Friday, September 11, 2015

Well it's one solution: go marry a climate denialist

Interesting article from a man married to an anti-vaxxer. It reminds me a little about studies showing that a prejudiced people need intense contact with the members of the group they're biased against before eliminating their prejudice; casual contact can be counterproductive.

In the case of the article, overcoming bias was a two-way street, with the author having to abandon his (lazy) belief that anti-vaxxers were just uninformed and stupid. He ascribes his wife's viewpoint to casual and highly negative contact with conventional medicine creating a fear of vaccines. He also mentions her affiliation to her sister, whose professional career is naturopathy (there really is something to the whole Dan Kahan/cultural cognition thing; it's just too bad he exaggerates it so much).

In the author's case, it took years of conversation before his wife finally let her daughter get vaccinated, but it did work. Single people out there who believe in science, you now know what to do.

Or short of that, some empathy for those who only sip at the cup of denialism, while laughter may be more appropriate for those who wallow and profit from it.

ELI:  Perhaps the bunnies might send a delegation to Peter Webster and ask how that has turned out?