Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Butterfly Effect Of Deceptive Science: How Media Influence May Have Spread The Illusory Link Between Vaccines And Autism, Kami M. Vinton

Communication Theses

Delaying or refusing childhood vaccinations can increase a community’s risk of vaccine-preventable diseases. Agenda setting theory demonstrates that media can influence people's attitudes and opinions. One study in 1998 asserted that a vaccine/autism link existed, giving birth to one of the longest held myths in modern medicine. Shortly after its publication, the study was thoroughly discredited, and hundreds of subsequent studies have failed to find any link. Many parents who refuse vaccinations remain unconvinced by traditional science and favor anecdotal, pseudo-scientific accounts of the cause of and treatments for autism. Given the recent resurgence of once-eradicated vaccine-preventable diseases, it is …