Tuesday, February 27, 2018

False Balance in the Media

Just the Vax is recommending a post by Joel Harrison, PhD, MPH has published on Science Based Medicine. Enjoy.


[Note that the full article can be accessed by clicking here and a downloadable PDF version is available by clicking on the note at the top of the article]






The So-Called Vaccine Debate, False Balance in the Mass Media & The Risk to Public Health

Executive Summary

by Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH

February 26, 2018

The San Diego Union-Tribune (UT) recently published two opinion pieces on vaccine mandates, responding to California Senate Bill 277 which removed the “personal belief” exemption to vaccine requirements for children entering into day care, elementary or secondary schools. The bill was passed by the California Legislature in 2015:



Mark Sawyer, MD is a professor of clinical pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases in the UCSD Medical School. Terry Roark is the advocacy director in California for the nonprofit National Vaccine Information Center.

Each piece was given equal length, giving the impression that each side represented a legitimate position, creating a false balance. In all fairness, the UT has posted articles and editorials on other occasions that clearly supported vaccines and the science behind them, e.g., “In a win for science and for student safety, school vaccination rates are the highest they have been in California in at least 15 years” (The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board, 2017). The problem is that people often have short term memories, may not have read the previous pro-vaccine articles in the UT, or, seeing two articles, were influenced more by the one than the other.

As will be shown in this paper, the article by Terry Roark is full of inaccuracies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations, cultivating readers to form an opinion that is invalid. Like Roark, the vast majority of antivaccinationists lack the basic understanding of the science underlying vaccines, view the world as all or none, subscribe to paranoid conspiracy theories, and their certainty of the rightness of their opinion clearly reflects research that shows once people form opinions, they seldom change them and, remarkably, when confronted with evidence that they are wrong, they often embrace their point of view even more tenaciously (Tavris, 2007). Some of this can be attributed to the Dunning-Kruger effect, which posits that people often fail to grasp their level of competence (or more to the point, incompetence), which precludes their ability to form credible opinions.

Summary and Conclusion

In publishing Roark’s opinion piece, in my opinion, The San Diego Union-Tribune is guilty of creating a false balance. My intent is NOT to single out the UT as this is a problem belonging to our mass media in general. However, as the UT is my hometown newspaper, it provided an excellent example.

As I’ve demonstrated in this article, not one point made by Roark is valid. The underlying premise she is coming from is based on a lack of the basics of science, thus, a bogus opinion on vaccines, a lack of understanding of the economics of vaccine production, and a misleading quote, taken out of context, from a Supreme Court decision. Her affiliation with the National Vaccine Information Center and its Co-Founder and President, Barbara Loe Fisher, as shown by Fischer’s statement, leaves little doubt that besides a lack of scientific knowledge, antivaccinationists suffer from paranoid delusions of conspiracy theories, project their own, often vicious, attacks on the integrity and honesty of those promoting vaccines, including threatening statements, and see the world in terms of the Nirvana Fallacy (for more on Barbara Loe Fisher as the main spokesperson for the National Vaccine Information Center, see Orac, 2017). Attacks on the integrity and honesty of scientists says more about the attackers than the scientists. Such attacks indicate that antivaccinationists are incapable of systematically and validly using microbiology, immunology, epidemiology, biostatistics, and the history of infectious diseases to make their case and display, in my opinion, a crass lack of integrity and decency, basically anything and everything goes to influence people’s opinions, regardless of how unscientific, illogical, and including threats and character assassination.

Given that The San Diego Union-Tribune has, on the whole, been supportive of vaccines, it would behoove them, as well as our mass media in general, to re-evaluate their choice of opinion pieces and even letters that clearly do not reflect, have NO validity, on other issues as well. The UT’s policy regarding Letters to the Editor, “It is also our policy to attempt to publish letters supporting or opposing a particular issue in a ratio reflecting the number received on each side,” when one side is clearly taking an unscientific, invalid position, promotes false balance and is a disservice to readers (The San Diego Union Tribune. Letters and Commentaries).

Joel A. Harrison (2018 Feb). The So-Called Vaccine Debate, False Balance in the Mass Media, and the Risk to Public Health: Terry Roark’s Opinion Piece in the San Diego Union-Tribune (Oct 5, 2017) , “Exemptions should be option for parents”. Science-Based Medicine.

Joel A. Harrison, PhD, MPH is a retired epidemiologist who has been writing articles over the past years supporting vaccinations for Every Child By Two, an excellent non-profit founded in 1991. Every Child By Two has changed to Vaccinate Your Family, expanding its mission to include vaccines for people of all ages. You can find Executive Summaries of his previous ECBT articles that hyperlink to the complete articles as well as his brief biography on the archived ECBT Expert Commentaries page. Dr. Harrison has studied and worked in several countries, including Sweden (where he earned his doctorate) and Canada (where he earned a Masters degree). Having experienced both the Swedish socialized health care system and the Canadian non-profit single-payer system, over the past 30 years he has devoted considerable time to studying health economics and health care systems, concluding that, though the Swedish system is excellent, given American culture, he believes that a non-profit single-payer system would be best option for the United States. Dr. Harrison is a long time member of Physicians for a National Health Program.

9 comments:

  1. Editor: First of all, Grove talks of ONLY two potential severe
    reactions. Anaphylaxis (allergic reaction) and getting the illness
    itself. This is absurd. First, passive surveillance, and the lack of
    willingness to look at the children themsleves, for severe vaccine
    reactions gives us no clue of what countless severe reactions may actually
    be out there. As found in the PDR (55th edition 2001) on page 1884,
    severe reactions include encephalitis, subacute slerosing (hardening)
    panencephalitis, Guillain-Barre' syndrome, febrile and afebrile
    convulsions, seizures, ataxia, ocular palsies, anaphylaxis, angioneurotic
    edema, bronchial spasms, panniculitis, vasculitis, atypical measles,
    thrombocytopenia (decrease of number of plateletts), lymphadenopathy,
    leukocytosis, pneumonitis, Stevens-Johnson syndrome, erythema multiforme,
    urticaria, deafness, otitis media, retinitis, optic neuritis, rash, fever,
    dizziness, headache, and death!!! That is JUST FOR MEASLES vaccine. All
    of that rings a bell (not otitis) as it has been seen in these pages of
    the BMJ before.

    If my child has any of the above reactions, no way would they get a
    second dose as, if you ask me or most sound thinking people, they are now
    SENSITIZED to respond in a severe way. Many of the above reactions are
    neurological, auto-immune, and/or allergic. If I'm sensitized to an
    allergen, my allergies don't go away, they usually get increasingly worse.
    If one of my patients has a severe reaction to penicillin (or even a
    rash), for example, no way am I prescribing penicillin again. And would
    even be cautious prescribing cephalosporins. You know, cross-reactivity
    to similar drug classes. How do they come off saying a reaction is less
    rare the second time? Using the above analogy, it is highly probable to
    have another severe reaction and I don't see how a vaccine is now somehow
    different than another drug. Except for the biologic pathogens, simian
    viruses, other species proteins, and an array of known neurotoxins.

    I am glad to note that Grove would not give his child a second jab if
    he/she had anaphylaxis to the first. Maybe Dr. Grove feels seizures are
    insignificant, or thrombocytopenia? How about dizziness? Sorry, bad
    question. Dizziness is a little hard to assess in an infant, now isn't
    it?

    And, how are many of the above reactions checked for? Before we go
    about nonchalantly giving booster after booster after vaccine after
    vaccine. How many CT scans are performed following a child with post-
    vaccinal seizures to look for encephalitis, sclerosed nerves? Death gets
    checked off as SIDS and so therefore sibling is ok. How many bleeding
    profiles are done when a child presents ill following vaccination. Heaven
    forbid they have a bruise or nosebleed from thrombocytopenia as the child
    will surely be relocated to foster care under the SBS and MSbP proponents.

    So, what appears as an everyday illness to a doc, may very well be
    one of the severe reactions. And you tell me to give them the next shot.
    I'd rather take my chance with wild measles and Vitamin A.

    And, if antibodies are developed to one strain, that doesn't
    necessarily protect from other strains, and we've all seen citations
    throughout these BMJ pages that antibodies don't necessarily mean immunity
    or "protection". There are many diseases I have even natural antibodies
    to, but seem to get them again, and again. Often times the last common
    cold was worse than the prior one. Not more mild. But we're told if we
    do get a vaccine type of "preventable" disease, it will surely be mild as
    we've been "protected". Again, a double standard. How should it be much
    different than natural diseases we get more than once. They are not
    guaranteed to be more mild as we have been previously exposed via the
    "protective" vaccine.

    I wonder what the MMR advice website would have to say about the
    above? Nevermind, I think I already know.
    ***http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/30/re-re-mmr-facts***


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A random opinion on a comment page is not verifiable evidence.

      Delete
    2. Thanks for the copypasta anonymous but it's a bunch of bullocks and you don't know what you are talking about. Come back with your own words.

      Delete
  2. So, do you deny this ? Would you do also at court ? ad:


    the lack of
    willingness to look at the children themsleves, for severe vaccine
    reactions gives us no clue of what countless severe reactions may actually
    be out there. As found in the PDR (55th edition 2001) on page 1884,
    severe reactions include encephalitis, subacute slerosing (hardening)
    panencephalitis, Guillain-Barre' syndrome, febrile and afebrile
    convulsions, seizures, ataxia, ocular palsies, anaphylaxis, angioneurotic
    edema, bronchial spasms, panniculitis, vasculitis, atypical measles,
    thrombocytopenia (decrease of number of plateletts), lymphadenopathy,
    leukocytosis, pneumonitis, Stevens-Johnson syndrome, erythema multiforme,
    urticaria, deafness, otitis media, retinitis, optic neuritis, rash, fever,
    dizziness, headache, and death!!! That is JUST FOR MEASLES vaccine.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Le sigh, more copypasta.

      So how does the reactions to the present American MMR compare to actually getting measles? Does the MMR cause encephalitis in one in a thousand like measles? Does it cause pneumonia in at least one of ten like wild measles:
      The Clinical Significance of Measles: A Review

      Delete
    2. When you can post a comment in your own words instead of spamming with copypasta, I can respond. The next one I'll just delete.

      Delete
  3. That is a prime example of false balance. Reading that site you learn the child had issues just being born. They were compensated by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

    Which definitely does not happen to those who get cancer from chronic hepatitis.

    Please stop trying to capitalize on that family's tragedy, especially since your anti-vax message can cause other families to have to deal with a preventable form cancer.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous ignores the herd immunity effects of 95% vaccination rates.
    Pointing out that smallpox which killed 500 million people before it was declared eradicate in 1980 is the type of success vaccines seek.
    The ratio of vaccine supporters is 99.5% vs.5% anti-vaccine. It would be a public service if the anti-vaccine article was published with a rebuttal written immediately after each accusation. This would help readers such as myself who have children and anti-vaccine friends whom I try to educate.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Where does your exact number come from?
      What are your objective measures? How did you measure herd immunity objectively?

      Delete