Are you a sucker for being hoodwinked? The problem with deception is that the deceived have no idea they are deceived....
Are you "disposed to be critical"?
Or are you simply a conformed
This is an important question, because lot of people think they can spot illogic, and lies a mile off.
This weekend, the Sunday Star Times published an article dealing with the blog about Amina Arraf - that wasn't. A comment in the article said, "People want to believe the best in those they choose to follow online,' writes Davey Winder, a tech writer and author of Being Virtual. "To do otherwise would be a reflection of their own poor judgement. Everyone likes to think they're a good judge of character." (emphasis mine)
In other words, everyone invests themselves in their pride, ego and also... being with and thinking like the "in" crowd. If you just go with the "communal flow", like dead fish, you can hide in the comfortable norm. No-one is "threatened" - everyone likes you. But people who think deeply, will have real problems in the dream world of internet and... deception. Finding out you are deceived is quite a painful experience, and it's even worse, if like Copernicus, you can see that Baa-land is a delusional dreamland on autopilot. The problem being, as I said at the beginning, deluded people never know they are deluded. And would be mortally offended if you told them so.
Another version of this, is the police instructors in the Li Yu case, who closed ranks to keep her out of the police force. The article said that, "pride meant the college insturctors would not accept they had made a mistake:
"I've worked there. I know you take a rather entrenched view, you take a position you believe supports your own instructors. You back them up and [some] instructors become myopic and self-serving in their belief as to what happened."
This is a similar strategy to the protectionism exhibited by Nikki Turner intoning on about the "coincidental effect", with the difference that I'd like to think it's not so much "willful ignorance", but rather a case of not knowing what she isn't able to see. But doctors and immunologists have a history of willfully ignoring inconvenient data for years, which is the theme of this wonderful 1955 medical article called "The Immunologist and Evil Spirits". Perhaps there is a relevant message here for all who say vaccines can do no ill.
No doubt her ilk would consider this medical article more of the "conspiracy theory"? No. They would say that Copernicus - or in this case, McGill, was suffering from "cognitive dissonance" in that he couldn't grasp the reality of the "experts" of his day. The Turners of the world might say McGill was an "outlier" just as they view those of us who constantly raise valid questions.
Not long ago, a doctor tried to convince me that my problem was that my "beliefs" were such that they prevented me from seeing the provaccine message which "is so obvious to intelligent" people.
My reply follows, amended to avoid identifying the recipient:
When you make a decision that you can't take back, your brain tricks you into assessing information incorrectly. Even you can’t avoid that as a scientist, because of your job, your credibility amongst your scientific peers, and your standing with XXXXXXXXXXX who will rubber stamp your proposed XXXXXXXXX article, no matter what you write. And I note that in the draft, the use of the word “perception” is everywhere. Nowhere do I see the words “good science”.
You are in the same situation as parents who have vaccinated. You, and they won’t accept information that proves your decision or your career path to be wrong and you're very likely to overestimate the importance of any information that would support your decision and your career. Both provaccine doctors, and provaccine parents develop a bunker mentality because to do otherwise would be to admit they were hoodwinked.
Any person who has chosen a career in the pharmaceutical industry is very unlikely to be objective about the companies goals, ethics, etc. and the rare ones who speak out, get shot down in flames as an example to you all.
Provaccine parents don’t listen to anyone questioning the safety of vaccines, because they interpret that as the rest of us being condescending and insulting to them (and you – the experts) . Subconsciously, what they hear is the insinuation, (which we don’t say but they hear) that" the provaccine" are unable to be objective about vaccination. They reject that, on the basis that people like me can’t possibly know, because we didn’t go to medical school, and that you and they are intelligent enough to know when something is the truth or not.
When people question the safety of vaccines, the provaccine reject those questions, because to NOT reject them would be to have to admit that no matter how smart they think they are, or how smart they actually are, they would have to admit that they didn’t actually look into it. Or in the case of parents, they didn't actively make an independant informed choice. Another inference heard subconsciously, is the suggestion that once a parent has vaccinated their kids they just don't have the brain capacity to be objective toward any information that suggests their choices lacked the backing of good science.
What perhaps is worse, is that that’s actually true. It's a proven function of the human brain (so say all the behavioral scientists out there).
The same applies to you. It’s not possible for you to be objective about those of us who don’t vaccinate, because your job depends on one line of thinking alone.
Therefore you make assumptions about us, and characterize us in a way to fit whatever policy you will construct to try to counter us.
For you to admit that there is any credibility to any other stance, or questioning, puts you in the same position as pro vaccine parents. Even worse, if you were to see validity in our points, you would no longer have either a job, peer standing, or a way to make a living.
Touché.
So as you see…. There are two ways to consider “cognitive dissonance”.
To put it bluntly, I have nothing to gain socially or financially, by swimming against the tide when it comes to vaccination. I have nothing to gain in being thought of as a fruitcake, or worse, some criminal about to infect the world. I have had NOTHING to gain, in doing what I do, in spending years, reading full text medical articles which most people in the system have no idea even exist. I have nothing to gain by helping parents with children seriously ill in hospital, or whose children have suffered the "coincidental effect" of having a vaccine, which has thrown their immune systems into disarray - something scientists consistently deny and will continue to deny because their very reputations depend on it.
But what I do have to gain, is the self respect of knowing that my very strong convictions are based on very strong science. The problem is that making a really informed choice, as opposed to conformed bandwaggoning, requires hard slog, lots of reading, and joining the dots for yourself, because the system isn't going to do it for you. In fact, high vaccination rates rely on the fact that most parents won't investigate - they will simply invest their belief in colourful brochures and pathetic DVDs which tell the parents nothing other than "Just Do It". The message is that there is nothing else to say - for if there was, the information would say it.
To understand what I mean about understanding serious knowledge and how that applies to an informed choice as to whether to vaccinate or not, carefully read the neonatal immunity series, if you haven't already:
How a baby fights infection and develops the immune system
Can vaccines become cranial and immunological cluster bombs?
What doctor told you about that? None of them, because I don't know any doctors who would know the medical articles let alone be able to tell you that. And even if they did, they would consider it much too "complicated" for the average (ignorant) parent. Much better to skip science and rely on belief.
That's why Nikki Turner's "coincidental effect" is such good currency. It's the other side of the "fear" weapon so successfully used, which goes like this:
"Be very scared of measles, which is is breathtakingly contagious, the most serious of diseases, and if you don't vaccinate your kid could get chronic lung disease, deafness, blindness, brain damage and die. But don't be scared of the vaccine at all, because we know that nothing ever happens as a result of the vaccine. Anything that happens will ALWAYS be coincidental effect".
Absolutely masterful mental manipulation, and most parents brains just disconnect from the fact that it all might be totally overblown misinformation. It's proven that listening to experts can do just that. Listen to Noreena Hertz on Youtube, about how and why EXPERTS are dangerous.
Pay particular attention to the implications of what Noreena says between 4.00 and 4.30. Experts flat-line the brains of people who listen to them, without any critical disposition.
The implications of what Noreena says, show clearly the sorts of manipulations that vaccine defenders use all the time. The problem for us, is that it's very difficult to have meaningful discourse, or even... "managed dissent" (12.25) because provaccine people ratchet their debate on the basis of the emotional blackmail, which says, "our side is the only side, and your side will destroy the world", when .... that's not true.
