General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: You can't criticize one pseudoscience when supporting another. [View all]tblue37
(65,227 posts)verifiable nonsense when they see it, even if they have beliefs of their own that don't stand up to careful examination.
One problem with both issues is the simple reality that we all have reason to distrust those in authority, especially when they mandate certain actions that have direct and potentially dangerous effects on our own safety or on the safety of those we love, and especially when those mandates seem to be a way for corrupt and well-connected companies, groups, or individuals to increase their power or to make a lot of money.
That is the case with vaccines (which I am a devoted proponent of, by the way!). People are not on the whole rational, but emotional and reactive. Furthermore, most people do not have a lot of knowledge or a lot of time to become well-informed about such subjects. Instead, they rely on information they get from people or groups/institutions they trust. Unfortunately, a lot of that trust is foolishly misplaced. For example, our celebrity-worshiping culture gives celebrities more influence over the beliefs of individuals than they should have, since they usually are no more knowledgeable than ordinary citizens (and are often less so). Jenny McCarthy is a celebrity, but even her untoward influence would not have carried as far if she had not been essentially endorsed and promoted by two celebrities whom the general public likes and trusts more: Jim Carrey and, much more important, Oprah Winfrey. Furthermore, Winfrey's influence was especially powerful among women--the mothers and grandmothers who would decide about vaccinating children.
About GMO--the huge multinational agribusinesses that stand to make a killing with GMO crops have been shown to be willing to screw over individuals on their way to raking in ever bigger profits. People are not that well-informed about these matters, but most of them do realize that big agribusinesses are not on our side and are willing to do anything to make more money. We have all read stories about how companies like Monsanto essentially enslave small farmers, especially in developing countries, by getting them to use proprietary seeds, so that after bringing in a crop, they cannot save seeds to replant, but must purchase more each year from the company, often ending up so deeply in debt and so desperate that they commit suicide.
We have all read articles about how big corporations endanger us by pushing dangerous, contaminated products into our food supply--and even the foods we buy to feed our pets. I don't think most people carefully distinguish between the factory that produces contaminated caramel apples, the ones that produce contaminated pet food, the ones that produce e. coli tainted ground beef, the ones that produce dangerous pesticides, and the ones that modify plants to produce variants that increase harvests, resist disease or pests, or tolerate poor soils, limited water availability, and other uncongenial growing conditions.
On top of that, we have a long, long cultural history of narratives that present amoral and even mad scientists who are so devoted to their Faustian quest for knowledge and power that they never stop to consider whether their experiments might be dangerous to themselves or to other people. When those scientists work for the government we get LSD experiments on uninformed subjects, black men with syphilis that is deliberately left untreated, lobotomized mental patients, atom bomb tests that expose people and the environment to dangerous levels of radiation, nuclear power plants that are built without sufficient safety protocols (to save money, of course), and that are not inspected regularly or carefully, so that we end up with scary situations like Three Mile Island.
And, of course, we also have the general (and often perfectly reasonable) distrust of those who have power in our government. We have too much evidence of their nefarious designs and actions to ever accept without question anything they say, simply because we know most government officials who have any power at all got there by being willing to sell their souls, at least bits and pieces of their souls, for the money and connections they had to have to make any run for office or to get appointed to powerful positions. even the "good" ones have to be at least somewhat compromised by what it takes to move up in a thoroughly corrupt system.
Put all those very good reasons for suspicion together, and it is a wonder that any of us are able to see beyond an instinctive revolt against anything those in power say we must do and instead take the time to become well-informed and to consider each case on its own merits.