r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 16h ago
Medicine Study of 2.5 million children finds no link between MMR vaccine and autism.
https://www.psypost.org/study-of-2-5-million-children-finds-no-link-between-mmr-vaccine-and-autism/4.8k
u/daheefman 16h ago
Now anti-vaxxers will stop claiming it does, right? ... Right?
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u/lpan000 16h ago
Science to some people is a scam.. because they don’t get someone may know more than their gut
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u/melekin 16h ago
They think that scientists do some witchcraft (which actually looks like it, considering how advanced it is). But since they dehumanize scientists, they do not realize that scientists are just curious people who actually think more about the problems that they also care about.
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u/NonCorporealEntity 16h ago
They think every scientist and every doctor is too dumb to question what they're told. Literally. The doubters don't even understand the process of discovering and learning something. Everything they know has been told to them by someone else, so they think science and medicine is the same. Like someone at the top just makes things up and everyone else just believes it. Never realizing thats exactly what's happening at thier church.
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u/melekin 15h ago
If someone says "scientists did not do their research, they do not question what they are told", my goto answer is;
"Scientists actually love when something goes unexpected. It is every scientist dream to find a major finding. If you have a finding like this and if that is true, many scientists will actually compete with each other to collaborate with you and make sure you are heard. If noone does, then probably you are wrong."
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u/Aethoni_Iralis 13h ago edited 12h ago
I ran into a creationist who used the example of Semmelweis and his advocacy of hand washing as evidence that science refuses to accept truths they find uncomfortable.
I said “that’s a very good point, scientists today still don’t agree with Semmelweis, as evidence by the lack of handwashing before sanitized procedures and the lack of handwashing before surgeries. Oh wait.”
He got mad and ended the conversation.
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u/StoneGoldX 9h ago
Other ways to get them to end the conversation, the best example they have is over 170 years old.
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u/Embarrassed_Age8554 5h ago
But the case of Semmelweis is an example from a time when medicine was hardly a science at all. Back then, few doctors applied the scientific method, and in the US, especially, it was possible to graduate from a medical school and call yourself a physician without ever having set foot in a lab or dissected a cadaver.
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u/Aethoni_Iralis 4h ago
I agree, science was in its unformed infancy at that time.
As my pharmacist friend likes to hyperbolically joke, medicine at the time was sometimes “you’ve got ghosts in your bones, you should do cocaine about it!”
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u/KingFlerp 11h ago
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
— Isaac Asimov
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u/arealdoctor25 15h ago
No no no, its not that we dont question. It is just we get these fat imaginary “thanks for hurting kids” checks in the mail monthly from BIG PHARMA!
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u/malthar76 14h ago
Thank Jeebus for Ivermetcin* to save us from big pharma!
Ivermectin was discovered and commercialized by Merck in the 1980s, and now is produced as a generic animal dewormer.
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u/billhillybob 14h ago
I studied Theology at a legitimate accredited university, including classes in Hebrew and Greek. When I went back home and listened to my small town pastor pretend to "read from the original Greek" from the pulpit I laughed out loud. Needless to say the old biddies were not happy. My favorite Pastor Don mistranslation was that he insisted that at the wedding at Cana, the word most often translated as "wine" is really the word for "grape juice". Never mind that the whole point of the narrative is that the characters were like "hey wait a minute, why did you bring out the good stuff after we're all drunk?"
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u/Earguy AuD | Audiology | Healthcare 11h ago
I was raised on "Jesus's wine was actually grape juice" in our church. Astounding.
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u/billhillybob 11h ago
It isn't uncommon. If your entire world view is based on believing unlikely things based upon obviously inconsistent information it isn't surprising if you make up laughable facts to support your beliefs.
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u/zeustke165 15h ago
They also don't understand the scientific method. Hypothesis - "well they're just guessing"
Theory of .... - "see they don't know for sure."They don't understand that in science even something that has been proven by tons of data to be overwhelmingly the most likely truth, it's still just called a theory because science is always looking to prove itself wrong, not correct. They take this as those in the scientific fields to be stupid. They don't understand that the scientific method is designed to eliminate bias, because they themselves are highly biased.
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u/ausmed 14h ago
They also don't understand logic.
'It's all about the money. Doctors get kickbacks for giving vaccinations. They just want people to get sick'. Yeah, doctors get kickbacks FROM insurance companies.
Why would insurance companies pay doctors for giving vaccines? Insurance companies have to pay loads of money if someone gets sick, so logically they would only incentivise things that result in LESS people getting sick. Therefore, if it's all about money, vaccines must result in less people being sick, saving insurance companies money.
There's literally no other logical way for insurance companies to make money from promoting vaccines but nope. They're all just making people sick to get paid.
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u/lanicorain 12h ago
US healthcare is not only highly, ridiculously inefficient and costly, it's also actively hurting the average citizen's main point of interaction with the scientific method. My third world country has free public healthcare and anyone that gets sick can personally, quickly attest to the efectiveness of the science of modern medicine as they recover. We still get some anti-vax weirdos, because of Facebook groups, of course, but anti-science sentiment in general is way less than that of the USers.
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u/scalyblue 13h ago
The way I like to word it for laypersons is that a hypothesis is a guess that can be proven wrong, and once proven wrong, becomes a fact , and a theory is what you call a bunch of facts that paints a picture that’s so correct that not only can you use it to predict how things will turn out, any picture you want to paint in the future has to include and make sense of all of the existing picture. Yes it’s a bit wordy but I’ve had 1 hour of sleep and I have very little editing equipment left
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u/W0gg0 14h ago
“They think that scientists do some witchcraft (which actually looks like it, considering how advanced it is).”
On the contrary, it looks like witchcraft to people with low-IQ and those entrenched in religious beliefs.
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u/no-sleep-only-code 15h ago
They literally think the government is run by demons.
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u/usernameforthemasses 13h ago
To the uneducated, everything they are ignorant about looks like sorcery. It's the main mechanism of religion, and works well to manipulate people.
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u/Osoromnibus 14h ago
That's not far off. From my experience, they think smarter people have access to a magic button that does everything they don't understand and that they're just being excluded from using it. Anecdotally I.e, when people ask how to get the thing used to "make" computer programs.
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u/PhantomNomad 16h ago
"I did my own research!"
Problem is their research never included actual scientific papers or methods.
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u/Oderus_Scumdog 15h ago
When I read this, I automatically add the preceding phrase in my head:
"I decided what Research is"
So it becomes: "I decided what Research is and then did my own!"
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u/USNWoodWork 15h ago
It’s almost like we need a verb to specify scientific research done at proper facility with published papers that doesn’t mean the same thing as an individual looking stuff up with their smartphone/PC.
Notice I said a verb specifically. A single word that means scientific research with peer review.
Or we need a word that is a comedic interpretation that means the exact negative opposite to poke fun at the Facebook research crew. Like “I don’t care about your me-search. Studies conducted by MIT and Kansas State University say “X”.
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u/RhapsodyofMagic 15h ago
Always, always ask them what research they'll accept.
If they say they want to see proof of something, ask them first what proof they'd believe. If they say they don't trust science or medical journals or something like that, then just walk away. They'll only trust sources that agree with their stance and you're wasting your time.
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u/numbersthen0987431 12h ago
It's like the Dr Mike vs 20 antivaxxers jubilee episode. He asked one of the ladies "what can I say to make you change your mind today?", and her response was "nothing".
And that's the basis for their whole understanding: it's not about science or evidence, its about belief and narrative. They don't understand it and they don't want to understand it, and so they go off on belief of what "makes sense" to them. But their belief is based on not understanding what is happening, and so they get stuck in a cycle.
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u/Hubert_J_Cumberdale 10h ago
This is the key to maintaining sanity and inner peace. The two most anti-vaxx people I know don't want "all sorts of random, unknown chemicals" in their bodies. They both vape regularly, smoke cigarettes occasionally and use recreational street drugs every once in a while. So obviously, that's a lie.
When asked what evidence they'd accept, they pretty much say none because their entire rationale is that they do not trust the government. The best I could come up with is asking why they think our government is even capable of pulling something like this off.
Then all you have to do is name a few examples of gross government incompetence (from both parties) because they do agree with those. It gets them thinking a little and it's usually a good way to end the discussion in an amicable way.
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u/fresh-dork 9h ago
i got that from some people who didn't like my conclusions. when i said NIH and the UK equivalent, they got even madder
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u/mmcmonster 15h ago
Cool. You did your own research? Publish! Wouldn't you like the fame of having your name in those prestigious journals?
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u/rotsono 14h ago
"Scientific papers and stuff is nice, but what about my uncle's brother's wife who got the covid vaccine and then died?!?! and someone told me they got a child after getting the vaccine and it got 3 arms?! dont trust this science they all lying to you!11!!"
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u/TintedApostle 14h ago
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
- Isaac Asimov
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u/prberkeley 12h ago
"For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible." -CS Lewis
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u/ElegantHope 14h ago
My dad would always counter me discussing any study I found fascinating with "you know they have to find results that satisfy who pays them, right?" And go on to claim/suggest subtly that that study is funded by Democrats to change public opinion. It was so annoying because it would be the case for ANY study I brought up - from dinosaurs having feathers to me nerding out about geology and talking about a study of the Earth's mantle and how it looks without any water on it.
It just taught me to close myself off from him instead of having any genuine conversations with him. Which sucked because I just needed him to be my dad, not a conspiracy theorist. That mindset just sucks people in and refuses to let them go because it makes them so scared of whatever boogeyman they have been convinced of. And I think it really locks in as they get older because they feel that they don't have any reason to change because they're the elder, they should be right.
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u/AppropriateScience9 13h ago
Ugh. What's really depressing about that is most of the researchers who look at this stuff are funded by federal grants at universities, federal agencies, and health departments. So the money they're working for is taxpayer money. And part of being able to get grants is making sure your research holds to certain scientific standards and isn't compromised by conflicts of interests.
So, if anything the scientists are being paid by the Federal government. Those grants are created by Congress and the executive agencies are the ones divvying them out to (usually) the states who then turn around and divvy them out to universities and research institutions if the state agencies aren't doing the research themselves.
Even though there are some additional layers, everyone knows it's the politicians at the federal level who control the purse strings. The Democrats are usually the ones who fund this stuff. The Republicans are usually the ones who defund it. It used to be that BOTH parties funded scientific research because it was an obviously good thing for everyone.
My theory is that it changed because the science started coming up with answers that directly challenged the morality of capitalism and all forms of bigotry. And since billionaires fund federal politicians via legalized bribery, the Republicans started defunding science and the Democrats didn't always put up a fight or restore it when they had the chance.
Now Russell Vought wants to cut even more based on ideological grounds and he's trying to eliminate all those safeguards that protected science from political meddling.
If Republicans succeed at this, then they will have CREATED the kind of world your dad already thinks exists, except it's go to be for the benefit of Republicans and billionaires.
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u/ElegantHope 13h ago
He's passed away by now too, so my dad is never going to see how bad it'll get because he was a supporter of Republicans and Trump. He only got a taste of Trump's terrible side and was starting to slip, but still hated Biden more
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u/recycled_ideas 15h ago
because they don’t get someone may know more than their gut
The problem is that people don't understand what "their gut" is. They think that it's some inborn thing with some fixed quality, but it's not. Your gut is the subconscious application of your experience.
So what happens is that people use "their gut" at work or in things that they know super well and it's really really good. And they think that it's transferrable to something they don't know anything about when it's not.
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u/JayNotAtAll 15h ago
I think some people have a hard time understanding that there are people who are smarter than them and capable of deeper thought processes.
They also don't trust authority of people smarter than them. In reality, smart people rarely have any actual authority. Like they don't have the power to arrest you for disagreeing or whatever.
However, they have influence over people with power because they should. If we are talking about public health, who should I as a policy maker listen to? A public health expert from Hopkins or a mechanic?
Doesn't mean that the mechanic is a bad person or that he isn't good at his job. But this is WAY outside of his field.
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u/remotectrl 14h ago
All good points. I think it’s also about deflecting blame. If they can say Big Pharma stole their precious child by giving them autism, then all of these problems aren’t their fault and they are absolved of guilt. It’s sad.
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u/Leading_Line2741 15h ago
The anti-intellectualism is wild.."I don't understand it so it must not be true". Bruh, some people are smarter than us. I trust thousands of Ph.D scientists in concurrence over my gut any day. They're smarter than me, and that's great.
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u/BasvanS 15h ago
Not necessarily smarter, but at the very least decades of dedication to studying and working through failures. Thousands and thousands of hours of hard work.
Sure, usually smarter too, but that might be hard see/admit, but the dedication is what truly separates us.
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u/jugglegeese 11h ago
"do your own research" and their research is a bunch of Facebook posts and "mama knows best"
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u/outerproduct 15h ago
You can't reason someone out of a point of view they didn't reason themselves into.
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u/PainfulRaindance 15h ago
Ya know that’s one of the main intelligence differences between humans and chimps\ apes, is that they cannot comprehend others having the same knowledge they do. They can see and learn from others doing things, but they can’t organize and say “since you’re good at this, you specialize, and I’ll do this other thing and get good at it. They just fumble around in their own made up worlds.
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u/userousnameous 16h ago
Dumb are gonna dumb. Whether to get a vaccine or not is above the mental competence level of a good sized segment of people, and it shouldn't be a choice.
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u/NonCorporealEntity 16h ago
I'm sure, this being the 3953rd study showing no link, they have absolutely no reason to think otherwise now.
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u/ACCTAGGT 16h ago
Indeed. How could someone think otherwise. Clearly information like this takes precedence over any other… let’s say views.
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u/sarcosaurus 16h ago
Yes, anti-vaxxers are famous for their high regard for science and verified facts
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u/ChadEmpoleon 16h ago
To them, all evidence is just further proof that “they” are trying to suppress the truth.
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u/code_archeologist 15h ago
Oh you sweet Summer child, the more evidence that we show the anti-vaxxers that their beliefs are wrong, only causes them to further entrench themselves in their misbegotten fantasies.
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u/TrulyOutrageous42 13h ago
Aka "you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into"
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u/JimiusRostock 15h ago
Just imagine how 1 fraudulent researcher has been able to cause so much harm. Not just from kids not being vaccinated, but also prompting the removal of thiomersal from vaccines so their shelf life reduced dramatically, which was problematic in developing countries.
And of course the millions of dollars and tens of thousands of manhours spend just to proof something we already knew.
And he didn't even apologize, or try to make amends. He just leaned in and started profiting off of his own lies.
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u/JeSuisUnAnanasYo 14h ago
Imagine sleeping at night knowing you are the direct reason that so many children have died or been maimed
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u/Syscrush 15h ago
Why are we still doing this? There have been literally zero credible claims to the contrary.
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u/LightOfMithras 14h ago
... I personally believe it comes from selfish parents and neurotypical persons imposing their fears and feelings onto people with autisim. The idea to me is that if these parents can blame vaccines, then they feel there is a controllable way to put all their feelings of frustration, anger self-guilt, and the idea "they did this to their kid" vs some big conspiracy or medical malpractice taking on the slings and arrows for them.
But no one needs all this guilt and misplaced anger. People with ASD are just people. Neurotypical persons need to adjust to the fact that some people are different than they are. My two cents.
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u/Syscrush 14h ago
But why are the uninformed neuroses of a small number of people driving continued massive studies?
Like, we don't see a new study every year indicating that there's no such thing as ghosts, or that nobody actually drives better when they're drunk. This is on the same level.
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u/Aggravating-Candy-31 14h ago
i assume it’s out of a hope they can logic people out of a position they feared their way into
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u/KuriousKhemicals 14h ago
Because some guy who thinks he drives better drunk has the possibility to affect a few other people once, and then there are legal penalties if he does or maybe even if he doesn't but just gets caught before he hurts anyone. Because he has the right to get drunk, just not the right to also operate a car at the same time.
Someone who believes in ghosts likely affects literally no one but themselves.
Anti vaxxers end up affecting usually NOT themselves because most of them are vaccinated already, but their kids. And it's not each anti vax family that gets unlucky independently - it spreads and they often know each other, so typically as soon as one unvaxed child gets sick, it's as if one drunk driving crash suddenly triggered every other drunk driver in town to get in a crash within the month. And then it also takes down a bunch of other people who had nothing to do with it, some of whom are the ones who selectively the most harmed, including people who couldn't get the vaccine due to allergies or immune system problems, babies who were too young for it, and elderly people who got the vaccine decades ago and their immune system isn't as good as it used to be.
One drunk driver gets unlucky and probably has 2-5 faultless victims (as with disease, it may be fatal or may be survived). One anti vaxxer's kid gets unlucky and it could be hundreds. And it's perfectly legal.
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u/JeSuisUnAnanasYo 14h ago
It's like a weird modern version of the changeling myth ppl. Even with technology, humans are scared, stupid creatures who want to find someone to blame for their child not being perfect
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u/Gorstag 9h ago
This is definitely the core group that buys into the BS. Another sizable subset are the individuals taking advantage of this large subset by feeding tailored misinformation for some sort of agenda. Propaganda if you will.
And since we know who is currently spreading it... we know where the blame (right)fully belongs.
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u/Vox_Causa 15h ago
You can't reason someone out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into.
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u/Themoosemingled 15h ago
RFK jr will misquote and misrepresent it.
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u/code_archeologist 15h ago
That is the guy I point to when I make the argument that free speech should not protect the repeating of verifiably false statements.
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u/ContributionNo8787 15h ago
It's never been about autism, they just desperately want a world where they're the correct minority and everyone else is wrong without putting any effort into learning
They're just stupid narcissists
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u/ThisOneTimeAtLolCamp 15h ago
It's only 2.5 million! There's billions of people! How can we be so sure with such a low percentile?!
But seriously, it's actually frustrating that a lot of children are going to face possible health crisis because of these sort of people.
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u/29187765432569864 15h ago
they will say the study was fake. Fake kids, fake everything. Delusional people are that way. Probably caused by a vaccine.
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u/wihannez 14h ago
Science vs some grifter in YouTube/Government. There’s no easy way to convince people in a cult.
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u/chilltopian 15h ago
They don't believe that it's possible for the science community to tell the truth, so no.
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u/hamfinity 15h ago
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair
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u/Nevarien 15h ago
Kind of ridiculous that there needs to be such a huge study to prove some bloody idiots wrong, but if that will save lives it's worth it in the end.
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u/PainfulRaindance 16h ago
Yeah, been that way forever.
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u/Maleficent_Sky_1865 15h ago
Well for a hundred years anyway! We have literally been using vaccines for over a century and people still dont believe in them. It amazes me.
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u/PainfulRaindance 13h ago
I was lucky enough to have a centenarian great grandmother. She told me how she lost siblings early, and that she had 7 siblings, because they worked on a farm and chances are a kid would die to disease before they mature.
Now people can’t see past last week, and base their info on what politician burns the other better. That’s fine I got my shots. Go ahead and mess around. We’re already seeing measles come back.21
u/Maleficent_Sky_1865 12h ago
My dad has told me several stories of his friends getting polio as children. And never walking again, or dying. What a terrible disease. And now it’s making a comeback because people are scared of vaccines that have worked for decades. Imagine one day you catch polio just like you catch a cold and you never walk again.
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u/celticchrys 1h ago
Ever watch the Great British Bake-off or any of many other shows with the famous British TV cook Mary Berry? Ever wonder why her one hand seems to have some slight deformity and off movement? Polio. That's how recently we overcame that.
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u/divDevGuy 7h ago
First human vaccine was for smallpox in 1796. While you're not wrong as 230 years is over a century, you're under delivering how long vaccines have been around.
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u/coconutpiecrust 16h ago
It would not matter to those this study needs to convince, unfortunately. The data is whatever you want to believe these days.
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u/nnnnottoday 16h ago
Some won't believe this, sure. But many parents who are considering not vaccinating their kids (because of lies fed to them by close ones or social media) may be swayed by this.
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u/coconutpiecrust 16h ago
One can only hope.
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u/aerkith 14h ago
I dunno. A study of 2.5 million is good and all. But my friend's neighbour's kid got the Jungle juice and now they have autism, a peanut allergy and a mullet. Explain that.
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u/TheBlackCat13 15h ago edited 12h ago
If they haven't been satisfied by the last few hundred studies then I don't think one more will make a difference
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u/mental_reincarnation 14h ago
I’m so tired of reality not mattering to these people. Skepticism early on is ok, it’s expected. But study after study after study after study…
But these people substitute our collective reality with their own. And what for?
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u/coconutpiecrust 14h ago
I remember reading that conspiracy theorists, as a rule, are usually inept and lead insignificant lives. Being a part of a conspiracy theory group makes them feel special and as if they have some kind of insider knowledge.
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u/Jimmy_Fromthepieshop 10h ago
They didn't form their stupid opinion using facts so you won't convince them otherwise using facts.
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u/SenescenseSteel 16h ago
1 article written by a complete fraud with falsified data
40 year soccermoms in facebook echochambers: "well this article says otherwise".
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u/duffking 15h ago
A fraud who held a financial interest in having separate vaccines instead, no less.
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u/KuriousKhemicals 14h ago
I wonder how he feels about the fact that it didn't even benefit his alternate vaccine.
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u/awesome9001 15h ago
You don't get it dude. I got the flu vaccine last year. Next day BOOM my wife left me. How can you say vaccines are safe?
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u/Sweet_Bypass69 16h ago
From over 20 years ago too and at least 10-20 deeply thorough studies revalídated the facts since.
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u/viceversa 16h ago
Can someone cross post this to r/pennsylvania and maybe r/florida?
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u/muchgreaterthanG_O_D 16h ago
The people who need it arent online. At least in pa.
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u/suchalonelyd4y 15h ago
Yes they absolutely are. It's reductive to assume it's just the Amish who aren't vaccinating. It's plenty of raw milk fiends and anti-science wackadoodles too.
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u/Joe_Sisyphus 14h ago
The people who need this stapled to their foreheads are mainly on Facebook, not here.
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u/Standard_Meringue_26 15h ago
And r/canada. They have even worse rates of mmr vaccination than we do.
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u/vshawk2 15h ago
Will this ever die? Will we have to constantly research this specific issue?
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u/kombiwombi 14h ago
It is intensely annoying that Wakefield's fraud 27 years ago still diverts resources. But whilst his fraud is still believed, its claims must be convincingly countered.
Having said that, the implied belief of these antivax parents that they would rather have a dead child than an autistic child is disgusting.
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u/Lost-Pineapple9791 12h ago
The wildest part is he just wanted to promote his own vaccine, he wasn’t even trying to be anti vax
So the anti vax crew whole argument is from a guy selling vaccines…
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u/Redditer51 8h ago
It's extremely dehumanizing and hurtful. It's basically telling autistic people that you'd rather risk your child dying than be like them.
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u/lulu_l 11h ago
I wanted to write that when a deadly pandemic will hit us hard we'll relearn the imense benefits of vaccination, but corvid has proven that people would rather die and let and watch their loved ones suffer and die, literally, than change their minds about what they can see with their own eyes.
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u/Striky_ 11h ago
My mom worked in the ICU as a nurse during COVID. To this day she is convinced It wasn't more than a bad flu and the vaccination was a hoax. She literally saw hundreds of people die to symptoms very different to the flu. At some point people are just lost.
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u/light_at_the_end 8h ago
You'd be surprised that it might just be trauma coping. Making it out to be less than it was makes it easier to go into work and not be scared.
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u/not_a_moogle 15h ago
Unlikely. If rational thought couldnt convince those people, then dozens of studies wont.
They'll just claim its fake, or that one discredited study is enough to convince them that theres a conspiracy or that not everyone has the facts.
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u/Jollysatyr201 15h ago
“You must not have used a keyword search! Try ‘Vaccines cause autism’ instead”
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u/Pleasant_Pen8744 14h ago
My grandma went to her grave believing tomatoes were deadly poisonous. She also loved ketchup.
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u/CrashTestOrphan 13h ago
It's wild that Europeans could be hundreds of years further along in tomato sciences but aren't because everyone thought it was the evil poison apple for so long
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u/JynxYouOweMeASoda 15h ago
A bunch of wasted research on something we already know
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u/theMightBoop 12h ago
It would be nice if we could use these resources towards just learning more about autism.
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u/Squidly_Diddly 15h ago
Read it and weep, RFK, you degenerate.
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u/blujet320 14h ago edited 14h ago
They’ll just move the goal post and say it’s because of too many vaccines at once or that it’s caused by another vaccine, or they’ll ignore this and cite some random grifting doctor’s book as being the “truth”.
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u/theZinger90 14h ago
He cherry picks studies and cites studies that contradict his agenda, so he either would a) ignore this or b) claim it is corrupt or c) take one line out of context to "prove" his point.
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u/Wise_Monkey_Sez 15h ago
I hate this normalisation of the reversal of the burden of proof.
There is no credible evidence of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
There is no need to investigate this topic any further.
And in an era where "balanced journalism" has been confused with "presenting credible evidence alongside crazies" every time a study like this hits the news it amplifies the voices of the crazies.
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u/beepbeepsheepbot 14h ago
I got into it with someone over this. They kept asking why autism numbers were going up and I explained that was because of better diagnostic criteria and more adults particularly women were now getting diagnosed. They wanted to keep looping back around to vaccines. They don't actually care, they just want to villify vaccines and autism and this was a convenient vehicle to do both.
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u/2074red2074 13h ago
Because in 1950 that weird kid who really liked trains was just a weird kid who really liked trains. You weren't autistic unless you were nonverbal.
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u/sprashoo 14h ago
A person’s basis for understating the world is a very precious thing to them, that’s why they keep looping back to it. They aren’t going to give it up just because a stranger presents some facts.
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u/funkme1ster 14h ago
No, I'm sure if we simply present enough objective, coherent, empirical data, the people who based their worldview on a single faulty study of ten kids 30 years ago by a man who has been stripped of all credentials after he was found to have faked that study for money will acknowledge the error of their judgment and adjust their worldview accordingly.
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u/catscanmeow 14h ago
they didnt base their worldview on a faulty study. theyve based it on a massive propaganda campaign that preyed upon their fear of needles.
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u/DirtyProjector 9h ago
Clearly there's a link between water and autism, every single person who has autism had parents who drank water.
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u/giddy-girly-banana 6h ago
Every person that has died in the history of humanity had water in their system. Think about that.
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine 16h ago
Study of 2.5 million children finds no link between MMR vaccine and autism
A new study of over 2.5 million children provides evidence that receiving the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine before age two is not associated with an increased risk of developing autism. The findings, published in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, indicate that the precise timing of the immunization was not linked to a child’s likelihood of being diagnosed with the developmental condition.
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u/Druggist147 16h ago
If antivaxers could read, they would be so upset by these results.
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u/Apprehensive_Hat_444 15h ago
Being upset about having been wrong is only ever valid if you're mad at the people who made you believe something false on purpose.
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u/One_Purchase_3127 15h ago
The only link between Autism and vaccines are the dipshit antivaxers
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u/forakora 14h ago
'I'd rather my kids be dead than weirdos!'
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u/sprashoo 14h ago
To be fair, I don’t think that’s what anti-vaxxers think they are standing for. They’ve been led to believe that vaccines don’t protect against any diseases, and are instead some kind of unexplainable conspiracy
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u/Ricktor_67 14h ago
There's a link, it's the opposite though. Vaccinated kids are slightly less likely to get autism.
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u/God_of-Games 16h ago
No amount of research will stop anti vaxer. These research are actually for the vaxer because we bother to look at real science
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u/macplayer 15h ago
Damn, was really hoping my daughter would become a sysadmin.
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u/CaptAwesomeness 15h ago
Don't despair, she can still be a reddit mod.
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u/Such-Echidna-0901 15h ago
I wonder what the mental state behind reddit mods really is.
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u/amishius 15h ago
Having been a mod on two education related subs, it was mostly "Someone has to do it so it doesn't shut down." You know, until the death threats rolled in.
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u/blatantregard 15h ago
I keep conjecturing why a child with Austism is somehow a worse fate than DYING FROM MEASLES!?
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u/ChickenWithCashewNut 10h ago
Because there's an overlap between antivaxxers and people that would have supported Aktion T4.
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u/rndljfry 9h ago
living with autism is probably more expensive than dying of measles. but also no one will believe their own precious child will die of measles, especially if they’re doing magical woo woo to protect them from big pharma
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u/ImhotepsServant 15h ago
Andrew Wakefield should be in prison for fraud, minor abuse, and manslaughter
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u/madchemist09 4h ago
vs a debunked study of 12 . Yet, our government will still choose the study of 12.
So fking embarrassing.
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u/Pisnaz 16h ago
It pisses me off that we have to keep running the same study, to find the same results due a quack doctor and legion of idiots. This research time and effort could have been used for other studies.
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u/Dollar_Bills 16h ago
The MMR combo has been around since the 70s, the increase in autism rates happened much later.
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u/HarrMada 15h ago
There obviously isn't an increase in autism rates either, it's just more people are getting diagnosed. The autism was always there.
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u/EpictetanusThrow 15h ago
We just called them “interested in trains” or “my son loves dinosaurs!”
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u/Shedcape 15h ago
Not sure why people have such a hard time grasping that. At my company we implemented a bug reporting tool to make it easy for any employee to report bugs they see. Suddenly we had a lot more bug reports. Some people got concerned our software was getting buggier than before because of the increase in bugs reported. No, the bugs were always there. They are just visible and tracked now.
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u/atlantagirl30084 16h ago
Imagine the money that has been wasted on these studies, especially the most recent ones, to try to prove a negative for anti-vaxxers. There will never be a study that will convince them to change their minds.
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u/NamelessCabbage 15h ago
Only when measles takes a child may they rethink it. But who am I kidding - they don't think.
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u/atlantagirl30084 14h ago
There was one case where an unvaccinated child died of measles and the parents said it was God’s will and they wouldn’t have done anything different.
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u/Coffee_pecking_order 15h ago
Every rational person already knew this.
Every irrational anti-vaxxer won't believe it.
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u/JRBlue1 14h ago
Study of 2.5 million children finds there is still no link between MMR vaccine and autism, despite unfounded claims to the contrary*
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u/BravinatorLX2 15h ago
there is a link between conservatism and child abuse though.
it's literally playing out right before our eyes right now.
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u/Sylvonara 10h ago
As an autistic person, I want to know why people would prefer dead babies over babies like me anyway.
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u/ordosays 16h ago
Can we finally move on and just fine anyone that says otherwise with damages for misinformation spread calculated to per incident? Please.
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u/BitcoinMD 16h ago
There were already studies with more children than this showing the same thing. This will change zero minds.
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u/Hoblitygoodness 15h ago
That's nice.
But it won't stop those folks from saying there is.
So there's that.
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u/farfaleen 16h ago
I wish that the energy being out into disproving disinformation could be put into something more constructive. I also believe vaccine education is important. I just don't know if the effort will have any pay off what so ever because vaccine deniers don't want facts.
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u/TheSanityInspector 16h ago
Disproving disinformation *is* constructive.
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u/LoamyLoamisLoamy 15h ago
Someone who believes that they are being lied to is not going to believe those who they think are lying to them. They are already not believing the studies that say vaccines are safe, so why would they believe them now?
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u/SyndromeMack33 14h ago
This won't matter to the idiots of the world. One discredited paper was published to the contrary and suddenly "they are suppressing the facts".
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u/starcoder 16h ago
Sadly, this is falling on deaf ears. The people who need to see it likely won’t and/or they won’t accept the findings.
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u/ProfessorUltra 15h ago
Millions of dollars of science funding all to prove a point we knew decades ago. Glad we have evidence like this, but what a shame that all these researchers’ time and resources go into backwards-looking research questions.
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u/Nearbyatom 15h ago
Too late. Now 40% of the US thinks this article is fake and biased. Can't close Pandora's box now. Even if Andrew Wakefield came out and admitted to lying, the antivax will still not believe.
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u/Delicious_Volume3306 15h ago
Just a reminder that anti-vaccers don't care about evidence because they've chosen what they want to believe. To them, truth isn't objective but subjective.
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u/Sweepy_time 15h ago
Anti-Vaxxers: Well, I'm betting they cherry picked those 2.5 million children to skew the results.
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u/LavenderPearlTea 14h ago
It’s infuriating how much research money continues ti be wasted proving this point against and again. Only to have people rely on social media memes instead.
Facebook killed The Enlightenment.
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u/engagetangos 14h ago
So they think children caught autism after the shot? How do you catch autism?
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u/delphinous 12h ago
that won't stop the anti-vaxxers, they can't read.
jokes aside, thats a really large sample size, so it's definitely a really strong set of evidence.
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