On evidence that doesn't fit your narrative
When you find evidence that doesn't fit your narrative, include it anyway. Acknowledging complexity doesn't make you less convincing— it makes you more credible. And it makes the other side more curious and open.@amandaripley: https://t.co/93kYEFih2m
— Adam Grant (@AdamMGrant) July 8, 2018
Not too long ago the New York Times published Anti-Vaccine Activists Have Taken Vaccine Science Hostage. To offer up a representative sample of the article's argument:
When I tried to report on unexpected or controversial aspects of vaccine efficacy or safety, scientists often didn’t want to talk with me. When I did get them on the phone, a worrying theme emerged: Scientists are so terrified of the public’s vaccine hesitancy that they are censoring themselves, playing down undesirable findings and perhaps even avoiding undertaking studies that could show unwanted effects. Those who break these unwritten rules are criticized.
It doesn't seem to me to be all that surprising that people might opt for differing narratives fed to them by grifters or others with dubious agendas if the above is what they pick up on hints of in the media. Politics has a lot of damned-if-you-do-/-damned-if-you-don't terrain. One element of that I think is that the "pro-science" crowd may in some instances be as big a threat to science as the "anti-science" appears, due to the extent to which its use of propaganda and political pressure seems to increase the vulnerability of the population to false narratives.