Is There A General Distrust Of Science And Scientists?

[jim360]

And if so, why, and what should be done about it?

I asked having just watched Thursday's Question time where once again the MMR row raised its ugly head, but the media representative defended the story as "reporting the facts". This is not even close to the truth, and the way media reports science is something that seriously should be made far better.

But the scandal itself is part of something more general. By and large the public went along with the story, despite just about every other scientist or expert who was asked going against it, and presumably doctors continued to advise taking the vaccine. So why did this turn into something so large? Is it because people distrust Scientists?

[LazyGun]

@LadyAlex - No, thats perfectly true - that, for MMR vaccine, compliance with the childhood vaccination schedule went down - but that can be attributed to the controversy that surrounded the MMR vaccine itself, I think.

What the MMR vaccine also did was to create a fair degree of distrust of vaccinations in general, so other elements of the childhood vaccination schedule were affected also.

There will be other factors that undoubtedly contribute too. The scandal around MMR arose not that long after the whole BSE- beef controversy.I think that vaccination was also a victim of its own success - many parents of that generation had never seen a case of polio, for example, or the true dangers of measles and mumps since they had become so rare....

[ladyalex]

I agree that the compliance with MMR went down because of the controversy surrounding it.
I still remain convinced that the government did not handle the issue at all well. adopting a high-handed attitude in the face of seriously reduced uptake.
"We're right and you'll do what we tell you " seemed to be the stance.
Well, they were right, but people didn't do what they were told. Given the scenario of reduced uptake, it was up to the government to find a better way of getting the vaccines into children rather than plugging away at the same old (accurate) story which was not working.

What is the incidence of death from measles ?
I am fully aware that the consequence of serious effects are appalling, but I would like to have an idea of how likely they are.

[LazyGun]

@Lady Alex.

I would not disagree with you regarding the way the government handled the MMR crisis. Many people I have spoken with have the same recollection and opinion of the handling.

One should not judge the severity or danger of an infectious disease solely upon its mortality rate.

In the developed world, the death rate is something like 1 in 1000 - still grounds for some real family tragedy, and fatalities might not be unexpected , if the Swansea outbreak continues, or the spread takes hold in somewhere like London, for instance....

You might find this paper of interest, LadyAlex.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1712354/

[Old_Geezer]

At the risk of derailing the thread the reason I blame the government is that, I suspect Wakfield felt, rightly or wrongly, that he was acting as a whistleblower; and we don't want to put such folk off. The media merely reported. It was the government who was in a position to act to avoid disaster, but chose to cause one instead.

[LazyGun]

@O_G I would agree with you that we should not discourage Whistleblowers, and the NHS for example have been grossly authoritarian, using gagging clauses to stifle such people.

Not sure we could ever conclude Wakefield was a whistleblower though.

Whilst a GE researcher at the Royal Free, he was approached by Richard Barr, a lawyer seeking to put a case together to launch a class action in the USA to present a case against the vaccine manufacturers.

It was Richard Barr who brought the children to Wakefield, and Wakefield was paid handsomely for his efforts - 450K. His did not seek ethical approval for his case study, and performed invasive investigations on the children brought to him.

Wakefield had a potential financial interest in discrediting the MMR vaccine; He had patented a measles vaccine of his own.

Wakefield might present himself as a kind of maverick researcher, bravely standing up to an uncaring establishment - and his supporters do the same, asserting conspiracy and more - but the evidence does not support that conclusion.This is the same conclusion that the GMC arrived at, when they struck him off the register.

I would urge everyone interested to read Brian Deers work on this.
http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-summary.htm

[slaney]

I remember the media debates on MMR well; a government spokesperson/expert would defend the safety of the vaccine, citing papers such as the Finnish trial which followed 1.8 million children over 14 years without seeing an excess of cases of autism. Their opponents would then accuse them of arrogance - so they were in a no win situation. It didn't really matter what they said - no one was listening.
To blame the government now, as Andrew Wakefield is doing in a self-serving
exercise, seems unfair.
If science and medical writers/commentators had a better grasp of scientific basics - the difference between a well designed study and a poor one, or even the difference between absolute and relative risk, that would be something, but I'm not holding my breath.

[jomifl]

Slaney /If science and medical writers/commentators had a better grasp of scientific basics / I think you have put you finger on it ...they would be scientists?

[ladyalex]

Slaney...my point is that, if no one was listening, it was someone's job to do something about that.
That was not to continue doing the same thing...the MMR is safe you must vaccinate your children repeated and repeated...
If you keep doing the same thing, you keep getting the same result....people were not listening and not vaccinating their children.

[slaney]

@jomifil- I think of many good commentators who do not have a science degree who understand the instances I have given above - the difference between a well designed study and a poor one etc
@ladyalex- it was someone's job to do something about people not listening.
What do you think they should have done, apart from reassuring and presenting the evidence?

[ladyalex]

Perhaps they could have looked at what would have been acceptable to parents...like separate vaccines.
I do not think that people did not take the triple vaccine because they were cavalier about their children catching measles etc....after all, I do not believe that there was any evidence that other vaccinations (whooping cough, diphtheria etc) were not taken. I think they were unwilling to , as they saw it , put their children at risk of dreadful consequences (autism) by their deliberate actions (having the MMR) as opposed to putting their children at risk of contracting measles, mumps or rubella, previously common childhood ailments, by leaving things to chance.

We will never know, of course.
But what we do know is that presenting the evidence and offering reassurance did not work.

[LazyGun]

Whilst we are sort of on the subject - article in the Independent today which is sort of on topic.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/warning-bad-science-can-damage-your-health-8581439.html

"but by 2010 the UK had one of the lowest levels of MMR coverage in a survey of European countries. What accounts for the difference is the way that sections of the British media, led by the Daily Mail, habitually push an anti-science agenda. British newspapers published hundreds of MMR scare stories (more than 1,200 in the peak year of 2002) alongside claims about "cures" for cellulite and "sightings" of UFOs."

[slaney]

I do realise what parents went through - there was a scare about the whooping cough vaccine in the 70s that gave me many a sleepless night.
Parents would not have been put in this dilemma had the media reported responsibly.

I'm with Ben Goldacre on this one - he firmly blames the media. Perhaps his book Bad Science should be on the national curriculum...
"The media created the MMR hoax, and they maintained it diligently for 10 years. Their failure to recognise that fact demonstrates that they have learned nothing, and until they do, journalists and editors will continue to perpetrate the very same crimes, repeatedly, with increasingly grave consequences."

Thanks for the link Lazygun - I must have had a very sheltered life as I managed to have measles (and chickenpox) as a student. Lying in a darked room and hallucinating with a temperature over 40 was no fun - nor was the cough that went on for months.

[heathfield]

The government at fault? Yes. They banned single jabs. This forced parents into a choice between MMR or nothing. The result? Many chose nothing. Had single jabs continued to be available, they may well of gone down that route instead. I remember tales of parents travelling to Europe to have their children vaccinated with single jabs, such was their anxiety over MMR. The government's action was sheer stupidity.

[jim360]

Thanks for all the replies. It's been interesting reading.

I think things are very complicated, and I've often wondered how much of the problem is the media, or government, or even scientists themselves sometimes being media-shy or just unable to express their ideas clearly. At one level it's understandable - Science is too hard to put into words sometimes - and perhaps the technical language puts people off.

The role of the media is surely a very important one. It's where most people get their information from after all. So newspapers and TV news stations have to do a better job of reporting Science than so far. Whether that means a move away from "balance" (where there is none) or more complciated things I don't know. But it has to improve. Maybe Scientists do too. But either way the distrust is odd and still surprises me.

Mistakes like Thalidomide, etc., don't really help of course but then every group of people makes mistakes. And yet the mistakes of some over organisations seem more readily forgiven than those of Scientists. Or is that just some persecution complex?

Anyway some interesting points - keep 'em coming!

[jim360]

We will never know, of course.
But what we do know is that presenting the evidence and offering reassurance did not work.

ladyalex - Certainly a correct observation there. But why didn't it work? Why was all that evidence against Wakefield's "research" ignored?

[slaney]

Jim - if you look at Lazygun's link and quote above you will see an explanation as to why the evidence against Wakefield's paper was ignored. It remarks that the MMR scare was pretty much confined to the UK.
Parents were swamped with misinformation. The story of the lone crusader battling against the medical establishment was just too good to be ignored.

A YouGov poll (18/19th April) showed that
for the low take up of the MMR vaccine
26% blame the newspapers
23% blame Andrew Wakefield
18% blame parents
10% the government
7%The Lancet
The rest presumably "don't knows"

Maybe science could be put across better by someone like the abovementioned Ben Goldacre

[jim360]

Yes, Ben Goldacre. Sadly a rare voice, we need more scientists like him I reckon.

[woofgang]

He's brilliant, a sharp mind and an excellent writer.

[woofgang]

Not a parent, but the arrogant attitude of the government has already been mentioned on here. The sense that I got was "We know best, you have to trust us and if you don't we'll make you do what we want anyway"

[jim360]

I've had in mind for some time that, one way or another, I want to work in a field which enables me to share my knowledge and love of Science with others. Be that teaching, or working in the media, that's something I really would like to do. Have entered and done well in a couple of small-scale Science writing competitions so made a good start - will hope that I can become even half as good a write as Ben Goldacre.