Anti-Vaxxers Love Their Children Too

Growing up in tail end of the Cold War, Russians were typecast in movies as evil villains hell-bent on destroying all that was good in America. We were taught that Russians were power-hungry to their core and would rather destroy the planet in a nuclear holocaust than downgrade their ambitions of world domination. Russians were likely led to believe the same thing about us. It was eye-opening when Sting penned his lyric “I hope the Russians love their children too” because if we could start from that simple premise, everything else in the geopolitical debate would lose its stark black and white contrast, giving way to nuanced differences between the two superpowers and their citizenry.

A new Cold War has broken out on American soil between anti-vaxxers, those opposed to giving children vaccinations, and the rest of us. This Cold War is becoming increasingly political and the same character-based epithets that arise in any war of ideas are back in vogue for this battle. Harvard educated doctor Amy Tuteur has written what many of us believe—that the anti-vaxxers are less concerned with their children and more concerned with their own privilege, unreflective defiance of authority, and the need to feel empowered. Her solution: “we have to hit anti-vax parents where they live: in their unmerited sense of superiority. How? By pointing out to them, and critiquing, their own motivations.” (What everyone gets wrong about anti-vaccine parents) Perhaps if each of us could take a few minutes out of our day to critique the motives of one anti-vaxxer to their face, all would be resolved.

This approach to the anti-vaxxer movement will only lead to further radicalization and entrenchment of their beliefs, while allowing the rest of us to feel smug in our sense of moral and intellectual superiority. When others engage in different behaviors than we do and express different viewpoints, we should always start from the presumption that they likely have the same general motivations, goals, and intelligence that we do. Reaching a different conclusion from us does not depend on a deficit in any of these areas. Lets consider how someone might end up with the belief that vaccinations represent a threat to their children without imputing any wicked or self-indulgent motives to the anti-vaxxers. I want to be clear that I support vaccinations 100% and can easily fall into character-based name calling, but the latter makes me part of the problem, not the solution.

First, it is reasonable to be wary of any technological advance that claims to magically solve problems without creating any new ones in their place. Our fossil fuel economy, cigarettes and DDT pesticides are just a few of many technological advances once thought safe that were later revealed not to be. Given the interests of big business in maintaining the view that certain advances are all gain and no pain, it is hardly crazy to have a general skepticism towards business-backed advances that sound too good to be true. If you take a step back, vaccines really do seem too good to be true. It flies in the face of common sense that it could be good for a person to take a small dose of something that in larger doses can kill. Even though vaccines have done more to eradicate worldwide disease than any other intervention in history, the process by which they work still seems implausible at an intuitive level.

Second, people are generally bad at weighing unseen and never-to-be-seen future benefits (e.g. not getting measles) against an undesirable sounding alternative now. If you did not know about vaccines and a doctor told you “I would like you to hold your baby still so I can put multiple painful needles in his arm and, just so you know, these needles contain aluminum, formaldehyde, monosodium glutamate (MSG), and mercury” you might have serious reservations. That doesn’t sound natural, nor does it is sound like a good idea. As it turns out, its one of the best ideas modern medicine has ever had, but that doesn’t make it look like a good thing to be doing in the moment. Those of us who start with faith in modern medicine will be better equipped to choose the larger longterm rewards even when the events in the short term seem so unnatural. But this is largely an issue of faith, not rationality or degree of concern for one’s child.

Third, there is that famous paper in a highly respected journal by Andrew Wakefield linking autism to vaccines. The paper was subsequently retracted and fully discredited. Wakefield lost his medical license. Several later investigations and reviews of all the work that has been done in this area clearly and unambiguously refute any link between autism and vaccines. There are those of us who wrote off his findings from the beginning as being only one inconclusive small study or probably bad science (even before we had reason to believe that). For us, the eventual findings vindicated the view we had all along.

For those who had reasonable concerns about magic-seeming technologies that are a boon to big business but involve using needles to put dangerous-sounding chemicals in our children, the Wakefield study must have seemed profoundly important. For those desperately seeking actions they could take in order to avoid causing their child to become autistic, the study must have called to them like a lighted path in the darkness.

Here’s the critical thing: social psychologists have shown for decades that when a new belief arises from evidence that is later discredited, the belief tends to persist (Anderson, Lepper, & Ross, 1980). Once we have a new belief, we conjure up lots of other information that fits with the first piece of evidence and soon the original evidence is no longer essential. We build an edifice to support our new belief, for which no one fact is necessary. Anti-vaxxers may have done this in this case, with opponents’ name-calling only strengthening this process, but this makes anti-vaxxers no more irrational than the rest of us. Belief perseverance in this case is more dangerous, but not more irrational, than the belief perseverance that we all engage in on a regular basis.

Lastly, let’s remember how we get our scientific knowledge. Have you read the dense jargon-filled primary source science on vaccines published in obscure journals? Neither have I, and I’m a scientist. For the most part, we get our science from “trusted sources,” who in all likelihood get it from their trusted sources who may have read a few abstracts of a fraction of the relevant science.

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Why is Sanjay Gupta on CNN a trusted source? Has he done research on vaccines? I don’t know. Has he read the original basic science himself? I don’t know. But he’s on CNN and he went to medical school. Also, he looks nice and speaks well. When these are the criteria we use to choose our scientific proxies, our trusted sources, should we really be so outraged when others choose different pretty people who speak well as their trusted sources? Our trusted sources may happen to be right this time around, but I have no problem imagining a case where Dr. Gupta stands up for something that later turns out to be wrong because his trusted sources don’t get it right. I don’t mean to pick on Dr. Gupta. He may have read the primary source material, but the rest of us don’t base our decision to trust him on knowing whether he did or didn’t.

Changing someone’s beliefs, even when there is an unassailable right and wrong, is among the hardest problems people ever face. It is much harder than calculus or quantum physics. But if we start from a mistaken presumption that those who are wrong are wrong because of a character defect—because they are crazy, stupid, selfish, or lazy—then changing their belief becomes near impossible.

Matthew Lieberman is currently writing his next book "The Reality Illusion: Why we disagree less than we think, but more than we should". For more, check out his bestselling book "Social: Why our brains are wired to connect".

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