The Illustrated Case Against the Anti-Vax Movement

[holly_evolving]

The world needs more science journalists and less fear-mongers. We may get the media we deserve, but where does the junk news addiction come from in the first place?

http://tallguywrites.livejournal.com/148012.html

Comments

[wolf-nd-shadows.livejournal.com]

I really need to look into the why we live in a culture so prone to clinical paranoia. We'll believe that vaccines cause autism, Obama wants to kill your grandparents, or that facebook will stat charging money soon without basic research or question, but interestingly, if you quote a UN mental health study that shows US Mental illness rates are higher than in other, less developed countries, people bend over backwards to dismiss it trying to use commonly investigated errors that would have already been worked around in the peer review process.

[holly-evolving.livejournal.com]

I think a big part of it is that at our cores, we are not creatures of reason. We are instinctual and as quick to perceive threats as we were in the pre-agrarian days. Without lions and tigers and bears to eat us, we invent enemies that we can do something about. Pretty much, if you're not struggling to live, you go crazy. So we're prone to accept the things that we're told will kill us, so long as they appeal to our base instinct. Anything that requires reason and thought to understand, anything that isn't simple and clear-cut, comes under fire.

We're just monkeys, after all. We're not very bright.