How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results [Scientific American Magazine]
Scientific American - Posted: July 25th, 2008, 1:00am EDT
The recent medical controversy over whether vaccinations cause autism reveals a habit of human cognition--thinking anecdotally comes naturally, whereas thinking scientifically does not.
On the one side are scientists who have been unable to find any causal link between the symptoms of autism and the vaccine preservative thimerosal, which in the body breaks down into ethylmercury, the culprit du jour for autism’s cause. On the other side are parents who noticed that shortly after having their children vaccinated autistic symptoms began to appear. These anecdotal associations are so powerful that they cause people to ignore contrary evidence: ethylmercury is expelled from the body quickly (unlike its chemical cousin methylmercury) and therefore cannot accumulate in the brain long enough to cause damage. And in any case, autism continues to be diagnosed in children born after thimerosal was removed from most vaccines in 1999; today trace amounts exist in only a few.
[More]
