My mom’s friend shared that viral article about vaccines and autism again

Last week my mom’s friend Deb posted this article from a site I’d never heard of called HealthFreedomNow. It claimed a new study proved vaccines cause autism in kids under 5. I clicked through to the actual study link and it went to a blog post from 2014 with zero citations. The article had fake quotes from a doctor who doesn’t even practice anymore. I spent 3 hours tracing the sources and found the original study was retracted 8 years ago. I left a comment on Deb’s post with links to the CDC and the retraction notice from the journal. She just replied with a crying emoji and said I was brainwashed by Big Pharma. Has anyone here actually gotten a family member to stop sharing junk science like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

iris_schmidt12d ago

Those 3 hours you spent. I get that feeling of needing to be right. But did it change anything? Probably not. Sounds like Deb isn't gonna change her mind on a Facebook post. @robinp89 has a point about people digging in. Sometimes you just gotta let them have their thing.

robinp8913d ago

Honestly Deb might have a point though, like maybe you kind of proved her right by coming in with all those links and acting like the authority on it. People dig in harder when you challenge them directly, so the crying emoji makes sense if she felt attacked. Probably could have just said "huh that's interesting" and changed the subject instead of going full research mode.

ray_sullivan13d ago

100% @robinp89. It's like that thing where you try to show someone a faster route but they get mad cause they feel like you're saying their way was dumb.