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Comment by monocasa | Hacker News Reader

Thank god, maybe this'll slow down the whole "vaccines cause autism" BS.

A huge part of that was that symptoms started to show after a big vaccine dose you get around 2 years old.

It's already been thoroughly debunked, no ammount of additional logic will sway the people who still think vaccines cause autism.

"You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into" ~ Jonathan Swift (paraphrased)

that really doesn't sound like Swift - are you sure that's an accurate quote?

I actually skimmed this article before posting, it seems to conclude that it's from Swift (or at least, a rewording of something he said originally):

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/07/10/reason-out/

The article says swift's original was this: "Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired"

Which does sound like Swift. The rewrite doesn't, and attributing it to him in that form is misleading.

I agree, but how else should I attribute it? That particular variation just came off the top of my head.

Hmm, very good question. I don't really know. I wouldn't expect you to memorize the Swift original.

I searched "How to attribute a fake quote" and nothing useful came up. Maybe:

"– Apocryphal quote incorrectly attributed to Jonathan Swift"

But that's not very satisfying, or short.

Apocryphal and incorrectly attributed to make it sound like he never even said something with that sense. The two quotes are more than alike enough in sentiment to attribute the idea to him, if not the exact words.

In which case, "Jonathan Swift once said something like...."

Or just "Jonathan Swift (paraphrase)"

Good suggestion, I just edited my original comment.

The construction

  to paraphrase Jonathan Swift, "quote goes here"

is similar, but arguably a bit more readable.

That makes it sound like the purpose of paraphrase is to give you license to misquote someone out of laziness, which it isn't. It's supposed to clarify meaning or, with direct quotes it's more often than not used to adapt a quote to the topic at hand.

I think it does clarify meaning in this case: it translates from 18th century English to contemporary English, while retaining the sense of the original.

No.

As an aside, I like how the passive-aggression increases line-by-line in your comment.

I was actually entirely earnest. I never before considered how to attribute a commonly quoted line that's almost a true citation, but isn't.

This one is much easier than the convoluted answers - just use the accurate quote. Don't remember it? Google it, tends to find them easily. If it's completely apocryphal you can just say apocryphal or don't attribute it.

"Paraphrased" typically has a somewhat different connotation, especially when you're using a direct quote.

The anti-vax crowd has an identity-level stake in that narrative. Facts that counter that narrative are taken merely as an attack on their selfhood at that point, just like any other identity-level investment in a belief, be it Democrat, Christian, American, or anything else.

If their entire feed is overwhelmed, eventually people change their mind. At least 30-40% of the feed in one study. source: https://youarenotsosmart.com/2017/02/11/yanss-095-how-to-fig... paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010....

Trouble is in today's world, you get to filter your data sources to things that you already believe in.

Check Vaccination schedule. 1st dose of MMR is given between 12 and 15 months.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/schedules/hcp/imz/child-adolesc...

Unless you regress into severe Autism, it's very difficult for parents or even doctors to recognize Autism until they are atleast 2 years.

Also according to the schedule, there is no big dose around 2 years. After 18 months, there are not many doses on schedule until children are again 4 years.

Most parents complain about MMR vaccination that is scheduled at 15 months. My son regressed into Autism after MMR. It is true. I hope the world realizes it before more children get effected.

First things first: sorry about your son's autism.

> My son regressed into Autism after MMR. It is true. I hope the world realizes it before more children get effected.

"The world" does not dispute that your son started showing signs of autism right after getting the MMR vaccine. Since there is no scientific causal explanation, and since study after study after study have shown that children who get the MMR vaccine do not develop autism at higher rates than those who did not get the vaccine, the best explanation is that the timing of the onset of your son's condition is a coincidence. I understand why parents dealing with their own personal sample size of one jump to that conclusion, but the link is just not there.

    > the link is just not there.

Watch the 'Vaxxed' documentary [1] about a CDC whistleblower who tells exactly WHY "the link is just not there".

[1] http://1337x.to/torrent/1789192/Vaxxed-From-Cover-Up-To-Cata...

Respectfully, saying "just watch this 90 minute film" is not a very worthwhile contribution to the discussion.

I gather from summaries I've just now seen that this film claims there is a global conspiracy to suppress the truth. If you're interested in reality, you can start reading about all the many reasons Wakefield has been discredited here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield

The most damning condemnation of Wakefield's "research" isn't even his own retraction of it. It's the number of his "subjects" (N=12, remember) that have come out and said he outright fabricated his data, as regards their child.

When a double-digit percentage fraction of the subjects in your "seminal" work cry foul about that work, you either have to give up that story, or admit that you're just making shit up.

Let's be clear here: Andrew Wakefield falsified his data and was stripped of his medical license for it.

He was invested in a company developing a new vaccine preservative and the study was purely a scare tactic to get vaccine makers to switch from a cheap patent-free preservative (thimerosal) to an expensive patented one.

Vaccines in the western world have completely dumped thimerosal out of an extreme abundance of caution. Many of the vaccines don't even use a preservative or use a trace amount since we have good refrigeration and fast transportation networks. Despite all that the rate of autism diagnosis has continued to increase completely unchanged. In fact rates of autism diagnosis hasn't been affected by anti-vax parents refusing vaccines either. If you properly control for induced bias there is no difference in autism rates among anti-vax parents and rational parents.

When you hypothesize a causal relationship, remove the causal factor, and the outcomes are unaffected we call that hypothesis <i>disproven</i>. There is no link between vaccines and autism. Period. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

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