How knowledge contributors are legitimizing their posts on controversial scientific topics: A case of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine

an article by Noriko Hara and Emma Frieh (Indiana University Bloomington, USA) published in First Monday Volume 24 Number 11 (November 2019)

Abstract

Traditionally, journalists, government agencies, and medical professionals have acted as mediators, facilitating the transfer of scientific knowledge from scientists to the general public.

More recently, however, ordinary citizens are circumventing top-down mediation and contributing directly to discussions about scientific topics online.

For the present study, we examined how these emerging mediators of online scientific information are shaping the discussion of hotly debated (at least within the public sphere) scientific topics, specifically, the alleged link between autism and the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Using content analysis, we have identified the resources that lay pro- and anti-vaccination knowledge contributors most often cite when making knowledge claims.

Additionally, we examined how these contributors

1. use citations to legitimize their arguments; and,
2. take on particular roles in such arguments.

Our results shed light on an emerging form of online science communication and the process by which knowledge contributed by ordinary citizens is shaping these online discussions. These findings have implications for online health information and health decision-making.

Full Text (HTML)

---

A Historical Look At Vaccine Skepticism

a post by David Crotty for The Scholarly Kitchen blog

In New York, home to a recent measles outbreak, vaccines are at the forefront of many people’s minds as children begin the school year under new regulations eliminating most exceptions that allowed attendance at public and private schools by the unvaccinated. On the eve of Peer Review Week 2019, one can’t help but be reminded of the greatest failure of peer review in recent memory, the infamous Wakefield paper in the Lancet that has had such a long-running pernicious effect on public health.

Although the thoroughly disproven links between vaccines and autism remain prominent in the current rationale for vaccine skepticism, it’s worth noting that the phenomenon is nothing new, and in fact dates back to the 19th century (and in light of vaccine requirements, also worth acknowledging that George Washington mandated that the Continental Army be inoculated against smallpox even in the days before vaccines were invented, via a process called “variolation“). The Washington Post has put together an informative video series on vaccines, and the first chapter looks at the history of such skepticism.



Continue reading

If you follow all the potential rabbit holes you will be on this post for quite a while but you will certainly know more about what people think of vaccination in the USA.
I wonder if it is the same in the UK. That is yet another rabbit hole and I am not going down it today. My name is Hazel, not Alice.

---