> The modern anti-vax movement has been traced back to Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent 1998 Lancet paper
As far as I can tell, the modern movement is fueled by personal anecdotes of family members / friends having young children present with autism after certain developmental milestones. The family goes, what went wrong? Well, we recently got them a bunch of shots, maybe it was that. Combined with the expanding vaccination schedule those coincidences are increasingly likely to occur. Then yeah that paper comes up when the families do a bit of research which does add more conviction to the belief.
You'd think so but the rate of autism in the US just keeps going up, it's something like 1 in 31 kids now. Many people will know someone with an anecdote. Social media definitely does its part though, I agree.
If you’ve got elementary-school aged children you’re almost certainly just one degree of separation away from a parent whose kid has an autism diagnosis or something similar.
Came to say this. Most people now aren't aware of the paper. It's the 1) anecdotes from parents, 2) memes about how the Amish don't have autism, 3) distrust of institutions and pharma companies.
You've got "post hoc ergo propter hoc" plus the naturalistic fallacy. Might as well label the vaccines as a needle full of capitalism juice.
As far as I can tell, the modern movement is fueled by personal anecdotes of family members / friends having young children present with autism after certain developmental milestones. The family goes, what went wrong? Well, we recently got them a bunch of shots, maybe it was that. Combined with the expanding vaccination schedule those coincidences are increasingly likely to occur. Then yeah that paper comes up when the families do a bit of research which does add more conviction to the belief.