“You're not allowed science any more”
nature.com
nature.com
First, lets set aside the hypocrisy of a non open access journal publishing this[1]. (What happens if Sacha wants to inform her self by reading a few old nature papers?)
I am pro vaccine but far too many doctors have this fantasy that they should have unlimited control and articles like this just serve to validate that view point.
Medicine is an inexact and continually evolving science and a good doctor should always be willing to talk over the options with you and engage with you on a level beyond just parroting the current recommendations. As someone who is one of the people contributing to the body of often-vague statistics we call medicine it is continuously annoying to have to get doctors to explain their (often subjective) judgment calls they are making and actually present their reasoning analytically.
Additionally, many doctors choose to forgo recommended treatments themselves due to side effects [2].
[1] In fact you can pay extra to make your nature paper open access but it is by no means fully open access. [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/20/your-money/how-doctors-die...
If the Future has driven HN to active discussion of an ethical topic, then it has succeeded in its purpose.
Unlike most of Nature, the Futures are free to read (and ~10% of them are compelling enough to make reading them all worthwhile).
(just scroll down to see the complete archive) http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/arts/futures/
Now reflect on your reaction to that piece. Even when on the side of the trader, it is still funny. You can be a trader and find that funny.
This is because of how the characters are treated in the piece. Essentially, it is ridiculing ideas while remaining sympathetic to the character that holds them, which is difficult to do well, but makes for a much more persuasive piece of satire that will be appreciated by a wider range of people.
The piece in Nature however is just preaching to the converted, and doing it in a way that will just entrench the views of anyone who identifies with the mother. Frankly, if they want to publish satirical sci-fi, they should pay someone who can do it well rather than embarrassing themselves like this. It reads like a teenage first attempt at short-story writing.
I'm not at all anti-vaccination, but I am anti-authoritarian and anti-closed-science. People have a right to know what they're putting in their bodies. The SV40 contamination turned out to not be that serious, but it was a close call. Had SV40 been potently carcinogenic, we would have had a medieval plague of cancer.
In the end it reduces to the problem of freedom and open society: freedom means tolerating people being idiots. Freedom means it's okay for the Ku Klux Klan to mail me literature. It means it's okay for people to question vaccination because some stupid celebrity told them it caused their son's autism. It means it's okay for people to put pink plastic flamingos on their lawns. The alternative is a closed, authoritarian society.
Right, and the doctor was trying to give her that knowledge, and she refused.
Typical doctor's attitude is: "Look this white coat, that I happen to have and you don't? It means even if I tried to explain to you all the implications you are not smart enough to understand. So shut up and do as I say, I have more important things to do!"
Edit: I originally wrote "black coat" instead of "white coat". There must be some nasty stuff hidden in my brain's crawl spaces.
We need to draw a distinction between idiotic behavior with no externalities -- side-effects for others -- and idiotic behavior that can damage third parties. Upshot: there's no simple dichotomy between an open society and an authoritarian one.
This article of course is not about vaccinations specifically. It's about a woman with a black and white view of protecting her children. She ends up choosing the less safe option out of ignorance and stubbornness but she's ultimately trying to do what is best for her children.
This article assumes that her ignorance on the vaccination issue indicates ignorance about all things scientific, which is a fallacy. Likely, she only needs the right person (someone she trusts) to approach her with a proper explanation.
Yes, the vaccination issue is absurd but we will not resolve it by removing parents from the freedom to do what they think is healthiest for their child. That will not make them more open to logical discussion and more likely to trust the decisions of their doctors.
There will always be a certain portion of the populace that cannot receive a specific vaccination because of allergies or a weakened immune system that cannot handle it.
The whooping cough epidemics that have been sweeping through anti-vaccination areas in recent years are an example of how a decision that you make for your kids can result in other people dying.
The decision to not inform yourself and your family about factual information that is related to the well being of the family has historically been frowned upon. We have taken action on matters like this by passing laws that state parents must afford their children a basic right to information as it is presented by society. Schools.
Given the Internet is causing a huge surge in the amount of information available for consumption (ignoring the opinionated bits), one would assume there wouldn't need to be laws in place to force parents to this decision. It simply takes care of itself because the child has nearly unfettered access to the information. Granted it could be curated better, but whatever.
The real issue then becomes ensuring this information is readily available to anyone that desires it. This desired outcome is only be affected by something along the lines of government (or terrorist) sponsored censorship and the current spat of anti-net neutrality arguments presented by big business. Fuck you Verizon. The logical conclusion this is why they are so horribly insidious to society as a whole. The net effect of anti net-neutrality arguments only serves to limit the spread of information .
Nature already has an image problem [1] and the idea that they would use such a high profile venue to publish this seems silly even if it wasn't so alienating to people we need to be reaching out too. It just contributes to the distorted view of science and scientists that high profile journals are creating.
[1]http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/09/nobel-winner-...
Exactly. The doctor tried to have that discussion, and tried to explain the pros and cons. Using a leaflet is a good starter and basis for discussion, because it contains those facts and pros/cons. Much better than just making things up as you go.
Sacha refused to engage, refused to be informed, refused to inform herself, instead wanting a simplistic black/white assurance that this would not harm her children, an assurance which is not possible given the facts. The facts that Sacha did not wish to be informed about.
She can go to pretty much any reference library in the world. I'm all for open access but let's not over-do it.
"Why not?" asked the scientist.
"Because you haven't learned to employ them in a way that doesn't alienate the very people you are trying to help. Now please send in Dawkins on the way out, we need to discuss internet memes with him."
Also, because trading vitriol with religious fanatics and ignorants accomplishes nothing. Knowledge is the antidote to ignorance. Not smugness, defensiveness, or indignation (well-justified though all of those things might be).
This conceit can be done well. Mitchell and Webb's little old lady job-justification hearings are a particularly good example. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbXTBPN1HhA
You're right - we shouldn't celebrate alienating people who need help.
You're wrong, because there is no argument that can convince someone who doesn't care about evidence.
So, please forgive us our gallows humor about this. After all, these people are content in risking the health of MY child on their Jenny McCarthy-inspired HUNCH that vaccines are bad.
If anti-vaccine folks were only risking the health of their own children, their anti-science stance (or selective-science stance) would be tolerable. As it is, they're a menace.
That sounds reasonably falsifiable, especially with some nice biscuits.
Apologies for my pedantry, but dreaming about harming people is actually pretty much the opposite of gallows humour. A more appropriate phrase might be "power fantasy."
This is someone who is putting a gun to my daughter's head.
They don't want to vaccinate their child, which increases my daughter's chance of getting seriously ill or dying.
This is a fantasy about retaliating against the people who threaten lives. That's gallows humor.
For every study purporting one thing, one can find an equal an opposite study purporting the opposite (or nearly opposite). Now, that is hyperbole, as usually one of they studies is inferior in some way that is not obvious to the lay person, but it won't stop them from taking an overly strong stance based on an inferior study.
I believe a lot of the "vaccines are bad crowd" fall into a few categories:
1) the group that is very susceptible to confirmation bias
2) the group that has seen some studies that weren't conducted very well and were possibly informed by the first group.
3) those that fall victim to circular references in their proof (e.g. wikipedia article citing a magazine citing the wikipedia article, with possibly a few steps in between)
4) those who choose to believe something because the alternative is terrible for them. I see this one a lot. If you are discussing with someone of some modicum of intellect, you'll detect the situation when "slippery slope" starts being mentioned.
I'm sort of friends with a "vaccines are bad" person. I've cited numerous studies, which, while I'm no expert at interpreting studies, seemed to have rigor. Didn't phase her in the slightest, and we just don't talk about that subject anymore. Or at least I don't, and I don't take the bait. I believe she has an autistic grandson, and if she didn't have vaccines to blame, she'd have to believe that God caused the autism and that's too terrible for her.
1: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6322a4.htm 2: http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/pages/communityimmunity.aspx
1) Vaccinations aren't 100% effective.
2) All unvaccinated kids aren't unvaccinated because of anti-vax parents. Some can't receive them for medical reasons, others are exposed to the disease before they could receive the vaccines.
3) The effectiveness of vaccines decreases over time, this is why adults with or around children are being encouraged to get boosters for things they were vaccinated for 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.
4) Sometimes vaccines don't take.
5) Sometimes immune systems are compromised (ever gotten sick and then, right when you were getting better, a cold takes you out for a week or more?). This can happen to both adults and children.
Ultimately, we need to achieve a high rate of vaccinations in order to minimize/eliminate the disease. The anti-vax movement is doing all it can to destroy our herd immunity and bring back diseases that we should've been on the verge of destroying (at least within certain regions of the world). The more the disease is around you, even if you're vaccinated, the higher the chance that you'll contract it or become a carrier of it. In the end, we're all less healthy as individuals and a species because of these morons.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/23/mn-measles-outbreak-tr...
The trouble with the view presented here is that sure the children get the vaccine due to this hypothetical rule. what happens when later the children get a severe cold (say) and the mom who remembers the previous visit thinks - bloody doctors I will just keep my kid home and pray for him to get better?
Much better approach: "Ok Sacha since you declined the vaccination now I have to report it to all medical insurers. Your family insurance just doubled."
At school: "Sacha your kids are not vaccinated and we do not admit any students not vaccinated."
Apartment: "Ok Sacha your kids are not vaccinated (per this website where we can query); we will need to charge you a fee that is contributed to our residents' medical fund to cover the risk of housing you."
If you really truly start to hurt in the pocketbook, I bet there will be much more incentive to really read up on the Science.
I thought this would perpetuate social stratification. But my hypothesis, that poor families are less likely to vaccinate their children than rich families, was incorrect. The National Network for Immunisation Information finds that "compared to fully immunized children, unvaccinated children were more likely to be non-Hispanic white and live in larger households. Educational levels, family income and other factors did not differ" [1].
Removing the philosophical exemption, at the federal level, seems a prudent first step. "States that allowed philosophical exemptions to immunization laws in schools had many more unvaccinated children than states that do not have philosophical exemptions."
[1] http://www.immunizationinfo.org/science/demographics-unvacci...
Reminds of of a Bujold quote. The character is referring to how over time people forget how hard things were:
> "They like to play dress-up and pretend being [noble-class] ladies of old, rescued from menace by romantic [noble-class] youths. For some reason they never play 'dying in childbirth', or 'vomiting your guts out from the red dysentery', or 'weaving till you go blind and crippled from arthritis and dye poisoning', or 'infanticide'."
> "Well, they do die romantically of disease sometimes, but somehow it's always an illness that makes you interestingly pale and everyone sorry and doesn't involve losing bowel control."
Indeed. The Waldorf School of the Peninsula, an expensive private school ($20k/year tuition for kindergarten and elementary school, $21k/year for middle school, and $28k/year for high school), full of the children of very well off people from top Silicon Valley companies, had a 23% immunization rate a few years ago (I haven't seen what the current rate is). Compare to 90% for the public schools in the same city, and 94% for the public schools in the county.
Unfortunately there are enough parents to make "no vaccinated children allowed" (you are not allowed in if you've been vaccinated) schools viable. See "Measles parties" and the sending of items infected with chicken pox through the post for examples.
EDIT: apparently there is a chicken pox vaccine, but it isn't administered to the general population in the UK, only NHS workers. Interesting.
edit apparently I forgot reading comprehension, I see now that you were talking about Chicken Pox vaccines.
I didn't know either, I just know the MMR. AFAIK people just have Chicken Pox parties for their kids and make sure they get exposed. I remember when I was about 4 or 5 my mother was so thrilled when the lady who owned a store down the way had two kids who got Chicken Pox. The next day she took me out of school and I "met" their kids for about 30 minutes. Got the Pox sure enough right after that.
My Uncle somehow missed it and ended up getting it in his 40s. I think he spent part of it in the hospital. The difference between adults and children's responses to it is quite remarkable.
I got hit by that one... I got chicken pox at 15 despite vaccination, and it was miserable, I was on by back for about 5-7 days.
The main trade-off I've seen is that a small percentage of people who get the vaccine end up with pox at the age of 20-30 where the complications (pox on internal organs) can require hospitalization and/or cause death. The flip side being, of course, that a small percentage of people infected with chicken pox as kids also require hospitalization and/or die.
http://www.webmd.com/children/vaccines/news/20131202/chicken...
The CDC says shingles is less common in vaccinated individuals (under "Other safety information"):
I was referring to cases where someone has received the chicken pox vaccine but still gets sick with the chicken pox later in life.
Granted, it also looks like the vaccine is made from actual virus? So maybe it is shingles after all. I don't science enough to say.
In the looking I've done today, I haven't seen anything real definitive about whether the vaccine makes this more likely or not.
The number of people choosing not to immunise is larger, and herd immunity is at risk.
So, they're sort of the the same but the risks are different.
As a professional scientist, there are few things more anathema than the idea that a scientific theory is "settled". Experiments can only falsify theories; they can never be proven to be correct. The best a theory can hope for is to remain consistent with observation.
Once upon a time, it was well-settled in large communities that the universe spun about the Earth.
I'm willing to compromise part of my herd's immunity for those who wish not to receive a vaccine, even if it increases my risk somewhat. I don't think that anti-vaccine activists are correct, but it's a hell of a thing to inject stuff into their children that they think could bring them harm. Though we do it every day as a society, I don't want to be a part of a herd that resorts to compulsion on ethical questions.
Inextricable from this discussion is the fact that the children won't reach majority before the decision must be made. If we could wait until people turned eighteen before presenting them with the choice of vaccination, this debate would be different.
As a final thought -- if everyone else is immunized, it may be to your advantage to skip vaccination to avoid a tiny risk of side-effects. There's an equilibrium here, and it's not at 100% vaccination rates, even if 100% vaccination could yield eradication.
What irritates me about anti-vax more than anything is the selfishness and privilege that goes along with it. "I don't need to put a vaccine in my child's body; if herd immunity really works, then my children won't be the problem!" Never mind the fact that every person this child comes in contact with now has a greater risk for infection, or even transmission of diseases.
Lastly, your usage of "convinced" really rubs me the wrong way. Granted, you have a "right" to believe whatever you want, but if you trust that evidence-based science is correct, it's really not a "take it or leave it" kind of situation.
You're assuming that both of these things are possible / likely. I want people to stop killing each other but that's not necessarily realistic.
It's an interesting problem, trying to achieve the theoretical best situation (everyone understanding and accepting science) vs 'tricking' people (just getting them to accept what you say).
But everyone else, no, they should just accept the opinions of the experts if the issue is reasonably settled. They're not going to engage in the scientific process anyway, so their uninformed opinion really doesn't matter.
You mean capitulate to a forced perspective?
If she learned fundamental statistic, pored through paper after paper, found errors and miscalculations, would she get her money back? No, so ignorant or not is irrelevant.
Your utopia is terrifying.
i understand if someone doesn't want their child vaccinated and they can't go to public school, but forcing people is another thing, even if it is 'for their own good'.
Oh good, argument based on conjecture.
—
The nice thing about mentioning Mussolini is that there's no Godwin Police to immediately point at you.
Fascinatingly, if you read Wikipedia's article about fascist Italy [0] Mussolini's rise to power sounds more like something the war-mongerers ("our president is weak") on Fox News would support than what a nanny-state advocate would support.
[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Italy#Fascist_regime...
https://www.google.com/#q=the+road+to+serfdom
...although I guess the saying "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" is even older.
http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.asp
The trains where no more on time under fascists than anyone else. Fascist just have better marketing departments.
Also, I'm sure we could find people who'd gleefully re-imagine this fantasy story as one where a parent refuses to read the religious tracts being offered to them by a school principal, resulting in the kids being sent to mandatory bible study.
Smoking obviously causes lung cancer via secondhand smoke, but it also leaves a carcinogenic and heavy metal residue on walls and floors (thirdhand smoke). Kids, especially, get sick from this from crawling around the floor. They don't have the luxury of opting-out of smoking.
What are the solutions to these public health problems that aren't heavy-handed? I'm all for freedom and voluntarism but the libertarian solution of identifying the perpetrator and bringing them to civil court falls apart when the vector from perpetrator to victim is so diffuse that you can't trace it back.
Similar problem with people engorging themselves on unhealthy junk. I have no problem when it only affects themselves, but once their obesity-related maladies start costing other people via subsidized healthcare or extra-wide ambulances and whatnot, it's no longer just an individual choice.
This probably applies to engineers, too because we use scientific (or logical) results imply certain solutions, and we don't always realise that validity of the underlying assumptions changes over time.
Unless you're actually formulating hypotheses and running experiments, you're probably not a scientist.
<http://www.neatorama.com/2009/01/01/mad-scientists-are-actua...
The boundaries between these things are pretty fuzzy, though, (even though the cores are distinct) and many doctors and engineers engage in research, while most scientists spend a fair amount of energy on developing tools and techniques, which are often more engineering-type challenges (fortunately we don't practice medicine frequently). Nonetheless, there are often very large discrepancies between the mindsets and approaches of the typical scientist vs. doctor vs. engineer.
As a doctor, which I am not, I would've said: the danger of your children dying or being crippled by a preventable disease is about 1000 times the risk of having an adverse reaction to the vaccine. Furthermore, I can guarantee that the vaccine will not cause autism.
This is what I tell my "anti vac" acquittance, because I can't say I'm friends with morons. But being a moron doesn't preclude the right to understand what's actually happening and what the risks are when making a decision, even if you refrained in the past to educate yourself.
But it's hard to educate, so the author would just ban the discussion altogether. You, the author, are no better than the ones to which you would ban explanations and discussion.
"You can't explain something,"
That's exactly not it. The doctor wanted to explain the facts, with the leaflet. Sacha wanted a simplistic assurance that wasn't possible, and refused point blank to have it explained to her.
The doctor's office is not a courtroom or an arrest where everything you say can and should be used against you.
I'm reminded of people who think it would be awesome to bug lawyer's offices or doctor's offices or confessionals to ferret out crime. It will work the first time, but after that you have totally destroyed trust so you haven't gained yourself anything and the public has lost a place to sensitive discuss issues with people they trust.
Er, no.
She is a fictional character in a parable, entirely the author's creation. I think it's safe to assume that the words "she" used were the ones "she" intended to use.
Did you read the part where the doctor tried the same thing and she cut him off?
> “As I said, there is always a small risk, but if you look, you will see that this is less than the probability of...”
> Sacha held up her hand.
> “Please, Doctor. Don't try and confuse the issue.”
Demanding a yes/no answer to a question that isn't yes/no doesn't make a point, except that you already made an opinion and are paying a copay so that you can ask a doctor rhetorical questions. The fact is, likelihood that the parent in this story smashes the minivan into something on the way home is probably higher than the chances of any ill effect from the vaccine.
There is a line that can be crossed where you take away people's ability to make decisions. This happens via court order for folks with religious convictions against blood transfusions, for example. Anti-vaxing is certainly reckless and IMO ignorant, but I don't know if it crosses that line.
Yes, most disturbing in the story was how the woman took her children into a place she thought was trustworthy and she could talk openly, but instead her words were used against her to rob her of agency.
Antivaxxers can be pretty horrible, but there can always be something worse.
"You are more likely to crash your car on the way home from this office than experience harm from this vaccine." is a pretty succinct explanation invoking relative risk.
I understand the frustrations that lead to doctor wanting to write this sort of fan fiction... I just wish they'd try harder to make the "hero" doctor from the story a more sympathetic character by trying much, much harder to sway the mother's point of view.
"The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning. God was a dream of good government."
Perhaps we could call that authority "civilization."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo
(short clip above, long clip below)
If you cannot tolerate the idea that everyone benefits from science done well, even including those who behave destructively towards scientific progress, then why are you doing science in the first place?
Screaming from the mountaintops, "No! No! You're doing it wrong! All wrong! You idiots! You morons! Stop what you're doing immediately and do as I say!" is not likely to help your cause. That is, after all, what people have been yelling at each other for centuries, even long prior to the development of modern scientific inquiry.
There may even be a branch of science that deals with social norms and cultural shifts, and perhaps the intentional guidance of groups towards given institutional goals. You could probably take the socio- prefix and append an -ology to it. Maybe ask a sociologist what usually happens when you strip a person of the ability to make their own choices, even if you are certain they are making those choices based upon flawed premises.
Applying force or coercion does little but change the portion of the behavior of a person that is visible to you. You cannot use it to change someone's mind, no more than you can make a person love you by smashing their ankles with a sledgehammer. You have to coax them to it, convincing them to change their own minds. But you can't do it for a non-rational person using only rational argumentation. It does not compile. You have to use other means to even get them close enough that argument will work.
You have to advertise. Use rhetoric. Flash some sideboob. Blow dragon smoke from your nose using cookies dipped in liquid nitrogen. Write a catchy jingle. Go viral. Write a hoax about cool teenaged kids getting electrotetanized by their musical Tesla coils. Get Bill Nye slimed on Nickelodeon's Kid Science Awards Show as he introduces the new Mr. Wizard, wingsuiting down to the venue from an orange zeppelin.
You have to make people want science to like them. And you're not going to get there by acting like a condescending know-it-all prick--even if you do actually know it all, and the other person is a clueless, drooling moron.
However, the quasi-religious defence of Science as a settled body of knowledge which people must be forcibly 'educated' about is becoming depressingly common. Becoming more like a religion isn't a good way to counter superstitious falsehoods.
The patient-doctor relationship has waned, IMO. Here in the UK for most ailments I see a GP for about 10 minutes. I never see her again. No follow up, no chat, etc. Different GP next time. Perhaps social media could help build trust within practices.
And the doctor in the tale did try and educate the mother before she was cut off. She just didn't want to listen.
The doctor did not try to educate the mother. He tried to lecture her. He offered her a bad user experience, which she naturally rejected. People are not machines. You don't just feed the same information format in and expect the same result from everyone.
It's good to know that, yet again the fault does not lie with the common man. It is always someone else's fault.
The fault does technically lie with the common man in the sense that he behaves the way he does. But we KNOW that he behaves a certain way, and further we have the knowledge necessary to mitigate the effects of those deleterious behaviors and grant the people knowledge despite them. And yet many in the scientific community still refuse to take those psychological lessons to heart, preferring to blame it on "the willful ignorance of the masses".
When you continually run up against failure, blaming the object of failure is not a path towards solving the problem.
A super-majority of doctors don't understand the math of the screening tests: https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/context/doctors-flunk-quiz-... Can we say doctors aren't allowed to math anymore?
Sacha held up her hand.
“Please, Doctor. Don't try and confuse the issue.”
---
Education attempt, and rejection of such education, in three sentences. After previous education attempt (plus a pamphlet) and rejection of such education.
What more should the doctor have done?
Normally when something doesn't work, you look for reasons why it doesn't work. You then take some educated guesses at what might be blocking success, and try altering your approach. After some trial and error, you eventually discover how to make it work.
This doctor-patient situation is the same kind of thing, except that the doctor is simply dismissing the patient because his attempts at education on his own terms have failed. He makes no attempt at figuring out WHY the patient is rejecting the education, nor does he try altering his approach. Instead, he ram-rods what in his own opinion makes the best education down the patient's throat, and then has the gall to blame the failure on her.
It's just like in the bad old days of web apps with no UX.
No, it's worse, the doctor overrules the patient forever because patient can't science.
There are good arguments for compulsory vaccination (excepting legitimate medical issues). On the other hand, this essay is horrible. It's a doctor's fantasy of magically shutting up All The Stupid People That Don't Listen To Him. If Sheldon did this on Big Bang Theory it would be played for laughs because of how outlandish it is.
If the other party is unwilling to have a conversation (to the point where she attempts to leave when he won't give the binary answer), there simply is no way to "look for reasons why it doesn't work". The doctor shows his willingness and interest in having a discussion at the end, where he supports her asking of a non-binary question. What's most unfortunate in this tale of what it took to get to the patient to that place.
This is a false dilemma. It takes time to fix this sort of thing. Unilaterally shutting her out is probably the worst thing the doctor could do.
Really? That's what she has done to her doctor. She's chosen a life of potential suffering and death for her children because she wasn't paying attention. If someone has ignored the internet ads, billboards, magazine reports, news articles, and their own doctor, they're not going to change their tune just because someone prettied up the message bit (even though that's exactly what people have been doing for years now, plenty of examples if you look for them).
In the end, I think shutting her out is the best course of action in this story, if only for the children. And for her - it's shaken up her life enough to make her start asking interesting questions.
This is not accurate. Have you ever tried to discuss evolution with a creationist? The US Civil War with a "The South Shall Rise Again!" sort (the kind that call it "The War of Northern Aggression")?
Many people are rational, but people are also emotional. They get emotionally tied to their particular views for a number of reasons, but those emotions inhibit their ability to consider and evaluate the alternatives in anything approaching a rationale frame of mind. When you're trying to explain a concept to someone that shatters their present world view, you're pretty much always talking to a brick wall. The only approach I've found successful is to hit them in those same emotions, and work back to the rational arguments. Or play the long game, whittling away at it over the course of months or years. But you can only do that for a handful of people.
We have the psychological knowledge. It's just a question of putting it into practice instead of taking these knee-jerk reactions of "they'll never come around. Better to just force it".
Yes, emotional attachment to something will cause people to cling to it beyond its objective due, and that's why UX is so important. You're NOT going to persuade someone with information alone. You must make it accessible to them, which could involve all sorts of roundabout approaches, many of which may not even begin to offer any actual information until much later in the process (especially if you're trying to undo damage).
Ultimately my point is this:
- People do not react exactly the same as their neighbor. You can't make a one-size-fits-all solution and expect it to work.
- People tend act in a manner consistent with their belief system. There is a rationality to their thought process, even though emotions complicate things. But these complications are understood and have been studied extensively. The knowledge for how to deal with them exists.
- If you're going to reach someone, you must first understand what that belief system is, and figure out how to offer knowledge in a non-threatening way.
In fact, this thread makes for a good microcosm of the problem. Some people immediately understood what I was getting at. They upvoted, or gave positive response. Others either did not understand, or perhaps I touched a nerve (negative emotional response), causing them to downvote. One even responded with "It's good to know that, yet again the fault does not lie with the common man. It is always someone else's fault.", which is a pretty clear indication that my approach failed with him entirely. Pure information did not work, and in many ways my presentation of the information has been incomplete, as evidenced by yours and mine back-and-forth, culminating in "It's like you didn't read what I wrote." (a clear indication that I failed to communicate with you effectively).
In fact, my first entry into this thread was filled with attack words, which likely put most people into a defensive frame of mind (especially if they originally agreed with the article). I could definitely have done that better.
It's not easy to do, but I believe that tailoring the message is better than dismissal.
No. They really aren't[1], and they really don't[2].
Changing your mind is very hard, and most people don't do it. Even if you have been trained to change your mind, the longer that you hold onto an idea, the harder it is to believe the idea to be false. There is a reason Neils Bohr stated "science progresses one death at a time."
You are likely reading this and coming up with a bunch of reasons that you are right, and I'm wrong. Likely: "You missed the point, You didn't talk about UX", or "The doctor was still condescending," or more likely there is some flaw in my argument that you immediately see[3]. These thoughts alone should give you a good idea that it is difficult to change your mind.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Revised-Expande... [2] http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/i-dont-want... [3] It is also entirely possible that you don't think any of these things. It depends on how strongly you hold to the belief that you shared.
I did appreciate the point about being proud to be bad at math. I think that attitude is damaging and probably deserves a (more reasoned) article of its own.
When people are consistently frustrated using your website, you'd normally look into the UX so that you can make a smoother experience. You then test to make sure your changes actually made your site better. Math and science education is no different, except that those in charge tend to treat it like the bad old UNIX days of "If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand" and "RTFM".
I totally agree. What I'm saying is I'd love to read a more nuanced piece exploring this attitude including its causes and effects.
I used to think "if I could just punish/control other people the world would be so much better because I'm so smart." But then I went through puberty.
Today's airtight methodology is tomorrow's tragic myopia.
Here's just one incident of an illegal bringing disease into the US:
http://news.yahoo.com/arrest-warrant-issued-man-tuberculosis...
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
What really matters is the cost-to-benefit ratio. A jab in the arm vs denying someone immigration, decide whatever you want but it's a sliding scale, not black-and-white.
And nice job putting words into my mouth, I didn't say you HAD to be against Y, I said you SHOULD. And it wasn't denying immigration I was talking about, it was illegal aliens. Different words mean different things.
Perhaps if doctors understood the facts better, and could explain them better, this wouldn't be a problem:
I'm parsing it as "You're not allowed <to use> science" or "You're not allowed <to know> science", but it's right on the line of believable that I could see that sentence being used genuinely in another dialect.
So I guess it's "allowed" which is being used in a way I'm unfamiliar with.
Congratulations, you've amazingly found a way to be even worse than the antivaxxers. I didn't think it was possible.