Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Locked in Ignorance

The other day, I got into a discussion with someone calling for Congressional hearings on the DeStefano 2004 study that is the latest to-do in anti-vaccine circles. I won't go into the background; you can read about it here. Instead, I'll just present the Storify curation of tweets. My interlocutor just didn't understand what she had read. There is nothing wrong with that. We all have areas in which we lack the requisite knowledge to fully grasp the subject. The real trick is figuring out where we are ignorant and put in the effort to learn and grow. I'm presenting the whole conversation here in the hopes that others might learn from it. It's a bit long, but it gives a good pictures of how our preconceptions can lock us into a state of ignorance.

Here are a few resources for your reference as you read through this.
Ignorance is not bad, unless we make no effort to overcome it. Being wrong is not bad, unless we do not accept that we are wrong.


3 comments:

  1. It's unfortunate. This approach not only prevents these people from realizing when they're wrong, it also makes them easy pray to people like Andrew Wakefield.

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  2. Darn you..you meanies kept pointing out her errors, she had no choice but to fall back on 'I don't trust the CDC!'

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  3. Well, that was pretty painful to read. You're a saint for not losing it and having so much patience. It seems to me like your detractor just didn't want to be wrong about anything and that was that. Good job pointing things out for anyone "on the sidelines."

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