RE: Are you entitled to your opinion?
What a great post. I really enjoyed reading that, and agree with your sentiments. One of my bugbears is the use of science. People love to use science to validate their own opinions, but they tend to forget that scientific studies have been used for arguments on both sides of the fence, vaccines causing autism being one of the big ones, there are so many studies that prove and disprove this. Let’s not forget that it wasn’t so long ago that cigarette advertisements used science to promote smoking, saying that physicians were claiming that smoking was good for your health! I’m sure I saw a headline to a news article recently saying that research has proven that coffee causes cancer, but again, not so long ago, I read somewhere that coffee was, in fact, good for you!... Opinions of fact, great stuff! Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I look forward to reading part 2! @dramamama
Right. Science is a process. Individual people or groups can do science poorly, or they can label things as science that are not science. And good science can be done that, over time and testing, turns out to have pointed to a false conclusion.
My mom - ever a searcher - at one point attended a church that claimed to combine religion and science. I went once, and it had the kind of people who said they could see your "aura". Anyway, this claim to science was absurd. One of the big proofs was that since the word "ohm" was used in talking about electricity, this was proof of the spiritual, because - guess what?! People often chant "ohm" when they meditate. Makes perfect sense, right?
It was a long time ago, and I'm probably forgetting some of their "reasoning".
Part of critical thinking is looking beyond labels. Just because something is called science, it doesn't necessarily fit within the rigorous process. Comparative studies examining scientific research are great for this. While any topic may have outliers, if most research points to one answer, you've got a lot more reason to trust that.
You are wrong to say "a lot of studies prove vaccines cause autism". There are NO studies which prove this. There was one study published in the Lancet (which started this whole mess) that made this claim, and was quickly confirmed to be unsound. If you want the truth of any topic like this, it's better to look at a comparative study if it's available. Here's one about vaccines, though it speaks to more than just autism: https://www.cmsri.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/MawsonStudyHealthOutcomes5.8.2017.pdf
Thanks for reading!
Thanks for your reply! And thanks for the link you shared. Both my boys are fully vaccinated by the way, and I tried to be as informed as possible before going ahead with their immunisations. I am friends with people in both camps when it comes to this topic, so I get bombarded quite a lot on social media with “studies” supporting their camp’s beliefs. I’m inclined to believe that there are no studies to prove this link, but try telling that to the anti-vax camp, and you’ll get something like the pic below as a response! It can all get a bit intense, just like the whole gun control issue, and it seems that the more opinions with supporting studies and facts are shared, the more polarised the two camps become. Anyway...... can’t wait for your part 2! Thanks again :)
Right. And that's where the whole opinion of fact vs opinion of taste conflict becomes problematic. If you've got certain tastes/values, you're likely going to be drawn to certain factual claims or studies. More or less falls under the umbrella of confirmation bias.