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https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/8/3/16069204/vaccine-fines-measles-outbreaks-europe-australia

I completely support this. As someone who had a a family that was against vaccines, I'm done with all the anti-vaccine bullshit. I totally agree with what this person said on Reddit:
"Good, if you choose not to get vaccinations, you should be paying for the cost of stopping its spread."

It's crazy that in this day and age we have people who don't believe in basic scientific discoveries and facts, such as the safety and reliability of vaccines. On the extreme end, there have been cases of children dying because parents refuse to take them for medical treatment, believing religion can better treat them...at least in those cases parents are criminally charged, and I see no reason why they shouldn't at least be fined here.

If you don't vaccinate your child and you then put them in a group of other children, you're not only putting your own child in danger, you're putting the other children in danger too, and that's just unconscionable. The big thing here are 'religious exemptions', but other people's children shouldn't have to suffer for your religious convictions. At the very least those children shouldn't be allowed in schools or day cares with other children.

I hate anti-vaxxers, but I do not believe in science. It is not unbiased, and has an agenda. Scientists can prove whatever their overlords want them to.

What do you mean 'you don't believe in science'? That you believe the proven facts, but dislike the way experiments are carried out and set up?

The big thing here are 'religious exemptions', but other people's children shouldn't have to suffer for your religious convictions.

Most of the time it's not even real religious convictions, but rather parents don't want to vaccinate their kids and exploit the fact that in America any belief can basically be it's own religion.

I hate anti-vaxxers, but I do not believe in science. It is not unbiased, and has an agenda. Scientists can prove whatever their overlords want them to.

It seems to me though, the only other option is to listen to the opposing side which just says dumb shit like, "Vaccines cause autism!" Secondly, It seems like the foundation of modern science was laid back in the late 1800's to early 1900's, when scientists didn't have "evil overlords" and all modern scientists really do is build on that foundation.

Shouldn't this be in the Hall of Great Discussions?

Edit:

It's crazy that in this day and age we have people who don't believe in basic scientific discoveries and facts, such as the safety and reliability of vaccines. On the extreme end, there have been cases of children dying because parents refuse to take them for medical treatment, believing religion can better treat them...at least in those cases parents are criminally charged, and I see no reason why they shouldn't at least be fined here.

If you don't vaccinate your child and you then put them in a group of other children, you're not only putting your own child in danger, you're putting the other children in danger too, and that's just unconscionable. The big thing here are 'religious exemptions', but other people's children shouldn't have to suffer for your religious convictions. At the very least those children shouldn't be allowed in schools or day cares with other children.

Yep, the issue is that the growing number of anti-vaxxers is harming herd immunity, which is essential for protecting those who are actually unable to get vaccines, because of allergies and such.

Like I get it, it really sucks to see your precious child go through that pain, but just imagine your child with measles and then tell us that that's better.

I hate anti-vaxxers, but I do not believe in science. It is not unbiased, and has an agenda. Scientists can prove whatever their overlords want them to.

I believe in science as a method and philosophy for finding out more about the world around us. But scientific research is not some monolithic group; it's made up of individuals and organizations. And that's where healthy skepticism comes in: analyzing the funding, the reputability of the peer-reviewed journals, and seeing if the studies have been repeated independently.

Shouldn't this be in the Hall of Great Discussions?

Yeah, probably.

Done

Sorry, I didn't have much time there and oversimplified and exaggerated my view with the I don't believe in science comment.

Let me elaborate. Whilst I do believe in the vast majority of scientific explanations, etc. What I don't like is the general populous' idea that if science has proven something, it must definitely be true, no questions asked, and you're an idiot if you question it. Too many people look at you with disgust if you say, "I wonder if that's really true." when looking at a new discovery in the news. "It's scientifically proven, it must be true!" is the general response.

But, as taulover said, scientists are not infallible. For a start, a lot of what they say is incorrect, through no fault of their own. A theory may be proven wrong a few years later, as has happened soooo many times over our history. They may have made a mistake in the experiment, and not accounted for a variable, which may later be addressed in a future experiment, leading to new findings.

And of course, with regards to the overlord and unbiased bit, scientists need to pay their bills, and so, they need money. They get money by publishing their studies in Journals. Journals choose what studies they publish. Journals can control what kind of experiments Scientists do, and which ones get published. Only the truly sensational ones make it from the journals into mainstream news. Who cares if a scientist found that the oils from a berry in the Amazon rainforest cannot be used to cure cancer? But, if the scientist finds the opposite, then he's got a lot of money and attention, and funding for further experiments, where he happens to find that he 'accidentally' missed one thing, which meant that his findings weren't true. See how scientists can play the system?

Of course, the fault lies not with most scientists, but with the system. The Journal-overlords and lack of peer reviews mean that science is by no means infallible.

Populace. Populous is an adjective describing a heavily populated region. But that's a stupid minor 'hah you misspelled something so you're wrong' quibble anyway, which is not the point of that, I just have an entire log up my butt about homophones.
(Cue misremembered bible verse about removing the log from your butt before taking the stick from your neighbour's, which really is definitely a way funnier version and how I'm going to choose to relate it to people in the future)

I suppose that on some level you're right, but what you're describing is not the concept of science being wrong, it's the enshrining of science as some kind of unquestionable religion. Which then becomes a problem when the scientist you choose to believe and not question is wrong. And generally people hate changing their minds, so they'll just find some study or crackpot who says something they agree with, and cling to that paper as a shitty liferaft in the metaphorical storm of evidence which brings the proverbial flood of 'no, but really, this is incorrect and if you'd just look at these statistics' upon them.
Honestly, people in aggregate are stupid, which I recognize is a statement that sounds incredibly douchey that I will now attempt to defuse with 'well I recognize that I'm also stupid in many regards simply because I'm a badly engineered sack of meat which barely functions on the basis of sometimes shitty and often obsolete heuristics given to it by other badly engineered sacks of meat with similar, but not identical, heuristics of their own', which is kind of a tragically comic way to think of the human machine if you think about it.
Anyway we're all stupid because the stupid animal part of our psychology (as opposed to the very smart but incredibly paranoid and lazy part we pretend is the human part, but if that was the case then we'd probably be 'human' only 2% of the time maybe, because I dunno about you guys but thinking is hard and my brain really hates hard work, it just wants to play video games) makes us want to agree with the herd, even when the herd is walking over a cliff, because being out of the herd is certain death thanks to predators (which no longer meaningfully exist except in the sense of other herds being predatory (here meaning 'other countries, nationalities, or really just anyone that you find to be 'other' and thus more-or-less scary'), but that's primate pack dynamics for you), but at least when you walk over the cliff with the rest of the herd you might land on one of your former fellows' corpses and not die.
The question to ask yourself is whether you're disagreeing with the herd in a smart way that involves not walking over the cliff, or if, rather than avoiding this cliff, you are instead avoiding a brief hillock over which there is a gentle slope while ironically heading over an actual cliff with this new herd you're joining.

Aside: is this a long metaphor for 'wake up sheeple', or am I just getting confused by the flood metaphor, and then the machine analogy, and then the sheep-walking-over-a-cliff metaphor? I think I've quite metaphorgotten.
I'll see my way to the punitentiary.

I apologise for my spelling error, and I agree with you that people are stupid. Apart from that, I'm afraid you've lost me.

 

There's definitely a huge issue with the popular conception of science. The whole point of science is that everything that we know can be wrong; ie the Socratic paradox of "I know that I know nothing." It never proves anything to be true, but rather builds increasing amounts of evidence towards a certain hypothesis. Unfortunately, this also goes the other way; more ethical scientists generally refrain from making confident, absolute statements, and as a result are easily targeted by anti-intellectual types. (Eg: "evolution's just a theory", "we're not sure yet if climate change is real", etc.)

And there's clearly also many issues with the current system in academia, such as the lack of support for repeat studies.

I may have been the sort of mentally impaired that happens when you haven't slept enough.
Let me see if I can explain what I meant more clearly and with less digression.

What I feel like you're railing against, rather than Science as some sort of monolithic institution which has been corrupted by other elements, is the idea of people looking upon science as a quasi-religion, insofar as a group of people see scientists more as infallible prophets spouting some ineffable Truth Of The Universe than its proper roots which was essentially just dudes throwing shit together and seeing what sticks. Sure, now we can predict vaguely what kind of shit will stick to what, but at the end of the day the only real test of whether your predictions are right is to throw that science to the wall and hope it sticks.
The further trouble emerges when one group of scientists disagree with each other. If you, Joe Schmoe, have no clue what's going on in the scientific world, and frankly you don't actually really care on most levels, then it's really irrelevant. But if you have a horse in the race, oh, boy does that change. Such as if, say, you have a kid, and you're a first time parent, and you're paranoid, and this Autism thing sounds really scary and you don't understand it, and as far as you're concerned the medical industry is solely composed of quacks just trying to wring money out of you which would be better spent on your kid (or more likely the clothes for the instagram-perfect pictures you have to take to demonstrate to everyone you know 'see i am the perfect parent leading the perfect life).
Now, suddenly, this scientific dispute (if you can genuinely call it that, it's more of an utterly one-sided beatdown, where anti-vaccination is tied up in a corner and vaccination has a tank) is of grave importance to you. And so you'll find the prophet who says the truth that you know in your heart (i.e. the one who says things you already believe), and fight with all the fury of a crusader knowing This Is Right. And then seeing other people agreeing with you helps you know that This Is Right, because so many people can't be wrong (the brief segue into the herd mentality I did), which then convinces some people sitting on the fence that you guys must be right, again, because so many people can't be wrong.

And so essentially where I went with the rest of it was a statement that you should decide whether or not you were being opposed to science because this is, in fact, a well-considered position whose perspectives you've reviewed, or if in the standard, lazy human being way (note: you might not be lazy; I'm merely stating that the human brain is incredibly fucking lazy, which is why it reverts to the same patterns of behavior, uses the same stupid decision-making processes that are out of date in the modern world, and defaults to stereotypes at every available opportunity, because that is way easier than trying to do something new) you merely looked at the things you agreed with, cherrypicked out the failings in the ones you disagreed with, and called it a day. (This is not an aspersion on your character: this is utterly standard human behavior and one I'm guilty of pretty often unless I check myself before I wreck myself on the rocks of 'I don't actually care about the subject matter but I really want to win this argument'.)

Tl;dr: Thanks for being a lazy piece of shit, brain. Although its not your fault, really. Nature is just a really shit engineer (see: the recurrent laryngeal nerve, especially in giraffes).

EDIT: Oh, and also everything Tau said. Especially the bit about repeat studies. Mostly because everybody wants to come up with The New Hotness, instead of just double-checking that somebody else did not, in fact, fuck up the Old Hotness.

My take on it is this: I have always been a bit skeptical of Scientists and Doctors, they can perpetuate all sorts of harmful myths and trends for any reason they wish. Take the guy who popularized vitamin supplements, he was looking for the cure to death. I'm not joking. And this was in the 70's.

However, as much as I dislike Science and Medicine I must admit that there is almost no credible reason not to get a vaccine. The alternative to getting vaccinated is potentially getting a horrifying disease that will kill you slowly and painfully. And even if I grant you that Vaccines cause autism, which I do not believe, it evidently is not a very high chance since the majority of people haven't become retarded (I mean that in the medical sense).

So odds are your child will be fine. But alas, like we are one to do, half truths, misinformation and unverified opinion will rule the day over facts. So let them skip a Vaccination, I say. Less people in the world.

So let them skip a Vaccination, I say. Less people in the world.

The issue is that society as a whole needs to be vaccinated to protect those who cannot be vaccinated. The amount of anti-vaxxers in recent years is seriously harming herd immunity and endangering those allergic to vaccines.