People cling to debunked notions like folks cling to their religion. Slate has a great article explaining why so many folks continue to believe that vaccines cause autism, even though there is no credible evidence. The following quote is a winner:
Then, too, the material in discussion is highly technical and specialized, and most parents aren’t truly able to determine which conclusions are reasonable. So they go with their gut, or the zeitgeist message that it makes more sense to trust the “little guy”—the maverick scientist, the alt-med practitioner—than established medicine and public health. “History tells us that a lot of ground-breaking discoveries are made by mavericks who don’t follow the mainstream,” says Laidler. “What is often left out is that most of the mavericks are just plain wrong. They laughed at Galileo and Edison, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown and Don Knotts.”
Of course, there are other reasons as well: The news media in general does a crappy job, because in the quest for “objectivity,” the utterances of alt medicine quacks, product liability attorneys and distraught parents are given equal weight as the the opinions of real scientists who’ve done the work and followed the scientific method. Of course, it doesn’t help that most journalists don’t get the fact that just because “B” follows “A,” that doen’t mean that “A” causes “B.” Jornalists WANT “A” to cause “B” because that’s a juicier, easier-to-understand story. There’s also an inherent bias in the profession toward wanting to believe those facts that support scandal, another fact covered in this article.
Just go read the it. If you’re an editor or a journalism teacher, make copies and hand them out.
Tags: autism, media bias, mercury, scientific method, slate, vaccine
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
[...] he’s also written another article debunking the idea of an autism epidemic. Here’s the Blogfather’s post on the subject. Let me join them in lambasting this farcical [...]
Someone sure hoodwinked Don Imus and his wife; they have been on a kick about this for a long time before he got the boot; even got into Congress’s head on it.
It’s a tragedy because it diverts an AWFUL lot of precious resources needed for care, education, etc., of autistic children into a witchhunt.