While some false beliefs, such as astrology, are fairly harmless, parents who believe falsely that vaccination is dangerous or unnecessary for children present a real public health hazard.
Unrelated, but is astrology a "false belief"? There are some religions that take astrology quite seriously. I think saying that astrology is a false belief is similar to saying belief in Jesus is a "false belief". It's not quite the same as making an incorrect quantitative judgement about what the impacts of vaccination or greenhouse gas emissions are.
I didn't say it was "true". I said it's a belief system that allows some people to see a sense of order in the universe. I happen to not be one of them, but denigrating a religious belief isn't the same to me as pointing out a factual inaccuracy in a scientific argument.
The Catholic belief in transubstantiation -- that the bread and wine of the Eucharist literally becomes the body and blood of Jesus Christ -- is demonstrably false, unless you change the commonly accepted meanings of the words "body" and "blood." In any sense outside of theology and ritual it is a false statement. Doesn't change their belief. Doesn't even mean that you're denigrating Catholics if you're willing to accept faith as a virtue in its own right. Astrology makes potentially testable claims. Those claims have never stood up to examination. Therefore, outside of limited spiritual senses (which do not promise testable results), it is a false belief.
So the article fairly quickly points out that the group that was given studies to read about it actually DID end up changing their minds, all but the most stalwart. So the MoJo headline is misleading, in my opinion.
Yeah, I see that a lot lately on my facebook feed regarding Ukraine. Stubborn people saying "Russia never invaded Ukraine, the troops have always been stationed in the military base, and Crimea has always been Russian territory in the past". I keep telling my boyfriend arguing with them is useless but I guess he just can't resist.
Covered quite nicely in Jonah Lehrer's "How we decide" which, hang on, lemme find a link... God fucking dammit. Now I need to find a source for this that happens to be true. Piss. Anyway. Lehrer's argument, which may or may not have the vaguest basis in reality, was that anti-vaxxers are the left's equivalent of climate change deniers - and that once your brain gets on a track, it's easier to keep it there than shift out of the rut. Which, now that I type it out, seems kinda hand-wavey.Disgraced pop-journalist Jonah Lehrer's publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, has just announced that his second book, How We Decide, will be pulled from stores, and customers will be refunded. Michael Moynihan reports on the latest in the Lehrer fiasco.
There was another study I read about once upon a time wherein it was shown that if you remind a judge of his/her own mortality just before issuing a sentence, then the sentence tends to be harsher. I wonder if the same thing is afoot here. The death of oneself may be related to the death of one's beliefs, psychologically speaking, since we tend to think of our beliefs as some of the core things that define us as people.