{"id":303,"date":"2010-04-26T09:37:40","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T14:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/?p=303"},"modified":"2010-05-31T07:20:41","modified_gmt":"2010-05-31T12:20:41","slug":"pbs-frontline-covers-the-vaccin-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/26\/pbs-frontline-covers-the-vaccin-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"PBS Frontline covers the vaccine wars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The PBS program Frontline apparently will air a program on Tuesday April 27, 2010 about the battle over vaccines.  You can read the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wgbh\/pages\/frontline\/vaccines\/#press\">press release<\/a> to learn more.  <\/p>\n<p>I hope that Frontline gives the issue its usual careful consideration and doesn&#8217;t give equal weight to those who appear to ignore the science.  Take, for example, this quote in the press release from J.B. Handley, the founder of Generation Rescue: &#8220;There is no real-world study that shows me that those six vaccines didn\u2019t cause my son\u2019s autism.&#8221;  It&#8217;s hard to imagine that there ever will be.  Would vaccine critics believe any study that didn&#8217;t agree with claims that vaccines cause autism? Large-scale epidemiological studies have shown that there is no link between vaccines and autism.  If autism rates are no different with and without vaccination, then vaccines can&#8217;t cause autism.  Vaccination is not even associated with autism.<\/p>\n<p>Big chest thump to Orac at <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/insolence\/\">Respectful Insolence<\/a> for laying out the difference between scientific skepticism and scientific denialism in <a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/insolence\/2010\/04\/the_vaccine_war.php\">his discussion<\/a> of this Frontline piece.  Skeptics accept valid scientific evidence but are open to the idea that poorly conducted or invalid studies might lead to misleading conclusions.  Skeptics then look to conduct better studies that could rule out a hypothesis.  Denialism involves rejecting any study, valid or not, that runs counter to your own belief system. <\/p>\n<p>The real question, and one we address in The Invisible Gorilla, is why people tend to believe so strongly in an illusory link between vaccines and autism?  What leads people to form and then hold onto beliefs about a cause in the face of contradictory evidence?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/The-Invisible-Gorilla\/169190242181?v=wall\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Facebook.jpg\" alt=\"become a fan on facebook\" title=\"Facebook\" width=\"160\" height=\"49\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-273\" srcset=\"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Facebook.jpg 160w, http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Facebook-150x45.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theinvisiblegorilla.com\/buy_book.html\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Book.jpg\" alt=\"Buy the Book\" title=\"Book\" width=\"160\" height=\"49\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-272\" srcset=\"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Book.jpg 160w, http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Book-150x45.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 160px) 100vw, 160px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The PBS program Frontline apparently will air a program on Tuesday April 27, 2010 about the battle over vaccines.  You can read the press release to learn more.  <\/p>\n<p>I hope that Frontline gives the issue its usual careful consideration and doesn&#8217;t give equal weight to those who appear to ignore the science.  [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":453,"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions\/453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/theinvisiblegorilla.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}