Digital Mind 🧠

đŸȘ” The Threshold

Media false balance gave a discredited vaccine claim lasting public credibility

Properties2
tagsja-picks, addendum, causal_relationships, trade, singleton, xref, category/causal-relationships
aliases@van_der_linden_foolproof_2023, loc. 261

2 min read

Media false balance gave a discredited vaccine claim lasting public credibility

Evidence

Of course, the causal relationship between the conclusions of the paper and public health outcomes isn’t entirely direct. For example, the media has played an important mediating role in amplifying the paper’s false conclusions. Long after Wakefield’s paper had been discredited, the media continued to adhere to norms of ‘false balance’ – that is, representing an issue as having ‘two sides’ despite an overwhelming scientific consensus. For example, national surveys in 2002 revealed that over half of the UK population thought that ‘there is equal evidence on both sides of the debate’, about a third of the population reported that they would follow Wakefield’s televised recommendation to get three separate vaccines (instead of one single MMR shot), and 67 per cent of the public reported awareness of a potential link between autism and the MMR vaccine. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 261

Categorization

  • ADDENDUM: Directly extends the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ style analysis of how media norms shape public belief — the false-balance mechanism is a clean illustration of how institutional norms, not facts, drive belief formation.
  • XREF: connects to: Plandemic video damaged public support for vaccination — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects
, 210; Scientific and popular media amplified myth despite direct contrary observation — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity
, 606; Evenhanded journalism can itself bias public scientific belief — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False
, 61 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

✉

Backlinks