{"id":70323,"date":"2012-05-24T22:00:35","date_gmt":"2012-05-25T06:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/gnxp\/?p=16796"},"modified":"2012-05-24T22:00:35","modified_gmt":"2012-05-25T06:00:35","slug":"vaccination-as-heterodoxy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/2012\/05\/24\/vaccination-as-heterodoxy\/","title":{"rendered":"Vaccination as heterodoxy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/geekmom\/2012\/05\/mayim-bialik-disappoints\/\">Mayim Bialik<\/a>, Ph.D. neuroscience, is skeptical of vaccination. This just goes to show you that &#8220;science education&#8221; itself is no guarantee of immunity against acceptance of false propositions. Rather than reason from one proposition to another independently <b>humans operate in an ecology of ideas.<\/b> Bialik&#8217;s general suite of beliefs about mothering and her social milieu make her stance on vaccination rather unsurprising, notwithstanding that she has a doctorate in neuroscience.<\/p>\n<p>\nI&#8217;m mildly familiar with social pressures in regards to vaccination. In some communities on the West coast of the USA which emphasize &#8220;consciousness&#8221; it is now the dissenting position to accept vaccination as necessary. I myself regularly get flu shots and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/DPT_vaccine\">DPT<\/a>, and I had no qualms about vaccinating my daughter. On the contrary, I wanted her to be vaccinated. But this is not the default position for many, and over the past six months I&#8217;ve seen just how communities of self-reinforcing opinions emerge which deny established science. For someone with a weaker science background I can totally understand why being skeptical of vaccination might be a reasonable decision. Not only is your community validating and encouraging this decision, but there are persons with authority and stature, &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently Mayim Bialik, Ph.D. neuroscience, is skeptical of vaccination. This just goes to show you that &#8220;science education&#8221; itself is no guarantee of immunity against acceptance of false propositions. Rather than reason from one propositi&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1264],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vaccination"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70323"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71297,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70323\/revisions\/71297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}