Baby Steps (and Shots)

An epidemiologist reaches out to her dad, on the subject of his anti-vax Facebook posts:

I know how crazy it drives you when Republican politicians (and friends and relatives) post pictures and stories that are flat-out wrong, about the deficit, the economy, “Obamacare,” and more. It makes you nuts how uncritically they quote Fox News. They don’t examine their own biases; they don’t stop and think why they accept that Obama is the anti-Christ and that everything associated with him is evil, even if the facts clearly contradict their belief. Sure, they may know a lot, but it’s all from the same sources and it reinforces their pre-existing belief that Obama is Satan. Here’s the kicker: you’re doing the same thing. Yes, I know you’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos on vaccines, and fluoride, and other health issues, but the ones you watch–and accept–are the ones that already appeal to the beliefs you’ve accepted. This isn’t how science works, or how evidence is fairly weighed. I know this can get messy, because again, you’re not one of those trained scientists and you don’t know how to navigate the literature and determine which studies are well-conducted and which ones are crap. So sometimes, you have to accept that there are people out there who have taken the time to do this in an unbiased fashion, and decide to trust them (y’know, people like your daughter, perhaps?)

What a wonderful example of trying to find the right tone. Which is never more important than the message, but there’s a lot to be said for finding commonality with people you want to convince.