HRR: If all vaccines are 100% infallible, than yes it is a conspiracy. However, a vaccine is a consumer product like anything else. Unfortunately almost every company that is currently producing a vaccine has been convicted of both corruption and or fabricating data at one time or another. If you don’t want to feed conspiracies than get honest companies to produce scientifically valid products, with credible risk to benefit ratio’s. Questioning the effectiveness of a particular vaccine or a group does not make one anti-vaccine, just maybe anti that vaccine. You can just as well reverse the study to see who believes unqualified authority without question. even at the expense of their own children.

By calling valid scientific doubt a conspiracy, you in effect create one. ( The researchers of this study are welcome to rebuttal )

A belief in anti-vaccine conspiracy theories may have significant and detrimental consequences for children’s health, new research from the University has shown.

Researchers Daniel Jolley and Dr Karen Douglas, of the School of Psychology ^[1], surveyed 89 parents about their views on anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and then asked them to indicate their intention to have a fictional child vaccinated.  It was found that stronger belief in anti-vaccine conspiracy theories was associated with lower intention to vaccinate.

In a second study, 188 participants were exposed to information concerning anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. It was found that reading this material reduced their intention to have a fictional child vaccinated, relative to participants who were given refuting information or those in a control condition.

Daniel Jolley said: ‘This research is timely in the face of declining vaccination rates and recent outbreaks of vaccinated-against diseases in the UK, such as measles. Our studies demonstrate that anti-vaccine conspiracy theories may present a barrier to vaccine uptake, which may potentially have significant and detrimental consequences for children’s health.’

Dr Douglas added: ‘It is easy to treat belief in conspiracy theories lightly, but our studies show that wariness about conspiracy theories may be warranted. Ongoing investigations are needed to further identify the social consequences of conspiracism and to identify potential ways to combat the effects of an ever-increasing culture of conspiracism.’

The research, titled ‘The effects of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories on vaccination intentions’, was carried out by Daniel Jolley, Postgraduate Researcher, and Dr Karen Douglas, Reader in Psychology, at the University of Kent. It is published in the open-access, online journal PLOS ONE and is available here: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0089177 ^[2].

Related articles

• Children’s health can be affected by anti-vaccine conspiracy theories (medicalnewstoday.com)
• Anti-vaccine conspiracy theories may have ‘detrimental consequences’ for children’s health (sciencedaily.com)
• Anti-vaccine conspiracy theories harm children’s health (psypost.org)
• Vaccine Conspiracy Theorists More Likely To See Conspiracy Everywhere (forbes.com)
• One Map That Shows The Dangerous Consequences Of Anti-Vaccine Propaganda (thinkprogress.org)
• The Dangerous Consequences Of Anti-Vaccine Propaganda In One Map (publichealthwatch.wordpress.com)