The 9/11 truthers, creationism, holocaust revisionism, people who get colonics -- People believe some weird shit out there. Including the ones who were telling us that vaccines are to blame for autism.
On one hand, if my kid were sick from something the doctors didn't understand, I could hardly be blamed for wanting to know why. So in this respect, I empathize with the parents who took up this misguided cause.
People believe some very odd things. Sometimes the things we believe have nothing to do with evidence at all. This is a natural tendency in humans, it seems like, because sometimes we want to believe these things.
And that natural tendency is strengthened even more through that thing we call the Internet.
All you have to do is type in a topic, and soon you'll find communities. You'll find links. You'll find your own set of facts that match the general feeling of the group. It reinforces itself endlessly.
These days if you get a big enough group of people repeating the same claim angrily and often enough, the media is all to happy to give you equal footing with those who actually have the facts on their side. So science is in one corner, and emotion and sheer numbers are in the other. Is it any wonder science gets shoved into the backseat?
In the case of these poor parents, they were looking for answers and instead found only other confused people. They found a scapegoat. They found hucksters. What they didn't find was answers. Too many opinions, too few facts.
I sympathize with them, but this is one of the things we have to remember about the Internet and the quality of the information we can find there. It's possible for anyone to seek out information on anything, and you can inhabit any dream-world you like, totally insulated from facts or claims to the contrary. No one will question you. They'll only confirm what you already "know."
In this case, though, I wish the anti-vaccination people had been more like, say, the 9/11 truthers. All they ever do is sucker the occasional rube. But who knows what could have happened if these people had gotten their way? Long-eradicated or minimized childhood illnesses could have come back into this century, spreading to others.
Sometimes these self-reinforcing communities do no active harm to others, but every now and then their influence spreads.
If you want evidence of what one loud, misinformed group can do, look no further than the creationists. They've actually managed to get laws passed.
Of course, this latest development isn't going to change the lives of the already convinced. If they were interested in science, they wouldn't be where they are. But maybe it will give them less credibility with everyone else, and give their voices less strength.
I'd like to think that a renewed emphasis on science is around the corner, and with it we will see less and less of this stuff. But as I said in the beginning, we're dealing with a basic human tendency here. Misinformation, flimsy claims, junk science... these things are a part of our world. We just have to guard against them to avoid allowing them a potentially dangerous foothold.