 In 2008, my son was born and being a new parent can be stressful. There are so many decisions to make and at the end of the day, we just want to make the best decisions for our children. My entire life, I never questioned vaccinations and not vaccinating my son didn't even seem like an option. But when the time came, it was the first argument my son's mom and I really got into about parenting decisions. When my son's mom and I were together, she was teaching children with autism. Basically, the school district here in Las Vegas would pay for people like my son's mom to go and teach them independently while the children took half days from school. I met quite a few of these children on various occasions and they were all extremely sweet and kind-hearted. This was my first time ever interacting with children with autism or their parents. I saw how much their parents loved them and like me, they just wanted what was best for their child. Life threw them a curve ball that they weren't expecting. And it hurt them that their child was going to grow up with these challenges. During that time, I was often afraid that my son would develop autism and how I provide the best life possible for him if that were to happen. Being new to the realm of people with autism, I didn't know what caused it. And what we don't know can be scary. In the 21st century, we have so many scientific advances and answers to the universe, but even for experts in 2020, the causes of autism are still somewhat a mystery. But when it was about time to have my son vaccinated, my son's mom was reluctant based on some research she heard about from the parents of children with autism. Like I said, whether or not my son would be vaccinated didn't even seem like a debate. As someone who respects science, I felt you'd be a fool not to vaccinate with all of the viruses out there that can kill children. Although my son's mom and I argued about this, she's an amazing mother and always has been. It was difficult arguing with her about the decision to vaccinate our son because I knew she would never try to hurt him. To this day, she's one of the best mothers I've ever met. But she was terrified that vaccination may lead to our son having autism. As someone who tries to stay open-minded, when she asked me to watch a documentary before solidifying my decision on vaccinating our son, I said yes. It was then that she introduced me to a documentary about a man by the name of Andrew Wakefield. The majority of people have heard of anti-vaxxers, but I'm typically surprised about how many people haven't heard of the fraudulent doctor who started the anti-vaxxer movement. In the 1990s, this doctor released a paper linking vaccinations to autism. And although the paper was retracted by the prestigious scientific journal The Lancent for being fraudulent, over 20 years later, there was a gigantic movement around his findings. Today, I know that Andrew Wakefield is a fraud, but when it came time to vaccinate my own son, he sold me on the idea that this could lead to my son developing autism. In recent video essays, we've discussed how to use critical thinking skills to improve our own well-being. But what about the well-being of the people we love the most? In anti-vaxx circles, Andrew Wakefield is still lauded as a hero despite being exposed as a fraud. So in this video, we're going to discuss how that happened and how our cognitive biases can lead to us making terrible decisions. When we use logical fallacies like the appeal to authority, when neglect being skeptical just because someone like Andrew Wakefield says something is true. I can't begin to imagine how many lives have been lost due to the fraudulent work of Andrew Wakefield. And I felt the need to make this video discussing critical thinking and skepticism because we still have anti-vaxxers in 2020. My goal with this video is to shed some light on how something like this could happen, how we could better filter out nonsense studies and how these skills can help us in more areas of our life. By using these tools, it can help calm our anxiety because we'll know how to separate good science from bad science and make better decisions. But before we get started, if you're new to the rewired soul, we're cautiously skeptical and use critical thinking to improve our mental and emotional well-being. If you're like the rest of us and actively trying to improve your own thinking skills and emotional intelligence, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. Also, another quick side note. Please, please, please do yourself a favor and check out the new show, Love on the Spectrum over on Netflix. It's about people with autism trying to navigate the tricky world of romantic relationships. And it's the most wholesome thing I've seen in a long time. And if you wanna learn more about autism, subscribe to my buddy Dan over at the Aspie World. And I'm also trying to convince him to do some videos about Love on the Spectrum. So I'll link his channel down in the description below. As I write this script, I now realize that this is the first time I've ever shared this story publicly. And I hope that by the end of this video, you have a little more empathy for those who are anti-vaxxers so you can learn to have better conversations with them and hopefully guide them towards the truth. Back then, during those early stage pediatrician appointments, I didn't have the information that I have today. And I wonder how many people still don't have that information. After watching the documentary about Andrew Wakefield, it was time to make the decision about whether or not to vaccinate our son. And if I'm being honest, I still didn't know how it was gonna go down once we got to the pediatrician's office. We were two young parents at the time and all we wanted was what was best for our son. When the doctor came in and said it was time for the first round of vaccinations, we declined some of them. Without thinking about it, I stood by my son's mother's side and agreed with her because I thought it's what was best. Once we told our son's doctor this, he immediately had a look of disappointment. Although we didn't turn down all the vaccinations, we skipped some of the more important ones like the MMR vaccine. Even though the doctor asked us why and then tried to explain the science, we just felt like he was some auto repair mechanic trying to upsell us. He prodded us a little, asking why we made this decision. And we didn't tell him we watched the Wakefield documentary, but I'm sure he figured we heard about those bogus research as many other parents had. My son was born 10 years after Wakefield's study was published. And at that time, his work hadn't been formally retracted. You just heard my story about my one child and how we avoided vaccination based on Wakefield's research, but think about how many others were affected during that time. I can only imagine how many people didn't vaccinate their children due to the large anti-vax movement 10 years after the retraction, the numbers must be astronomical. So how did Andrew Wakefield fool the world? And more importantly, why did he fool the world? When asking these questions, we need to realize that it starts with us. Andrew Wakefield is just one person, but we are the many. Something that most of us don't think about often is how ignorant we all are on so many subjects. For a moment, I want you to think about something that you know extremely well. Think about something that you know more about than most people. Maybe it's an aspect of your job that you specialize in, or maybe you have some hobbies that many people don't know much about. Whoever you are, there's at least one topic that you know a lot more about than the average person. Now, I want you to think about how many topics are out there that you don't know about. This is something that many of us can't even conceive because there's so much out there to know. Most of us don't even know what we don't know. Our brains are like a hard drive and we can only store so much information. Even if we live a life of curiosity and are passionate about learning, none of us will even be close to having knowledge of everything by the time we die. This is one of the reasons we're able to form such cohesive societies and why we must rely on each other. There's a debate about whether or not humans are naturally selfish or altruistic. Studies show that we primarily operate through something called reciprocal altruism. Back in the day, our ancestors survived better as tribes than as individuals. Today, we do the same thing. We share our knowledge and skills with one another because none of us can know everything. For example, at a young age, I started building computers and in my 20s, I worked in the auto repair business. I know more about computers and cars than most people but I have to rely on others to fix things like the plumbing in my apartment or I have to turn to my coworkers with questions. One of the best things any of us can do is humble ourselves on a daily basis and realize how much we don't know. And this also leads us to realize why it's so important to have a strong support group. Unfortunately, people like Andrew Wakefield can take advantage of what we don't know. Despite what you don't know, I'm sure there are many things that you can look up online and learn but medical science isn't one of them. If you don't know how to cook a risotto or fix your toilet, it's just a YouTube video away. But people like Andrew Wakefield are able to take advantage of the fact that we can't do the same with medical science. Since we don't have the capacity to know everything, we rely on experts like doctors and medical researchers. And I want to make it clear that I think the majority of medical experts are trustworthy. But due to our ignorance on these subjects, it leaves us vulnerable to deception. Even worse, we're vulnerable to the halo effect. As you've learned in previous videos, the halo effect is when we take one positive attribute of a person and give it to all of their characteristics. For example, we unconsciously believe that since Andrew Wakefield is a doctor and since becoming a doctor is difficult and since being a doctor is highly regarded, he must be an ethical person. Due to the halo effect, we forget that people like Andrew Wakefield are human just like you and me. Just like the rest of us, people like Andrew Wakefield can be blinded by money or the potential fame of a breakthrough discovery as well as the ego's need for attention and recognition. Due to the fact that Andrew Wakefield is human, he's subject to the same cognitive biases that we all are. He and every other doctor, scientist, and other person you regard as smarter than you is a person who has a mind that plays the same tricks on them. These biases have led to many scientific mishaps throughout the years. And I recently finished the book, Science Fictions, How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermind the Search for Truth by Stuart Richie and it's all about this subject. I'll link the book down in the description because it's well worth a read if you wanna learn more about how to separate good and bad science. Andrew Wakefield is one of the primary reasons it's so important that scientists disclose any conflicts of interest when releasing their findings. We'll discuss Andrew Wakefield's conflict of interest in a moment, but it's important to realize that this problem happened long before his research linking vaccines and autism. Back in the 1960s, a team of Harvard researchers released studies stating that fats were more of a health risk than sugar. What these researchers didn't disclose was the fact that this research was funded by the sugar industry. Due to our confirmation bias, of course we'll believe any study out there that says sugar is actually good for us. So we'll eat all the cookies and cakes we want and we'll drink soda like it's water. Unfortunately, the research findings were bogus and due to the conflict of interest and these studies, it led to an obesity epidemic. Much like the Harvard researchers, Andrew Wakefield had conflicts of interest as well when conducting his studies linking autism to the MMR vaccine. When releasing his findings to the land set, Andrew Wakefield neglected to disclose that his research was being funded by lawyers working for parents who filed lawsuits against vaccination companies. Good science is about finding the truth and sometimes we don't like what the truth is. The average person like you and I know that science is about finding the truth. So we expect scientists to practice the highest level of ethics and seek the truth out. But when someone like Andrew Wakefield is being funded by lawyers trying to prove that vaccines cause autism, it shifted Wakefield to finding the non-existent link. Since discovering that conflict of interest, the land set formally retracted Wakefield's research and stated, quote, no causal link was established between MMR vaccine and autism as the data were insufficient. Something new I learned from Stuart Richie's book is that Andrew Wakefield was also working on his own MMR vaccine to profit from it. Due to the financial incentives Wakefield had from both the lawyers as well as the possibility of creating his own vaccine, Wakefield created fraudulent research. It's been a decade since the retraction of his research but as you can see, the damage is done and he still has a cult following. Recently, my beautiful girlfriend Tristan and I watched a vice documentary about anti-vaxxers and they invite Wakefield to events like he's a celebrity. As stated previously, Andrew Wakefield is only one person. So this starts and ends with us. In the final section, we're going to discuss the psychology behind why people are anti-vaxxers and how being skeptical and developing critical thinking skills can help us avoid this from happening again. Let me just say that today my son is fully vaccinated and it's all thanks to our pediatrician helping us apply some critical thinking skills. My son missed his first round of vaccinations but on the next visit, after a great conversation with his pediatrician, we decided to vaccinate. At the time, this was an extremely difficult decision for my son's mom to make but she doesn't regret it at all. In fact, when she had her second child with her new husband, there wasn't even a debate about vaccinations. So how did my son's pediatrician convince us to vaccinate? It was actually quite simple. He just asked us some questions. He asked, if you knew for certain that your son was going to contract one of these deadly viruses in the future, would you vaccinate? And we said, of course. He then helped us realize that the problem is that we have no way of knowing if he'd get that virus. He then asked us how we would feel if our son did catch one of those viruses. It only took a moment to think about it and we immediately knew how awful it'd feel. Our doctor didn't call us terrible parents and he didn't insult our intelligence. He was kind and compassionate and he helped us realize that there's overwhelming evidence that these vaccines are safe and how many lives they've saved. Fortunately, we weren't as hard of a sell as some of the anti-vaxxers out there, but I truly believe we were so easily sold because of how he had the conversation with us. When it comes to the topic of vaccinating, the conversation can get heated, but we need to remember why it gets heated. We care about our children, but the anti-vaxxers care about their children too. Oftentimes, when we insult an anti-vaxxer, we're also calling them a bad parent or trying to degrade them. If we hope to convince people we need to have a calm, rational conversation and ask questions, but these questions can help us in all aspects of our lives. In his book, Factfulness, 10 Reasons Why We're Wrong About the World and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, Hans Rawlsing also discusses ways we can become better critical thinkers. Using anti-vaxxers as an example, he says to ask yourself, what would it take to make me believe vaccines are safe? If the answer is nothing could ever convince me, then you aren't critically thinking. Critical thinkers have an openness to changing their opinions when presented with new evidence. You can use this first tip of asking questions in other areas like when you're feeling depressed. Ask yourself, what would it take to disprove my thoughts that nobody loves me? When I'm personally feeling depressed, I purposely find an example of one person who loves me like my son or my girlfriend. If even one person loves me, it means my mind is lying to me when it says that quote unquote, nobody loves me. If we're anxious, we can ask ourselves, what will it take for me to believe that the worst case scenario won't kill me? Well, how about the fact that we've thought this before and we're still alive? Next, let's discuss the second reason why we fell for Andrew Wakefield's lies and more importantly, why it's so hard to change our beliefs. When you're arguing with anti-vaxxers, it's easy to just think about what you're seeing on the surface. In your mind, you believe that if they just let go of this idea that vaccines cause autism, they'd be fine, but it goes much deeper than that. Much like other conspiracy groups like QAnon or Flat Earthers, we must remember that anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists are part of a community. One of the reasons people hold on to their beliefs so tightly is due to the fact that if they let go of that belief, they also lose friends and sometimes even family members. This happens with religion all the time as well. As someone who grew up here in Las Vegas, I know a lot of Mormons. Many of my friends growing up have left the religion, but it was extremely difficult because their entire family is Mormon and so is everyone that they grew up with. If a person all of a sudden starts believing vaccines are safe, they lose part of their group as well as part of their identity, which is difficult. This also perfectly leads to reason number three, which is cognitive dissonance. Dissonance is when our brain has two conflicting beliefs so it irrationally justifies stories to be rid of the dissonance. For example, even when presented with evidence that Andrew Wakefield's studies were fraudulent, a person will make up reasons not to believe the story because then it also means that their community of friends is wrong too. We also want to believe that we're intelligent, independent people. Nobody thinks that they're falling for cognitive biases so dissonance can often push us deeper into our beliefs. Throughout the years, it's been proven time and time again that those who believe in conspiracies only believe in them more when you try to disprove them. Here's a quick example of how cognitive dissonance may work in an anti-vaxxers brain when presented with evidence that Andrew Wakefield is a fraud. And remember, this is happening on a completely unconscious level. Hmm, the scientific journal that published Andrew Wakefield's study has since retracted it. But if that was true, that'd mean that I'm a bad parent because I didn't vaccinate my child. It also mean that I'm a bad person because I've convinced others not to vaccinate. This would also mean that I'm not intelligent. Well, this can't be right because I'm not a bad person and I am intelligent. So what else could be going on? Well, Big Pharma does have a lot of power and money. So maybe they paid off the Lancet to retract Wakefield's study. And if they're trying to silence him, that means I need to work even harder to spread the word about how vaccines are dangerous. Now, do you see how easily we can go from being presented with evidence that just makes us believe the wrong thing even more? Another example is why some people don't believe their significant other is cheating when a friend gives them evidence. The person may think that their friend is just jealous and wants to sabotage the relationship because you never date someone who cheats. You're a much better judge of character than that. As for numbers four and five on our list, we're going to look at logical fallacies. Remember, logical fallacies are arguments we use to justify a premise, but they don't prove anything. The two logical fallacies often used by anti-vaxxers are the appeal to authority slash celebrity and the appeal to nature. When they say Andrew Wakefield is a doctor, therefore he must be telling the truth, that's the appeal to authority logical fallacy. There is no law of the universe that says a doctor cannot lie. And recently we discussed how Jenny McCarthy helped push the anti-vaxx narrative and this is the appeal to celebrity. In both of these cases, the primary culprit is the halo effect. We must always remember that people are people and they're just as fallible as you and I despite their status. Next is the appeal to nature. The appeal to nature logical fallacy states, it's natural, therefore it's good or it's unnatural, therefore it's bad. Many people in the anti-vaxx movement use the appeal to nature to argue that natural remedies are the answer despite there being no legitimate scientific evidence. Personally, I'm someone that loves natural medicine and I'm constantly reading the latest research on it. So I try to be mindful of myself using this logical fallacy. We must remember that just because it's natural doesn't always mean it's good. For example, natural disasters like tsunamis, earthquakes and tropical storms that take thousands of lives are natural but we wouldn't say that they're good for us. There are some poisonous berries out there that can make us deathly ill. So it'd be wrong to argue that because they're natural, they're good. Finally, we're going to talk about the last reason Andrew Wakefield was able to sell us on his lies and that's our need for control. Earlier, we discussed how much there is that we don't know. It's 2020 and we still don't have all the answers. We're still fighting to find a cure for cancer and just a few years ago, I lost my grandmother to Parkinson's disease. It's scary to think that we don't have ways to cure some of these illnesses, let alone prevent them. When we don't have the answers, we feel like we don't have control and that's scary. As a parent, it was terrifying to me that my son might develop autism. Not only that, but addiction runs in my family and I'm worried that my son may develop an addiction later in his life. Unfortunately, when we're afraid, the rational part of our mind shuts off and we search for ways to make sense of this crazy world. Recently, last week tonight with John Oliver, discussed this when it comes to conspiracies around COVID. When we don't have answers, we'll look for anything to give us peace of mind. But we must stay vigilant. As badly as we want ways to prevent autism, we can't fall prey to conspiracies or bad scientific studies like those of Andrew Wakefield. As terrible as the COVID pandemic is, I'm absolutely terrified thinking about how many people will refuse to get the vaccine when it comes out. Yes, we all try to do our best for our children and our families, but we must also remember that our decisions affect the people in our communities as well as around the globe. There are many people who can't be vaccinated due to various illnesses, so we have a responsibility to get the vaccine to try to keep those people safe. We need more people to understand that the anti-vax movement was built on the lies and biases of Andrew Wakefield, but we also need to remember there's a right way and a wrong way to have these conversations. So before you start screaming at an anti-vaxer on social media, ask yourself, how would I respond if someone said this to me? If you don't like having your intelligence insulted, there's a good chance that others don't like it either. Hopefully, now that you know about some of the cognitive traps that people fall into and the critical thinking skills necessary to avoid bad science, we can all start having better conversations around vaccinations. All right, everybody, thank you once again for making it all the way through another video essay. And like I've always said, there are plenty of beliefs out there where if you believe in it, do your thing as long as it's not hurting anybody. But I feel compelled to discuss critical thinking and how to be skeptical when we're discussing something like vaccinations because this can hurt other people and we're in the midst of a global pandemic and on the brink of discovering a vaccine and there are a lot of people who don't wanna get it because of some bad science. You know what I mean? So again, I think the most important takeaway from this if you're really trying to be a critical thinker is ask yourself, ask yourself, what would it take for me to know that this was false? Right? Like what evidence could I be presented with? If we're in a place where no evidence could prove otherwise, then we're not critically thinking. We've made up our mind and that's not a great way to live, just making up our mind about things and nothing can change it, right? Like think about the relationships we have with other people. Think if you did think that your significant other was cheating on you. What evidence would it take to believe that they're not? If you say nothing, then what kind of relationship is that? How much trust is actually there, right? And like I said, I get it. This world is a crazy, scary place. I'm somebody with a generalized anxiety disorder and when I don't have control, I can freak out. But practicing critical thinking and all these skills that we talked about in recent videos, it really helps to soothe and calm my anxiety now because I can think rationally about these things instead of letting my mind go all over the place, all right? And if you need additional help with your mental health, I personally use BetterHelp online therapy. There is a link always down in the description and in the pinned comment below. It's an affiliate link, so if you would like to try affordable online therapy, use my link and a little bit comes back to help out the channel, all right? But anyways, make sure that you share this video. I hope it helps some people think about, you know, vaccinations and autism and just a lot of different conversations, if you like these videos where I discuss kind of like conspiracies or different beliefs and things like that, please let me know because I can do a million of these. But just let me know if you like these, all right? Anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge, huge thank you to everybody who supports the channel on Patreon as well as everybody who supports the channel by buying the books over at therewiredsoul.com or getting merch from the merch store. You're all awesome, all right? Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.