The Logic of Science

One of the most common concerns that people have about vaccines is that they might cause (or exacerbate) autism.

Some of the most persistent myths and misconceptions around COVID19 vaccines concern the risk of myocarditis and pericarditis, particularly in young people.

Anti-vaxxers love to demand placebo-controlled trials and insist that nothing else will suffice for demonstrating vaccine safety.

Yesterday, on this blog’s Facebook page, I posted the stick figure comic on the right, lightly making fun of anti-vaccers and using analogies to demonstrate why they are wrong that 100% effectiveness is needed for vaccines to be useful.

Over and over again when discussing climate change, I encounter Americans who insist that there is no point in doing anything because China and India are the real problem.

Science-deniers have a long history of blindly assuming that any research they don’t like must have been corrupted by “big whatever,” and I constantly see people assume a study had conflicts of interest rather than actually checking for conflicts.

The “backfire effect” is a psychological phenomenon in which correcting misinformation actually reinforces the false view rather than causing someone to reject it (Nyhan and Reifler 2010).

“Science used to say that smoking was safe, so why should we ‘trust the science’ when it says that vaccines are safe and effective, climate change is real, or GMOs are safe?”

The evidence for anthropogenic climate change is overwhelming, but the inherent complexity of the climate can make it difficult to communicate the science to the public.

Evolution is, in my opinion, the most fascinating topic in all of science.

Lately, my Facebook page has been flooded with people insisting that “no vaccine is tested against a placebo” (sometimes stated with additional qualifiers like “double-blind” or “saline placebo”).