The above sort of approach has a homepathically low chance of success with hardcore antivaxxers, the ones active on social media promoting antivax misinformation, making antivax videos, and organizing and participating in antivax protests. 2/
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You can be respectful and empathetic trying to engage hardcore antivaxxers until you’re blue in the face, and you will get exactly nowhere. 3/
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That’s because antivax ideology has become part of antivaxxers’ identities, like religion or a political belief system, and it’s just as hard to persuade antivaxxers to change their belief system as any religious or political belief system. 4/
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In the rare cases when hardcore antivaxxers do actually change their minds, it’s very much like a deconversion process and usually comes from within—and not in response to anything we provaccine advocates tell them, no matter how respectful. 5/
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So, yes, concentrate on the vaccine averse. They’re more numerous than the hardcore antivaxxers anyway, and you might reach them. 6/
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Don’t bother trying to persuade hardcore antivaxxers or being nice to them. It won’t work. All you can do is to counter their misinformation to try to inoculate the naive against antivax messaging, but even that’s not nearly enough. 7/
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Contrary to what most people believe, particularly physicians and scientists, It’s not enough simply to counter bad information with good information. That alone doesn’t work. It’s more important to counter the antivax story with a compelling counterstory. 8/
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The dishonesty, both factual and intellectual, of the antivax narrative must also be highlighted. That antivax ideology and misinformation are one big conspiracy theory must be emphasized. 9/
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As much as I wish that science alone can win out, it can’t. For example, unfortunately the single most effective message that changed the narrative in the press and got the media to stop reporting on vaccines with false balance, giving antivaxxers equal time, was not science. 10/
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What was that message? It was Brian Deer’s exposure of Andrew Wakefield’s scientific fraud. “Wakefield is a disgraced fraud who was struck off” became a very convenient simple shorthand that the press could use to reject antivax arguments and not so false balance. 11/
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It could be confirmation bias on my part (although I don’t think so) and I don’t have hard data, but after Wakefield’s fraud became widely known I saw a lot fewer news stories with false balance and a lot more mentioning his fraud. 12/12
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