Are We Alone?: Skeptic Check

I was listening to this program on the radio this morning. The topic was flu vaccine and the fears stirred by vaccines in segments of the general population. I was struck by a couple of things:

• The concept of "false balance". The media unfortunately sometimes tries to appear balanced by juxtaposing a scientific viewpoint, supported by evidence from carefully controlled experiments which have been replicated and described in peer reviewed publications with anecdotal evidence or worse with completely unsupported assertions. While such assertions may be well motivated by "true believers" with superstitious beliefs, they may also be meretricious assertions made for private gain.
• Our evolved interest in stories. People do like to tell and to hear stories. Often we can learn from the stories that are told. Check your newspaper and you will see how often information of general applicability is cloaked in the story of an individual or a family. The problem is that science advances by amassing data. The broadcast noted that "data is not the plural of anecdote".

Remember the old Skinner Box experiment in which an animal could get a food reward by pressing a lever. Often the animals would exhibit a complex chain of behavior before pushing the lever, apparently failing to recognize that only one element of that behavioral chain was needed. But the chain which does ultimately result in the benefit became "superstitious" in that sense that it was falsely believed to be necessary to the desired result/

It occurs to me that there is a fundamental difference in the two stories:

• I was immunized and I did not get sick.
• I was immunized and I got sick.

The event of "getting sick" makes a much more interesting story than the event of "not getting sick".