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August 12, 2017 10:00 pm

Study Finds Vaccine Science Outreach Only Reinforced Myths

Ars Technica reports on a study suggesting that "Striking at a myth with facts may only shore it up." Applehu Akbar writes:Researchers at the University of Edinburgh studied public attitudes toward vaccination in a group whose opinions on the subject were polled before and after being shown three different kinds of explanatory material that used settled scientific facts about vaccines to explain the pro-vaccination side of the debate. Not only was the anti-vax cohort not convinced by any of the three campaigns, but their attitudes hardened when another poll was taken a week later. What seems to have happened was that the pro-vax campaign was taken by anti-vaxers as just another attempt to lie to them, and as reinforcement for their already made-up minds on the subject. A previous study at Dartmouth College in 2014 used similar methodology and except for the 'hardening' effect elicited similar results. What's really scary about this is that while the Dartmouth subjects were taken from a large general population, the Edinburgh subjects were college students. "The researchers speculate that the mere repetition of a myth during the process of debunking may be enough to entrench the myth in a believerâ(TM)s mind," writes Ars Technica, with one of the study's authors attributing this to the "illusory truth" effect. "People tend to mistake repetition for truth."

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