Can scientists bridge the gap between evidence and doubt?
This week, the open-access journal PLoS Biology investigates why the debunked vaccine-autism theory won’t go away. Senior science writer/editor Liza Gross talks to medical anthropologists, science historians, vaccine experts, social scientists, and pediatricians to explore the factors keeping the dangerous notion aliveand its proponents so vitriolic. Pediatrician Paul Offit has made it his mission to set the record straight: vaccines don’t cause autism. But he won’t go on Larry King Livewhere he could reach millions of viewersor anyplace celebrity anti-vaccine crusaders like Jenny McCarthy appear. ”Every story has a hero, victim, and villain,” he explains. ”McCarthy is the hero, her child is the victimand that leaves one role for you.” When she read that hecklers were issuing death threats to spokespeople who simply reported studies showing that vaccines were safe, anthropologist Sharon Kaufman dropped her life’s work on aging to study the theory’s grip on public discourse. To Kauf
