The latest hot thing in anti-vaxx circles is Aluminium. First it was the thimerosal. That was taken out of most vaccines but of course there has to be something in vaccines that are bad so it was on to the next thing. In comes aluminium alarm. This in itself is a great example of goal post moving but I wanted to talk about a specific example I recently encountered on Twitter.
I have included a screencap of the initial tweet that caught my attention. What is the FDA doing allowing a vaccine to be given that has 5 times the limit of aluminium in it? Seems weird, like it’s a claim that should be investigated further to me. Since this exchange I’ve seen the line repeated many times. “The Hep B vaccine contains far more aluminium than the FDA allows”. So some investigation was required. A minute or two on google turned up the antivaxxer in question had slightly mistyped the true limit set by the FDA. It is 850mcg, not 50mcg as they claimed above. Easy mistake to make. Maybe their screen was dirty when they looked it up and the 8 was perfectly obscured.
So I pointed out the mistake and asked if there was still a problem since 250mcg is way below 850mcg. Of course there was. You can’t score a point against an opponent who removes the goal posts every time you move. Not that I view this “debate” as an us vs them situation, a battle with wins and losses. But it does make the conversation pointless. If you are going to make a point, at least acknowledge it when you’re shown to be wrong. Instead of taking it as a learning experience, the person just said “oh well 250mcg is too high”. They may be right but their point was that vaccines breach the limits set by the FDA and they’ve just changed the claim like nothing happened.
Obviously they’ve just asserted 250mcg is too much based on… a gut feeling? That’s bad but not uncommon. At least it can be discussed. There is no point, however, talking with someone who will just throw up claims you have to shut down like whack a mole. Never conceding points, never showing even a small indication they care about the facts. It seems clear that the person on the other end either just wants to catch you on one point to claim total victory (no matter how many points they conceded) or will never change their mind.
Studoscience 