Anti-vaxxers: You haven't 'done your research'

Hey there, anti-vaccination mothers, how are you doing today? Pretty good, it seems to me. I’ve heard a lot from you this week, in my travels online and in real life, and I’ve realised that wow, there are still mums out there putting their kids lives at risk by denouncing vaccinations. There’s a lot of you out there, lurking on Facebook or hiding in closed anti-vaccination groups where nobody is allowed to disagree. A few of you pipe up from time to time on threads in Facebook groups , defending ‘a mother’s instinct’ and explaining that you know what you’re talking about because you’ve ‘done your research’.

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I’d love to believe that you’ve done your research. But I know you haven’t, because if you had, you’d know that vaccinations save lives, wipe out diseases that otherwise deform, or even kill, children, and protect the weak in the community. But I’ll take you at your word, because I want to believe you. So, let’s talk about your research. What, exactly did you do in your ‘research’?
Did you use Google to find out the majority of your information? If you did, you ‘haven’t done your research’. Did you try even using a different search engine than Google to find out if you got the same results, in the same order, and perhaps see what rankings were being bought, and by who?

Well, even if you’ve done that much, now you’ve had a bit of a tinker online, and you’ve found some official-looking links and sites. One for example that says “the first vaccines (smallpox) were derived from pus and blood scraped from sores on cows and horses, then put on a lancet, scalpel, or needle and jabbed into someone’s arm.” That’s pretty strong language, and doesn’t mention that smallpox has basically disappeared after killing more 7 million people when it was rampant. That site also carries an ad – yes, monetizing 'healthcare' - a product that cures “99% of ALL diseases -- cancer, diabetes, heart disease.” Sure. Tell that to Belle Gibson, who made a killing from selling just this same line to desperate people.

Anyway, great you’ve found a site that scares you. What now? Do you look at the sites and check them against mythbuster sites like Snopes.com? How about looking at their scare stories and then double checking details like names, ages, and places? Do you look these incidents up separately and check both sides of the coverage? Maybe at this stage you even add a few new friends or join a few Facebook groups to find out more. You’re looking for confirmation now, and your confirmation bias will likely see you finding reasons to agree with people, so you don’t have to vaccinate, because you’re afraid. And at this stage, you’ve still just Googled. That’s it, and you’re probably halfway to making up your mind. You haven’t spoken to anyone , probably, or maybe a friend of a friend tells you a story that confirms again your decision is right. So, after all this Googling, who do you talk to, if you talk to anyone at all? Do you seek out people who disagree with you, or run to people who only increase your fear? Do you look up experts independtly and contact them yourself, first hand, at the source? Or read accounts from others? How many of them disagreed with you? Were they accredited, professional, qualified people? Is part of your argument against vaccines now telling a story you’ve heard second or even third-hand? Did you go to the source and ask the person in question about what happened, or take your friend’s word as true?How many times did you check something yourself, in person, or make a phone call to someone? To someone on your side, and someone who isn’t?

And so it goes on. The fearmongering has activated your ‘mother’s instinct’ so you naturally want to protect your child. But you’re scared of the wrong people. You haven’t done your research. You’ve done nothing but trawl the internet, the famously unregulated, un-policed internet, to make a decision about your child’s heath. What makes up your case is a patchwork of conspiracy theorists, anecdotal evidence, and snake oil salesmen.

Don’t tell us ‘you’ve done your research’. You haven’t.

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