Talk:Issues in Interdisciplinarity 2020-21/Evidence in the anti-vaccine movement

Zoom meeting on November 20th:
Issue chosen: Power

Disciplines in health and environment and societies

possibilities: things related to gender, growing importance of teenagers in society (climate change, BLM, gender issues), assisted reproduction, surrogacy, BLM, contraception, 'artificial' meat, anti-vaccines/vaccination

Zoom meeting on November 24th:
Topic chosen: the anti-vaccine movements

Disciplines we could talk about: Power of education (lack of education), sociology (social groups impacte by this movement), power of religion, ethics, politics/power of government --> certain vaccinations mandatory, media studies? (the role of the internet - the communication on secondary effects of vaccines, polemics on cases where these secondary effects caused someone's death, etc.), conspiracy theories (discipline?) Power of media in the sociology discipline. Impacts sociology, social groups involved/impacted by anti-vccine movements. Disparities between countries. Those who have/don't have access to vaccines. Power of biology (power acquired by humans - now able to fight against viruses), epidemiology. The impact of lobbies - power of lobbies and their role in politics.

Conflict between biology (pro-vaccine) and social sciences/ethics (anti-vaccine movement and effects on society :education, media representation, politics, religion). Solution/middleground: Communication (by Education and medias). Power of education, how you can shift the anti-vaccine to pro-vaccine perspective

Conflict: can you make vaccination mandatory? Biology - yes

Social sciences/Ethics/Philosophy - can you force people, despite greater good, can you sacrifice individuals? + is are vaccines actually good for your body?

Education - see actual risks of vaccines, very contrasted with representation in the media

Maybe pick Truth instead of power?

links found by Rose:

https://ucl-new-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=TN_cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_1637568208&context=PC&vid=UCL_VU2&lang=en_US&search_scope=CSCOP_UCL&adaptor=primo_central_multiple_fe&tab=local&query=any,contains,anti-vaccine%20movement&offset=0

https://www-tandfonline-com.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/doi/abs/10.4161/hv.18371

WHO identifies the anti-vaccine movement as one of the top ten risks for global health: power of this movement

Conclusion of the zoom : We have to read a bit more past works to examine structures and then choose between Power of Truth for the focus of our study

After further discussion we've decided to change the Issue we had chosen: we are now doing Evidence in the anti-accine movement

Found this article which looks interesting: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1586/14760584.2015.964212 Chopsticks21 (discuss • contribs) 20:24, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Article on the link between the anti-vaccine movement and ethics: https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=dujs Saucesoja (discuss • contribs) 18:34, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Article on current issues related to anti vaccine movement & covid 19 : https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landig/article/PIIS2589-7500(20)30227-2/fulltext. --Api20 (discuss • contribs) 16:52, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Zoom meeting on November 30th:

How to structure our Wikibooks chapter:

1) Biology - biological evidence of vaccines' efficiency

2) Ethics - talk about religion but not only (just ethics in general, philosophy etc.)

3) Education - solution? allows people to have a critical view, to understand what a vaccine is and not speculation about it in the media, learn to have reliable sources (like scientific ones rather than things found in social media)

Saucesoja will mainly focus on the biology paragraph, Api20  on the ethics one and Chopsticks21 on the education one.

Introduction: defining the movement + what is the evidence behind people reluctant to Covid-19 vaccinations?

So, I started working on the introduction and am finding sources that may interest you so I'll put them here:

For ethics: Durbach, N. They might as well brand us: Working class resistance to compulsory vaccination in Victorian England. The Society for the Social History of Medicine. 2000;13:45-62. ( vaccine = “unchristian” as it has animal origins + seen as violation of civil liberty)

and https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1586/14760584.2015.964212

For biology (evidence that vaccines are safe): Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) Project Priority Studies. Chopsticks21 (discuss • contribs) 10:14, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Also I created sections to organise the page a bit but feel free to change the titles of your sections if you want to be more specific as my titles are quite broad Chopsticks21 (discuss • contribs) 10:57, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

SauceSoja and myself have decided to switch our roles paragraph-wise Chopsticks21 (discuss • contribs) 11:57, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Okay so I am almost done with my paragraph on evidence in biology, tell me what you think! I will try and find some sources to have facts on vaccines in general and adverse effects as a sort of conclusion to my section to show that the discipline promotes vaccination (quantitative evidence --> data suggests small adverse effects and important decrease in the diseases in general). Feel free to edit! Chopsticks21 (discuss • contribs) 11:57, 2 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Hello Chopsticks21, thank you for all your links, I will have a look at them!

Overall your work is clear and seems well-referenced, you make some good points. The introduction (although it might be a bit too long) gives a concise summary of the context. We could try to open up on what is happening today in the conclusion, regarding the Covid-19 vaccine. I just have a few suggestions to make on the biology part:

- you could explain some scientific terms such as "case fatality rate", to ensure that the reader understands everything, and also reexplain some scientific concepts such as "herd immunity", the condition on which a vaccine relies to work

- you have a lot of numbers and percentages, which is great because it supports well your idea, but the reader might sometimes feel a bit lost. You could add some sentences to explain them a bit more and summarise the main idea of your paragraph

- Finally, it could be a good idea to add a small conclusion, to show that scientific evidence is mostly quantitative.

I can see in your last message above that your work isn't totally finalised anyways, I am just giving you some first feedback on your work, feel free to take it into account or not! Apart from those points I found your work very interesting. Saucesoja (discuss • contribs) 18:43, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello, I just read your work & comments and I found it great. I agree with Saucesoja comments, maybe highlight a bit more the nature of the evidence in the biology part. I also re-phrased some sentences. Tell me what you think of it. As for me, I am currently reading articles on evidence from an ethical/ social view. I will follow on the questions that these statistics ask. I will put some links when I'm done. Api20 (discuss • contribs) 19:30, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Okay thanks for oth your feedbacks, I will try and explan that a bit further, I was just worried about the word count! Will take a look at your rephrasing too Api20! Chopsticks21 (discuss • contribs) 12:58, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Okay, so I've added a sort of concluding sentence/paragraph introducing Api20's, tell me what you think! Chopsticks21 (discuss • contribs) 13:19, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Saucesoja, I was thinking that on your paragraph on education, which is kind if the intermediate discipline to resolve these tensions, you could start off with the tensions saying that for biology and ethics, both internal and external tensions are at play, as evidence in biology suports vaccination (overall positive effect) but also has evidence that go against vaccination (infant deaths, secondary diseases). Likewise, I think that Api20 (correct me if I'm wrong) will conclude that there is a tendency to promote vaccination: utilitarism = for the greater good, as well as a dilemma: can you force people to get vaccinated/to vaccinate your children - dimension of selfishness, vaccine is effective if a majority of the population is vaccinated, protecting the unvaccinated, etc. Chopsticks21 (discuss • contribs) 12:12, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Thank you Chopsticks21, you make a very good point!

After further research and discussion with the other members of the group, the third part will be more globally on public health policies and the government’s strategy to fight anti-vaccine movements. The role of public policies concerning vaccines is important, because as Chopsticks21 has mentioned, they have to resolve tensions between the approach to evidence in biology and ethics. The aim of this part is hence to show how the anti-vaccine movement can be approached from an interdisciplinary point of view. As their goal is mostly to promote the health of the population, public health policies base themselves mostly on scientific evidence and quantitative data. Therefore, public health aims to fight anti-vaccination movements.

There are two main parts:

1)	Mandatory vaccines to ensure herd immunity. Public health justifies this thanks to utilitarianism and harm principle: what is better for society overall and individually. However, vaccine exemptions can exist (eg religious reasons) --> interdisciplinary approach to evidence

2)	Education has an important role because: - the new generation isn’t necessarily aware of the importance of vaccination as they can’t see their negative effects (as vaccination has already eradicated some diseases) - overall not enough knowledge - to fight all the conspiracy theories and fake news on the internet Here again, bases itself mostly on quantitative data. Saucesoja (discuss • contribs) 20:48, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Some articles I'm going to use for my part on Ethics in the anti vaccine movement : - https://publichealthreviews.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1007/BF03391666.pdf -https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/ethical-issues-and-vaccines Api20 (discuss • contribs) 13:09, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello Rose I encourage you to read the end of this article which I found very relevant for your part! https://publichealthreviews.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1007/BF03391666.pdf Api20 (discuss • contribs) 16:40, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Hello, I have posted my first draft under the Public Health part. I still have to change few things, like rephrasing some sentences and adding a conclusion. I am also aware it is too long. I'm waiting to see what you will write Api20 as you may repeat a few things I have said about ethics to see how I'll shorten it! And thank you for the link, I have reused it in my part. Chopsticks21, I had started my introduction with your idea at first (internal/external tensions) but as I repeated it later on it was too repetitive and long, tell me if you think I should change it. And give me back all your feedback! Saucesoja (discuss • contribs) 21:25, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Hi, I've started readng your part Saucesoja and so far it is very good. I think that the introductory part was good and I think you were right to mention the tensions later on in your paragraphs. I took the liberty of editing certain phrases I hope you don't mind (you can always change them back if you think they don't imply the idea you were looking to convey)! Also I think we should rephrase "take more into account ethics" at the end of your section onn Compulsory vaccines but can't come up with anything good to replace it... please edit it if you find a better wording! Chopsticks21 (discuss • contribs) 12:14, 10 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the edits, Chopsticks21, some sentences are clearer now! They haven't changed at all the ideas i wanted to convey. For the last sentence, I'll think about it and see if I find a new wording, even though yours is already good. Saucesoja (discuss • contribs) 14:55, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks Api20 for your submission. The ideas are great! I m doing a little of rephrasing at the moment that I will continue later on. Do you tink you could perhaps include a phrase or two un utilitarism? because you explain the principle of it (greater good > individual) but don't mention the term. Thanks! Chopsticks21 (discuss • contribs) 14:23, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I was reading the part on "New issues" in ethics and thought it might fit better in the paragraph on education(/public health) or in the conclusion as it doesn't really involve any ethicl issues. Tell me what you think about it Chopsticks21 (discuss • contribs) 18:39, 11 December 2020 (UTC)