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RE: From Anti-Vaxers to Alfie's Army: Have we lost faith in medical science?

in #psychology6 years ago (edited)

Really cool that you are joining such a panel! Medical professionals can sometimes not devote enough time to properly explain and build trust with patients which you sort of touch upon (and which is probably due to a combination of multiple factors) and the scientific community can also be self-absorbed, not engaging with science popularization enough.

But there's also a failure in our education systems that prioritize fact memorizing over actually learning the methods to assess and analyse reality and stay away from biases and fallacies, not to mention a complete disregard for even basic statistics which is essential in order to achieve said assessment and analysis (including for something like connections between vaccination and any other disease/disorder). Couple that with the for-profit anti-intellectualism movement that's constantly debasing and eroding trust in science and it's a terrible cocktail.

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Hi @tychoxi, yes, these are all thoughts that I have all too often! Although I sometimes find it hard to place blame, these issues are endemic to the ways that we’ve organised our health and scientific systems. These systems have given us tremendous gains up until this point, now however we face fresh new challenges (mostly behaviour change in regards to non-communicable diseases) and we’ll have to adapt accordingly. Which there does seem to be willingness to do. The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journal, for instance is really starting to shake things up in my opinion.

Also, congratulations on your pooping post this week! That some soild sciencing you've done there!

haha thanks, good luck with your panel!