Friday, June 29, 2007

True Believers

Check out Arthur Allen's article in today's Slate here. Allen discusses the persistence of mercury mythology by way of rational choice theory, confirmation bias and general distrust of the scientific and medical communities. A sample:

Systems of belief such as religion and even scientific paradigms can lock their adherents into confirmation biases. And then tidbits of fact or gossip appear over the Internet to shore them up. There's a point of no return beyond which it's very hard to change one's views about an important subject.

Titled "True Believers: Why there's no dispelling the myth that vaccines cause autism", the story includes a certain MAD magazine cover parody first seen here, and includes a link to Interverbal's blog as well.

6 comments:

  1. Congratulations!!!! I loved the MAD cover, it fit perfectly with the SLATE article, too.

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  2. Looks like you're famous now... cool!!

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  3. You're going to have to put all these together for a book!

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  4. That magazine cover just about sums it up really. Brilliant.

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  5. Way to go, Bev!

    It was only a matter of time before your satirical brilliance was widely discovered.

    Joe

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