of these parents, with no evidence, no real experiment, and
no good data is all that existed in this “study”). The next thing to do is to test this
hypothesis’ duplicability. That
happened, several times over. The
results of subsequent studies, involving populations much greater than the
twelve of the original, show overwhelmingly that there is no association
between the MMR vaccine and Autism. In
2004, ten of the twelve authors of the 1998 Lancet Study retracted their
original conjecture of correlation. Of
the other two, one couldn’t be contacted before the retraction, and the other
has lost his medical license. As it
turns out, he fudged data in the Study, making it as a whole, a lie.
In
summary, the belief of a correlation between the MMR vaccine and Autism is
based on one study which has been DEMOLISHED by future evidence in such a
complete way that most of the scientists involved in the study are convinced
that they were wrong, and the one who was not convinced is not allowed to
practice medicine any longer. By the
way, the study was paid for by an anti-MMR vaccine group planning litigation
against the vaccine manufacturer.
Ostensibly, the reason the original
Lancet Study from 1998 gained traction and convinced members of the general
public that the MMR vaccine caused Autism, was because the study was true and
proven by science as far as the Scientific Method can prove anything. If this were the case, the lack of any other
study finding the same results, along with the myriad other studies refuting
the argument would have put the Study in the same position from the general
public’s point of view as it is in the Scientific Community’s. It would not be considered true, but yet it
is. And now vaccine-preventable diseases
are making a comeback.
This brings me to the real question
I pose today. How could this have
happened? I have a theory. First, the anti-MMR vaccine lobby paid for
the study, making it clear that they wanted the results to be in their
favor. The lead scientist went against
ethics and fudged the Study in 1998, perhaps for a sum of money. That’s how the false Study was created, and I
can understand that money or something as persuasive as money could sway a scientist
to commit this ethical crime.
It is more difficult for me to
understand how the lie survives outside the Scientific Community. I take that back. It isn't difficult to understand. It’s difficult for me to accept. It’s difficult for me to come to the realization
that, like Measles, Mumps, and Rubella, there has been a way to prevent these
atrocities from occurring. The plain and
simple reason that a false study can be touted as true is the plain and simple
nature of the people who believe it.
Stupidity. These people are taking the “results” of one “study”
out of context, before any other similar study could be conducted, and changing
the global landscape of preventable disease.
We can see the consequences of their actions. We attempt to put the study they revere in context,
to explain how absolutely false their belief is, to demonstrate that even the
authors do not agree with what they once said, and we cannot change their
minds. Two million children die every
year because they don’t get vaccinated, and these people are not
convinced. These unchangeable minds have
no place in our modern society. There
are people who cannot afford or cannot receive vaccination, and even if an
anti-vaccination parent’s child survives a preventable illness, he or she puts
the rest of the non-vaccinated public at risk.
It’s been over 300 years since the Scientific Method came about, and it’s
still a better tool for understanding our world than whatever strange logic
these people utilize.
Vaccines are being demonized
because people are dumb. It saddens me
to admit it, but that’s my explanation. I
hope that people can become better educated on how to be educated. I hope that we who know better do the best
job we can to not let them get away with spreading lies. I do not know if the Scientific Method is
required learning in any, some, or all 50 states. What I do know is that if everyone would
respect it as much as the Scientific Community does, there wouldn't be as many
people suffering from Measles in California today. What’s more, the resources we waste bringing
these people up to speed with the seventeenth century could be spent towards
finding the real reason Autism is on the rise, and we could make some real progress.
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