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It's just like the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham. Absolutely worthless as it gives "equal credence" to ridiculous claims.
Why is arguing with fools like playing chess with a pigeon? Because it doesn't matter how masterfully tutored you've been in the theory, how sound your thinking and strategy is, or how good you are at the game in general, the pigeon is always going to knock over the chess pieces, crap on the board and strut around like it won anyway.
Not a shocker at all. Debates arent really an intellectual exercise, they're more of a PT Barnum off.
If they want "both sides" of a debate to have fair representation, then for every second an anti-vax conspiracy theorist gets to speak, actual scientists should have an hour. To represent the actual man-hours each side has put into researching their ideas.
Science already has an established method for debating and refuting scientific findings/claims. So this idea that we need to make a spectacle out of it is so disingenuous on its face. "oh but if they know what they are talking about it would be easy to defend in a debate", but it goes the other way. Then they keep moving the goal posts on what qualifies as a "real" scientific test, and I just can't have a good faith conversation with these people. I'll correct people in real life, but the internet is a cesspool and I don't have the patience.
Don’t give them a platform or any hint of validity
This is tough for me. The authors make a sensible argument. I've never had a debate with antivaxxers that was fruitful or didn't leave me feeling deflated from the sheer weight of the lack of critical thinking. But there have also been sketchy things that the pharmaceutical companies have pulled, and I dislike the growing movement that any opposition to them is counter to science and should be silenced. Argh.
I think it should be very possible to strike a balance between criticism of a company's shady doings, and staying away from science/medicine denialism.
I also think that conversations like that aren't possible if there are antivaxers involved, as it's often advantageous to them to ignore any kind of distinction or nuance here. If we all agree that the fundamental science is sound and most vaccines are safe, then we're in a good position to talk about pharma companies being shady in the particulars.