Paul Offit likes to tell a story about how his wife, pediatrician Bonnie Offit, was about to give a child a vaccination when the kid was struck by a seizure. Had she given the injection a minute sooner, Paul Offit says, it would surely have appeared as though the vaccine had caused the seizure and probably no study in the world would have convinced the parent otherwise. (The Offits have such studies at the ready — Paul is the director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and author of“Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All.”) Indeed, famous anti-vaxxer Jenny McCarthy has said her son’s autism and seizures are linked to “so many shots” because vaccinations preceded his symptoms.
But, as Offit’s story suggests, the fact that a child became sick after a vaccine is not strong evidence that the immunization was to blame. Psychologists have a name for the cognitive bias that makes us prone to assigning a causal relationship to two events simply because they happened one after the other: the “illusion of causality.” A study recently published in the British Journal of Psychology investigates how this illusion influences the way we process new information. Its finding: Causal illusions don’t just cement erroneous ideas in the mind; they can also prevent new information from correcting them.
More here – FivethirtyEightScience
The only good thing about the antivax movement is that it will probably die out 🙂
Interesting indeed. A constant battle for all of us isn’t it.
The main thing is to try to keep an open mind i guess and try to use critical thinking.
I reckon this article equally applies to both sides of any controversial topic. Topics like Climate change, Vaccination, 911 & JFK for example. However critical thinking regarding the herd mentality and money interests can be very enlightening
This issue is not about vaccinations. It is about our perception of cause and effect. We have to discipline our minds with regular doses of reality. If we do not, we set ourselves up for self-deception. There is a cure for the cause and effect deception syndrome. It is learning to separate cause and effect from the idea “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” The latter breeds is us a sense of immediacy, which is not necessarily true.
I have found that the best and most practical guidance for keeping cause and effect in perspective is establishing the following principle in my mind: “Cause and effect are not necessarily closely related in time and space.”