Trust Issues
We’re In an Epidemic of Mistrust in Science
Academia isn’t immune to the scourge of misinformation
Dozens of infants and children in Romania died recently in a major measles outbreak, as a result of prominent celebrities campaigning against vaccination. This trend parallels that of Europe as a whole, which suffered a 400 percent increase in measles cases from 2016 to 2017. Unvaccinated Americans traveling to the World Cup may well bring back the disease to the United States.
Of course, we don’t need European travel to suffer from measles. Kansas just experienced its worst measles outbreak in decades. Children and adults in a few unvaccinated families were key to this widespread outbreak.
Just like in Romania, parents in the United States are fooled by the false claim that vaccines cause autism. This belief has spread widely across the country and leads to a host of problems.
Measles was practically eliminated in the United States by 2000. In recent years, however, outbreaks of measles have been on the rise, driven by parents failing to vaccinate their children in a number of communities. We should be especially concerned because our president has frequently expressed the false view that vaccines cause autism, and his administration has pushed against…
