On vaccine hesitancy

This is a response to a comment of Peter, a regular visitor, about whether or not to vaccinate our children, more formally called vaccine hesitancy. I place it as an entry instead of a simple comment because it involves two questions that I consider fundamental: (1) the principle of the non-falsifiable hypothesis as a litmus test of whether we are facing a pseudoscience, and my metaphor of conspiracy theorists who leave the courtroom every time the prosecutor speaks. Peter wrote:

I’m truly surprised that you would express such a credulous stance on this issue, with mine being that vaccination is a branch of medicine just as fraudulent and pernicious as biological psychiatry.

I’m not sure the analogy is adequate. Although psychiatrists cannot present their central hypothesis (that mental illness is a biomedical entity) in a falsifiable way, I suppose that medical science can present, without violating falsifiability, the claim that vaccines prevent, say, smallpox, pertussis or measles. ‘I suppose’ I wrote because I haven’t listened to the ‘prosecutor’ in the case of vaccines. And this brings me to Peter’s second statement:

Finally, you like to speak of listening to the Prosecution and the Defense to come to a fair conclusion about any contentious topic. So to what extent have you given the “Prosecution” a fair hearing on this issue?

For someone who has not entered the courtroom of the debate between those who believe in vaccines and those who don’t, the best analogy wouldn’t be the member of a jury. That would mean spending much time as those members do in American movies. Furthermore, the government compels them not to walk away while listening to both sides. Rather, I would be one of the citizens who listen to the trial from the seats, a layman who is not obliged to follow the case closely but simply wants to get a general idea of the controversy.

To argue, without using much time, that psychiatry is a false science one just has to read my linked article above, or watch any of Robert Whitaker’s videos (whom white nationalists should not mistake for Bob Whitaker). Ideally, in the case of vaccine hesitancy, Peter would link an open debate between ‘lawyer’ and ‘prosecutor’ so to speak. Only if, from that debate, I feel that the prosecutor won (that is, that the vaccine-hesitant POV sounds more scientific) I would use my time to study the subject.