I’m not an anti vaxxer, but I am a little concerned by an odd and disturbing trend I see, which is people repeatedly being so eager to prove themselves as the opposite of cranks that they forget that the opposite of unreasonable is reasonable, not unreasonab!e in the opposite direction. Just because someone has come to a crazy conclusion or a since disproven one doesnt mean that 1) every single thing they ever believed is proof that the extreme opposite is true, both in conclusions and in premises.
It leads to some very odd paradoxes in thinking. While careful consideration of the issue will show that vaccinations aren’t linked to autism, and are a net benefit for society, what it doesn’t show is that vaccinations are a panacea with zero complications or that questioning authority is automatically paranoia.
After all, the whole autism scare happened because of a trusted authority lying for financial benefit. While this discovery and further research makes it fairly reasonable to disregard a link between vaccines and autism, it is ridiculous to use it as evidence for the idea that industries with an inherent financial drive are incorruptible.
That’s not only absurd, there’s abundant counter examples. A whole government agency had to be created to combat it (FDA). Even in the pure science of academic research where you would think there would be less incentive for corruption and more idealism, there’s a crisis in reproducibility of results.
I’m sure there are no end of tobacoo industry executives with children who nontheless continue to promote the bottom line.
So yes, it’s great to put a bed to the particular conclusions of certain groups that happen to be probably false, but it’s just as harmful to go to the opposite extreme by assuming every idea remotely associated with those things is automatically true in the extreme opposite, and that this can be shown not through reasonable evidence and arguments, but through dismissive sarcasm and virtue signaling towards a whole class of people.