Post about vaccine woo

http://blogs.plos.org/thepanicvirus/2011/05/13/rolling-stone-re-posts-rfk-jr-story-lauding-chemically-castrating-autism-researchers/#comment-921414

Link to article about the book The Panic Virus

(My handle for this was "Extraordinarily Ordinary")

Why does the anti-vax gang desperately cling to their black-and-white evaluation of this issue?  Why is there no middle ground? Why is there no nuance?  Why is there no prudent tentativeness? Why do they not say, "Well, I'm leaning in that direction, but of course there are many avenues of investigation I haven't thoroughly checked out."

Mu guess is that they need a boogie man to account for nameless fears they have.  It reminds me of a three-year-old thinking there's a monster under his bed, when, really, the 3-year-old is simply lonely and scared.  By inventing a monster, the three-year-old can feel as if the nameless fear is starting to be corralled and dealt with.  I am strongly supposing that this is what drives the anti-vax gang, at least in good measure.

The most telling "smoking gun" with the anti-vax crew is their absolutism, and how emotionally charged they are with fear and anger.  The absolutism is odd and strange! Something is going on here! -- and it sure as hell ain't objectivity. In more benign, humdrum issues, I have very little doubt that the anti-vax people would easily concede that they could conceivably be wrong, that there might not have the whole story.   However, this is not the case with vaccines.

Very few of the anti-vax crew will accept this as a real possibility.  This is strongly indicative that something is going on other than objectivity.