Anti-vaccine folks don’t have to just turn to Facebook or the Sears Vaccine Book anymore – they are preparing their own binders of anti-vaccine misinformation.
How does that work?
Binders of Anti-Vaccine Misinformation
Apparently, they just collect and print all of the anti-vaccine articles from their typical copypasta arguments and load them all up into binders.
Here is one the entries from Ashley Everly‘s binder, from the section on “asymptomatic transmission and shedding:”
Does it provide evidence for asymptomatic transmission or shedding of measles?
Nope.
The child had a rash after having his measles vaccine and had the flu. He likely didn’t have measles. Not even vaccine-associated measles.
Anyway, as is typical for these binders, they only use one example that might reinforce their argument, but leave out all of the ones that don’t.
“In the
end we are left with a powerful sense of knowledge – false knowledge. Confirmation bias leads to a high level of confidence, we feel we are right in our gut. And when confronted with someone saying we are wrong, or promoting an alternate view, some people become hostile.The Dunning-Kruger effect is not just a curiosity of psychology, it touches on a critical aspect of the default mode of human thought, and a major flaw in our thinking. It also applies to everyone – we are all at various places on that curve with respect to different areas of knowledge. You may be an expert in some things, and competent in others, but will also be toward the bottom of the curve in some areas of knowledge.”
Steven Novella on Lessons from Dunning-Kruger
These binders are just like their Facebook groups – echo chambers of anti-vaccine misinformation.
They won’t help you do research about vaccines and they certainly won’t help you win any debates or arguments with someone who truly knows something about vaccines.
More On Those Binders of Anti-Vaccine Misinformation
- Are Anti-Vaccine Folks Smarter Than the Rest of Us?
- The Dunning-Kruger Awards
- 10 Reasons You Aren’t Vaccinating Your Kids
- Using Pubmed to Do Research About Vaccines
- What Are the Greatest Tricks Anti-Vaccine Folks Use to Persuade Parents to Skip Vaccines?
- More Questions to Help You Become a Vaccine Skeptic
- What is the vaccine guide?
- Ashley Cate’s response to my review of her vaccine guide
- The Vaccine Guide: Cherry picked studies and deceptive highlighting in the service of antivaccine pseudoscience
- Let’s talk about Ashley Everly and her “Vaccine Guide” binder full of…A focus review on the “Ingredients” section.