In recent years, there has been an outbreak of media stories on early childhood disease outbreaks. The press has reported a spike in cases of measles, mumps, and whooping cough in communities from Seattle to Vermont. In many of the stories, a cause-and-effect relationship to lower childhood vaccination rates has been explicit. (Some journalists, however, have been careful not to follow the herd.) An obvious culprit is the anti-vaccination movement. But in a provocative post at his Cultural Cognition blog, Dan Kahan asks:
What is the evidence that an "anti-vaccination movement" is "causing" epidemics of childhood diseases in US?
He's not seeing any, and wonders:
If not, why does the media keep making this claim? Why do so many people not ask to see some evidence?
That seems like a reasonable question. The point isn't to ding the press. There is something more important at stake here, Kahan explains:
If ...
