Goldenberg 2021

Public Misunderstanding
of Science? Reframing the

Problem of Vaccine
Hesitancy
Maya J. Goldenberg
University of Guelph
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/posc/article-pdf/24/5/552/1790224/posc_a_00223.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021

Public resistance towards scientific claims regarding vaccine safety is widely
thought to stem from public misunderstanding (or ignorance) of science. Repeated
failures to alleviate this ignorance make the problem of vaccine hesitancy seem
intractable. I challenge this presumption of knowledge deficit and reinterpret vac-
cine hesitancy to be a problem of public mistrust of scientific experts and insti-
tutions. This finding invites new corrective measures: self-scrutiny by our
scientific and governmental bodies regarding their own credibility as well as
investment in dialogical rather than didactic communicative outreach to vaccine
hesitant members of the public. Without the oppositional framing of the problem
as a conflict of science versus ignorance, there is more room for conciliation of
public health agendas with the concerns of the lay public.
1. Introduction: An intractable problem

The public rejection of scientific claims is widely recognized by scientific
and governmental institutions to be threatening to modern democratic so-
cieties. Intense conflict between science and the public over diverse health
and environmental issues have invited speculation by concerned officials
regarding both the source of and the solution to the problem of public
resistance towards scientific and policy positions on such hot-button issues
as global warming, genetically modified crops, environmental toxins, and
nuclear waste disposal. The London Royal Society’s (1985) influential re-
port “Public Understanding of Science” (also known as the “Bodmer Re-
port”), which spearheaded the now-thriving area of science studies by the
same name, is commonly cited for first expressing the theory that public
ignorance of science dangerously prevented citizens from making mature
rational decisions in support of scientifically-backed policies (although a
similar sentiment was expressed earlier by the US National Commission
Perspectives on Science 2016, vol. 24, no. 5
©2016 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology doi:10.1162/POSC_a_00223
552
Perspectives on Science 553
on Excellence in Education 1983). The Bodmer report led to the formation

of COPUS, the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science, which
used grants and other incentives to initiate change in the attitudes of sci-
entists toward outreach activities (Committee on Public Understanding of
Science 1987). Internationally, governments have assembled portfolios on
“science and society” (National Science Foundation 1995; House of Lords
2000; Canadian Biotechnology Secretariat 2006; European Commission
2008) intended to address this crisis of public misunderstanding and mis-

trust. Most have committed to cultivating two-way public engagement
with science to foster better expert-lay relations in the often-contentious
science-policy nexus.
It is against this backdrop of public misunderstanding of science that
the problem of vaccine hesitancy and non-compliance in the industrialized
North has been framed. A narrative routinely repeated in the biomedical,
public health, and popular science literature focuses on the problem of the
public, whose ignorance and fear make us susceptible to misinformation by
anti-science interests. The problem of the ignorant public is alleged to ex-
plain why, despite concerted health promotion and outreach efforts, vac-
cine hesitancy still persists 18 years after the publication of the notorious
Lancet study (Wakefield et al. 1998) that galvanized current anti-vaccine
sentiment.1 The story goes like this: Despite the scientific community’s un-
equivocal rejection of the alleged link between the measles-mumps-rubella
(MMR) triple-vaccine and autism, and the finding that the science that first
alleged the link was fraudulent, public fear of childhood vaccines persist and
cases of measles, mumps, and pertussis (whooping cough) are on the rise in
previously safe geographical locations. Fanning the flames of public mistrust
of the scientific consensus is a well-organized anti-vaccine movement, com-
prised of self-serving researchers and celebrity spokespeople, mobilized parent
groups desperate to lay blame for their children’s autism, and a sensationalist
media. What results is our current, persistent, and growing problem of vac-
cine hesitancy. Years of intense public health and health promotion efforts to
assuage public fears by correcting public misperceptions have been ineffective
in quelling those fears and elevating rates of vaccine compliance in order to
reinforce herd-immunity. The problem seems intractable.
Yet this story also has the markings of its narrators, the biomedical and
policy elite that have unilaterally framed the vaccine hesitancy problem
1. This paper focuses on what historian Mark Largent (2012) referred to as the “current”
anti-vaccine movement that started with the Wakefield scandal and continues today. While
there were previous anti-vaccine movements, Largent claims that there are very few histor-
ical links between previous movements and the current situation. For some history on anti-
vaccine movements in the US and UK respectively, see Kaufman 1967 and Durbach 2000,
2002.
554 Public Misunderstanding and Vaccine Hesitancy
and thereby dictated its solution. The problem has been framed as a conflict of
science versus ignorance, the former unproblematic and the latter entirely flawed.
I propose that while we can accept that the public is prone to misunderstand-
ing science and failing to appreciate relative risk, these characteristics do not
explain vaccine hesitancy. Instead, I will draw from social scientific research
into parental attitudes regarding vaccination as well as information sourced
from vaccine-critical parent advocacy websites to reveal an alternate framing
of the question of vaccine safety. What gets described as “public rejection of

science” is better understood as a rejection of the values underlying the sci-
entific consensus. But the science and policy agencies tasked with remedying
this problem of vaccine hesitancy do not recognize this alternative set of pri-
orities, and instead presume public ignorance of science. Characterizing one’s
opponents as ignorant is self-serving, as it permits scientific agencies to dis-
miss those concerns, and thereby unilaterally frame the question of vaccine
safety and dictate its solution. It also insulates scientific institutions from
much needed reflexive scrutiny of their practices (Wynne 2006), which is
ultimately self-defeating, as public trust is damaged, and health outreach pro-
grams miss their target. It is only under the auspices of public ignorance that
the vaccine hesitancy problem seems intractable.
1.1. Outline
After offering a brief background of the notorious Lancet study that inner-
vated contemporary vaccine hesitancy over the MMR vaccine, specifically,
and other vaccines more generally, I will turn to the task of reframing vac-
cine hesitancy from its current characterization as emblematic of public
misunderstanding of science. To do this, I will first outline the standard
characterization of and response to vaccine hesitancy consistently presented
in the health and science literature, which, I will show, presumes an igno-
rant public. I will then challenge this account of the vaccine hesitancy
problem and deny that the public is ignorant. I will demonstrate how
the official response has thereby been misguided and numerous opportu-
nities to correct the problem through effective public outreach have been
missed. I will then reframe the problem of vaccine hesitancy as a problem
of trust and strained expert-lay relations due to poor communication prac-
tices. I close by briefly situating my analysis of vaccine hesitancy within a
vigorous line of criticism of the “knowledge deficit model” for explaining
conflicts between science and the public.
2. The Catalyst: The Wakefield Scandal

Most chronologies of the MMR-autism debacle, and the resulting drop
in immunization rates, commence with the publication of British gastro-
enterologist Andrew Wakefield and colleagues’ notorious 1998 study,
“Ileal-Lymphoid-Nodular Hyperplasia, Non-Specific Colitis, and Perva-

sive Developmental Disorder in Children,” in the Lancet ( Wakefield
et al. 1998).2 The research team presented an early report of a small
case-series where they claimed to have identified, using colonoscopy stud-
ies in 12 children with autism or related disorders, a new form of inflam-
matory bowel disease that they called “autistic enterocolitis.” They noted
that in 8 of the 12 cases, the parents attributed the onset of symptoms of
autism to the MMR vaccine, which the children had received, on aver-

age, 6 days before parents first observed behavioral changes. The team
postulated a causal sequence in which MMR causes persistent measles
infection in the gut (virology had not yet confirmed the finding of mea-
sles in the bowels of these children), which produced an enterocolitis that
led to the translocation of typically non-permeable peptides into the
bloodstream and, subsequently, into the brain, where they affected neu-
rological development and could result in autism symptomology. Being
only an early report, the causal theory was speculative. The authors sug-
gested that further epidemiological and virological studies might test their
hypothesis that there was a causal link between MMR and autism. Epide-
miological analysis should show a rising incidence of autism after the in-
troduction of MMR to the United Kingdom’s national vaccine schedule in
1988. Virological studies, they said, were “under way” to establish measles
infection in the bowel specimens of those children affected by autistic
enterocolitis.
The paper’s scientific limitations should be clear. This was a small case
series which found a temporal association between autism associated with
bowel disease and MMR vaccine. A case series only builds hypotheses (the
causal claims) for further testing. These limits are not problematic—they
merely invite further study. However, establishing a temporal association
via parental recall and testimony is problematic, as the source is highly
unreliable. The study also suffered from selection bias, as the sample
was overrepresented by the children of parents who believed MMR caused
their children’s autism.
2. Some commentators still acknowledge that there were precipitating factors leading
up to the explosive reaction to Wakefield et al.’s 1998 study. Fitzpatrick, for instance, notes
that a few years prior to Wakefield and colleagues’ first suggestion of an MMR-autism link,
“there were already signs that MMR was in trouble” (2004a, p. 11). The UK had expe-
rienced its first decline in MMR vaccine uptake (from a 92 percent average to roughly
91 percent) in 1997 following bad press over the 1994 “Operation Safeguard” school immu-
nization program that offered a combined measles-rubella vaccine. There had also been
publicity in 1995 for Wakefield and colleagues’ earlier work suggesting a link between
measles or the measles vaccine and inflammatory bowel disease (Fitzpatrick 2004a,
pp. 11–12).
In a commentary that appeared alongside the study, Chen and DeStefano

(1998) further indicted the study’s methodology for pursuing pathological
findings that were non-specific, for offering no clear case definition, and,
lacking confirmatory virological evidence, for failing to provide evidentiary
warrant for their hypothesis even being worth pursuing. As for the alleged
temporal association, the commentators asked: is the finding “causal or
coincidence”? The developmental regression of one-third of children with
autism is typically first reported by parents shortly after the child’s first

birthday. The MMR vaccine is typically administered around that time,3
so the temporal association could be mere coincidence.
This study was controversial not only for its methodology and highly
speculative findings, but also for the worry of public fall-out once the
media picked up the story. The Lancet editors deliberated on the appropri-
ateness of publishing the report (Horton 2004).4 News outlets had a his-
tory of publishing provocative medical research findings and failing to
follow up when early theories were discredited or revised (Offit and Coffin
2003; Clarke 2008). The harms to public health that result from media-
spun vaccine scares had already been witnessed in the pertussis vaccine
controversy in the 1970s and 1980s (Blume 2006).
To his colleagues’ surprise, Wakefield held a press conference, timed
closely to the study’s publication release, where he suggested that single
vaccines—one each for measles, mumps, and rubella—should be offered
over a 12-month period in place of the MMR triple-shot until a potential
link between that vaccine, enterocolitis, and autism could be further stud-
ied (Offit 2008a). The Lancet study offered neither evidential support for
the safety or efficacy of the single vaccine nor any warrant for his 12-month
temporal duration (Fitzpatrick 2004c).
In the months that followed, the study was systematically discredited
by the medical establishment. A British Medical Research Council hearing
concluded that MMR and autism had no association (Department of
Health 1998); following a shocking investigation into Wakefield’s finan-
cial conflicts-of-interest (Deer 2004), all but one of Wakefield’s co-authors
retracted the analysis of the study data for being overly suggestive of a
MMR-autism link (Murch et al. 2004); Wakefield was found to have vi-
olated ethics protocol in the study and was thereby stripped of his medical
license (General Medical Council 2010); the Lancet followed by retracting
3. The recommendation is for the first dose of the MMR vaccine to be administered
at 12–15 months of age in the USA (Center for Disease Control and Prevention ND), at
12 months in all Canadian provinces (Public Health Agency of Canada 2011), and 12–
13 months in the UK (patient.co.uk ND).
4. Lancet editor Richard Horton was strongly criticized for his decision to publish the
paper. See, for example, Greenhalgh 2004.
the study (Editors of the Lancet 2010); London Times investigative reporter
Brian Deer revealed that Wakefield had fabricated his data and exposed
this fraud in a 3-part report commissioned by and published in the British
Medical Journal (Deer 2011a; 2011b; 2011c). At each point of damning
revelation of impropriety and serious scientific misconduct, public officials
anticipated a sea change in public attitudes towards vaccination; this atti-
tudinal shift never materialized. To illustrate, a May 2013 USA Today
headline read, “Measles Surge in U.K. Years after Flawed Research”

(Cheng 2013).
3. The “Official” Response to a Looming Public Health Crisis

In the United States, American vaccine specialist Dr. Paul Offit is the most
public face of the scientific consensus position that there is no association
between vaccines and autism. He has been celebrated for his outreach efforts
to correct misperceptions of vaccine safety (George 2011). In his abundant
writing on the subject, which include numerous editorials in biomedical
journals (Offit 2007b; 2008c) and news sources (Offit 2007a; 2008b;
2011b), parenting books (Offit and Bell 1999; Offit and Moser 2011), prac-
tical guides for physicians (Offit et al. 2002; Offit and Hackett 2003; Offit
and Jew 2003; Gerber and Offit 2009), and popular science books (Offit
2008a; 2011a) with such inflammatory titles as Deadly Choices: How the Anti-
Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All (Offit 2011a), he has framed the defensive
strategy now emulated by others, including Michael Fitzpatrick (2004a;
2004c), his British counterpart.
The strategy involves both negative and positive components. The neg-
ative arm is a vigorous attack of the anti-vaccine message, while the positive
strategy is the corrective, the strong body of scientific evidence showing no
causal association between autism and vaccines. To start with the negative,
vaccine advocates highlight the weaknesses of the anti-vaccine message.
First, there is the faulty and fraudulent science performed by Wakefield
and colleagues (Fitzpatrick 2004a; Offit 2008a). Second, the untrustworthi-
ness of the anti-vaccine pundits: notably Wakefield, who had received pay-
ment for the Lancet study by a barrister representing parents suing vaccine
companies for causing their children’s autism (Fitzpatrick 2004b, 2004c;
Offit 2008a); the anti-vaccine celebrity spokespeople, especially Jenny
McCarthy (Mnookin 2011, pp. 249–61; Offit 2011, pp. 149–54),5 who
hypocritically, according to Offit (2011), “indulge their own vanity by
using injectable cosmetic botulinum toxin while reviling the same pharma-
ceutical industry for profiting from vaccines” (Brumback 2011, p. 1329);
5. For an analysis of the influence of Jenny McCarthy on vaccine hesitancy, see Largent
2012, pp. 138–48.
those profiting financially from the growing industry of “alternative”

autism research and treatment that is founded on public mistrust of main-
stream science (Offit 2008a; Fitzpatrick 2009, pp. 57–65; Hannaford
2013). Third, Offit and others further blame the media (Offit 2008a,
176–95; Mnookin 2011, pp.160–69; Fitzpatrick 2004a, 139–144) and
the US vaccine courts for distorting public perception of vaccine safety
(Offit 2008a, pp. 156–75; 2008b; 2008c), and finally, criticism is directed
at parent groups who mobilized support and research advocacy for families

of vaccine-damaged children, offered information resources to the worried
public, and garnered media attention and political support for their emo-
tional and unscientific claims. The National Vaccine Information Center in
the United States and the British group JABS (Justice Awareness and Basic
Support) are strongly reproached for playing an instrumental role in mis-
informing the public, misdirecting health resources, engendering spurious
controversy, and facilitating declining vaccination rates to levels below
those needed for “herd immunity” in some regions by way of their emo-
tional pleas (Fitzpatrick 2004c, 2004d; Offit 2011).
With the integrity of the anti-vaccine message undermined, the public
can now presumably be swayed with a generous offering of reliable science.
The pundits exalt the global health gains produced by mass immunization
campaigns and offer a strong body of evidence in support of MMR’s safety
record. In one such publication, written to assist physicians address the
concerns of their vaccine-hesitant clients, Offit and co-author James Gerber
explain that even though Wakefield’s MMR-autism thesis was not supported
by biological or clinical findings, “several epidemiologic studies were
performed to address parental fears created by the publication by Wakefield
et al.” (Gerber and Offit 2009, p. 456; my emphasis). These studies, the
authors seem to suggest, offer no scientifically relevant information, but in-
stead serve an important public outreach and educational function. Gerber
and Offit enlist those studies to deftly dismantle three popular hypotheses
regarding the dangers of vaccines:
(1) MMR-autism thesis
(2) Thimerosol-autism thesis—the theory that a mercury-based preser-
vative used in vaccines with inactivated viruses causes autism;
(3) Vaccines “overwhelm the system” thesis—the theory that too many
vaccines are introduced too soon into infants’ delicate systems.6
6. This thesis permits the increasingly popular option among parents of a modified or
“alternative” vaccine schedule rather than indiscriminate rejection of all vaccines. Some
vaccines could be eliminated, combined vaccines could be unbundled, and vaccines could
be introduced more slowly. See for instance, “Dr. Bob’s Alternative Vaccine Schedule” pro-
moted by best-selling author and physician, Dr. Robert Sears (Sears 2007).
Taking on both the MMR-autism thesis and the alternative thesis that
autism is caused by the mercury-based preservative, thimerosol, found in
vaccines with inactivated viruses (such as polio and pertussis), the authors
review twenty epidemiological studies that uniformly fail to make an autism-
vaccine association. They highlight the reliability of the findings and the
significance of these studies’ convergent conclusion. They note that
[t]hese studies have been performed in several countries by many

different investigators who have employed a multitude of epidemiologic
and statistical methods [ecological, case-controlled, retrospective
cohort, prospective studies] (Gerber and Offit 2009, p. 460).
Furthermore, these studies relied on national vaccine records, which
provide reliable historical data for excellent descriptive and observational
studies. These records permit examination of national rates of autism
before and after the introduction of the MMR combination vaccine into
national schedules, as well as before and after thimerosol was reduced to
trace amounts in vaccines (in response to public pressure, pro-vaccine
advocates insist, and not because of sound safety concerns). These large-
scale programs allow for a high level of statistical power, and the data are
often comparable for meta-analysis due to similar vaccine constituents and
schedules across national borders. Electronic medical records also facilitate
accurate analysis of outcome data.
The evidence against the last theory—that vaccines can overwhelm the
system—is more difficult to convey in accessible terms, as the evidence comes
from mathematical modelling of an infant body’s theoretical capacity to re-
spond to immunological challenges. Offit relies on basic immunology and
reassurances instead. In an interview with a parenting magazine, Offit said:
Children have an enormous capacity to respond safely to challenges
to the immune system from vaccines…A baby’s body is bombarded
with immunologic challenges—from bacteria in food to the dust
they breathe. Compared to what they typically encounter and
manage during the day, vaccines are literally a drop in the ocean.
(Howard 2005)
Writing to healthcare audiences, he elaborates that
the average child is infected with 4–6 viruses per year…The immune
response elicited from the vast antigen exposure of unattenuated viral
replication supersedes that of even multiple, simultaneous vaccines.
(Gerber and Offit 2009, p. 459)
Offit’s claims can be sourced to the work of immunologists Cohn and
Langman (1990), who calculated an average young child’s immunological
capacity and found it to far exceed the roughly two dozen vaccine antigens
that he or she receives as part of routine childhood vaccination. Knowing
that antibodies, the component of the immune system most capable of pro-
tecting against infection, are made by B cells, and that B cells make anti-
bodies against only one epitope (an immunological unit), the calculation
can be made by estimating the “number of B cells in the bloodstream
[against] the average number of epitopes contained in a vaccine, and the
rapidity with which a sufficient quantity of antibodies could be made

[against any offending epitopes].”7 From this, Offit famously concluded
that “babies could theoretically respond to about a hundred thousand vac-
cines at one time” (Offit 2011a, p. 174).8 Furthermore, those vaccines in-
duce an excellent immune response to future pathogens.
With the arguments mounted against all three “shifting hypotheses,”9
Gerber and Offit then confidently conclude:
These [epidemiological] studies, in concert with the biological
implausibility that vaccines overwhelm a child’s immune system,
have effectively dismissed the notion that vaccines cause autism.
Further studies on the cause or causes of autism should focus on
more-promising leads. (2009, p. 460)
We can draw from this pedagogical exercise that the positive strategy
operates with the working assumption that the public’s vaccine hesitancy
occurs because we misunderstand the science.10 With Offit and others re-
porting the consensus view as confidently as they do, perception of the
public’s ignorance is only reinforced. The epidemiological studies have
been done—again and again!—and clinical and virological studies have
failed to reproduce the Wakefield research team’s findings. The scientific
evidence is solid, and the scientific consensus is clear and unambiguous.
The only reasonable account of why vaccine hesitancy persists, it would
7. Those estimates and the detailed calculations are reviewed in Offit et al. 2002.
8. Offit made the now-infamous 100,000 vaccines argument in response to Dr. Sears’s
claim that the combination-MMR booster should be withheld until age five when the im-
mune system is more mature. Offit hoped to prove, to the contrary, that vaccines given in
the first year of life induce an excellent immune response. Instead the 100,000 vaccines
comment raised the ire of many vaccine hesitators and deniers, who perceived Offit as being
insensitive and uncaring towards vulnerable children. See Huff 2012.
9. Gerber and Offit (2009) described the three popular vaccine danger theses as “shift-
ing” because, by their account, the anti-vaccine movement has shifted public fear and at-
tention from one theory to another as evidence mounted against any one of them and
threatened to undermine it.
10. This theory of public misunderstanding of the science has been stated explicitly in
some instances. For example, the 2008 New York Times headline, “Measles Cases Grow in
Number, and Officials Blame Parents’ Fear of Autism” (Harris 2008).
seem, is a fearful public who is unable to integrate this evidence into their
worldview.
A 2003 editorial on vaccine hesitancy co-authored by members of the
Department of Vaccines and Biologics at the World Health Organization
explicitly endorses this disparaging view of the public (Clements and
Ratzan 2003). The authors describe the British public as “misled and con-
fused” by anti-vaccine misinformation. They write:

Because of the huge amount of media coverage of the safety of MMR,
the public, not unreasonably, have come to the conclusion that there
is no smoke without fire; there must be some truth in all this
alarmism. (2003, p.22)11
The authors continue:
Once the peoples’ mind is made up, it may be very difficult to
change it. Members of the general public are less likely to be able to
detect flaws or inconsistencies of argument, analyse the risk benefit
ratios, or identify omissions in evidence presented to them. The
public may focus more on the presence or absence of risk rather than
the relative risk of a situation (2003, p. 22).
Commentators frequently endorse this view of an ignorant public in the
popular characterization of declining vaccine rates as a problem of vaccines
being “a victim of their own success” (Lewis 2004; Offit in Howard 2005,12
Taverne 2005; Best 2011; Janko 2012). This refrain is sourced from a graph
created by Robert Chen, head of Vaccine Safety at the Center for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC), entitled “The Natural History of an Immu-
nization Program,” which naturalizes public reaction to vaccines with a
three-part historical progression (See Figure 1). In the first phase, people
are afraid of the serious infectious diseases that they have witnessed in their
lifetimes, and parents readily accept immunization. This is what happened
in the United States in the 1940’s with diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus
(DPT), the 1950’s with polio, and the 1960’s when the MMR vaccine
was introduced. In the next phase, as vaccines reduce disease prevalence
dramatically, vaccines become “a victim of their own success.” A new focus
on side effects occurs, whether real or imagined, and immunization rates
11. An ESRC commissioned report on science, the public, and the media, which com-
prehensively reviewed media coverage of the MMR-autism debate in 2,214 newspaper, ra-
dio, and television reports from January to September 2002, and surveyed over 1,000
British residents, came to this same conclusion. See Hargreaves et al. 2003.
12. Offit explained to a reporter for Baby Talk magazine that vaccines are “under fire”
due to their success. He is quoted saying “It’s the natural evolution of a vaccine program”
(Howard 2005).

Figure 1. Relationship between people’s use of vaccination and the disease rate
(Chen and Hibbs 1998).13
plateau. In the final stage, vaccine fear continues to rise and immunization
rates fall. Rates of preventable disease then increase, as we see now in mea-
sles, mumps, and pertussis outbreaks in the United Kingdom and mainland
Europe, USA, and Canada. Eventually, we return to something the like first
phase (Chen and Hibbs 1998).
The graphic conveys a passive public, motivated by fear rather than
sound judgment, lacking in the critical thinking abilities needed to, first,
appreciate the long-term benefits of vaccines, second, question the motives
and opinions of dissenters, and third, resist the emotional sway of fear
mongering and empathic connection with devastated parents.
Of course, those same epistemic vices structure vaccine compliance as
well. This has implications for how public health outreach efforts are orga-
nized. Health officials widely recognize the importance of public support in
achieving public health goals, and so the importance of garnering the public
13. Image downloaded from http://www.utoronto.ca/virology/mby480/ VaccineSafe/

maturity.gif.
trust and engaging the public are more than academic aspiration or political
promise. Even Clements and Ratzan finish their disparaging assessment of
the “misled and confused” public with a quick nod to the current vogue of
science and the public:
Because of these and other potential problems in communicating
with the public, professionals somehow need to draw them into a
participatory process in any risk ommunication efforts. (Clements

and Ratzan 2003, p. 22)
But it is unlikely that these health researchers are looking for genuine
participation from an ignorant and irrational public. Instead, the pro-vaccine
message works to create the conditions for mass public compliance—by
shutting down dissenting views and amplifying the pro-vaccine message.
Both tactics have failed. First, Wakefield’s credibility in the eyes of vaccine
resisters seems to be bolstered by efforts to discredit him. Wakefield is seen
as a maverick, speaking truth to power, while the scientific establishment
looks suspect in a seeming organized effort to suppress “inconvenient
truths” (Habakus and Holland 2012, p. 5; see also Holland 2012). This
view is reinforced by a general disdain for the cozy relationships between
academic medicine and Big Pharma; Paul Offit’s ties to the vaccine industry
are particularly disliked (Atkinson 2008; Koch 2009), earning him the
nickname Paul “for-profit” Offit (Mercola 2009). Second, the amplified
pro-vaccine message does not reach its intended audience because it does
not address the concerns of the vaccine-hesitant public. This last point will
be explored further in the next two sections.
4. Public Misunderstanding of Science? A Challenge

Health officials were initially surprised by public backlash against vaccine
recommendations and reassurances of their safety. A strong scientific consen-
sus is supposed to be the antidote to such occurrences; it functions to “certify
facts for the lay public” (Ranalli 2012, p. 183) and thereby placate public
fears or misgivings by offering expert-driven definitive answers that the pub-
lic can trust. The public’s questioning or challenging of the consensus view
suggests that the consensus is not serving this purpose. There are several rea-
sons why the public might not accept the scientific majority opinion. One is
that the public cannot understand the scientific content of the consensus. A
second possibility is that the public fails to appreciate the epistemic stature of
widely-held expert opinion.14 The third and least-considered explanation is
14. Historian of science Naomi Oreskes entertained this option in recent news editorials
on public resistance towards the overwhelmingly-strong climate change consensus offered by
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, National Academy of Sciences, American
that some of the previously secure relations of trust between science and the
public that gave consensus statements their epistemic weight in the eyes of
the lay public no longer hold. Our discussion so far has highlighted how gov-
ernment bodies were quick to accept the first explanation.
The scientific and policy establishment’s casting of the public as igno-
rant absolves these institutions of listening to the concerns of anxious par-
ents. I will now challenge the characterization of the public as ignorant or
resistant to science. I will not apologize for the general public’s predictable

lack of knowledge of the complex science of virology, immunology, epide-
miology, and other sciences relevant to vaccine safety. But I want to pro-
pose that public dissent does not reside in anti-science ideology or a
misunderstanding of the science. Instead many parents approach the
question of vaccine safety from a different perspective—concern for their
children—and this individualized approach makes the presence of rare but
serious adverse events a safety priority rather than, as health officials see it,
a reasonable risk. By failing to see this alternative framing of the vaccine
safety question, and instead charging “ignorance,” scientific and govern-
mental agencies have misdirected health outreach efforts and missed op-
portunities to seriously address and remedy vaccine hesitancy.
This individualized approach to the question of vaccine safety has been
observed in social scientific research into parental attitudes towards vacci-
nation (Evans et al. 2001; Poltorak et al. 2005; Leach and Fairhead 2007;
Yaqub et al. 2014). Leach and Fairhead, for instance, observed this phe-
nomenon in surveys and interviews with British mothers and a few fathers
participating in community-based post-natal groups in the early 2000’s
(Leach and Fairhead 2007). This was a time of heavy media coverage in
Britain of the MMR-autism debate, precipitated by the circulating rumor
that then-Prime Minister Tony Blair had chosen not to vaccinate his infant
son. The personalized approach adopted by the majority of study partici-
pants contrasted the characterization of vaccine safety by health research,
policy, and promotion agencies as a public health question, answerable at
the population level. These parents expressed vaccine fear that would not
be relieved by reassurances that MMR was safe for the general public. They
wanted to know: “Is MMR safe for my child?”15
Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association
for the Advancement of Science. In these writings, she attempted to clarify what the con-
sensus represents (a justified majority opinion rather than unanimous agreement), the rig-
orous analysis with which the climate change conclusion was reached, and why the public
should not be concerned by a few outlier scientists that challenge the consensus (Oreskes
2004a; 2004b).
15. Hobson-West (2007) found this language of individualized needs of the child being
heavily used by British Vaccine-Critical Groups (including JABS) in her interviews with
The interviewees and survey respondents, who came from both working-
and middle-class backgrounds and subscribed to a range of political views,
were asked about their perceptions of vaccine safety, where they turned for
advice and support, and finally, how they intended to act on the options of
either vaccinating, not vaccinating, or paying out-of-pocket for an alter-
native (spread-out, reduced, or unbundled) vaccine schedule at a private
clinic.
Parents, with their copious reflections based on experience and observa-

tion of their own children, were widely found to hold a distinctively per-
sonalized view of their children’s health, immunity, and whether their
child should have the MMR vaccination. Against the vision of a passive
public wholly susceptible to overblown media reports of vaccines’ ques-
tionable safety record, these parents typically did not endorse either the
mainstream reassurances or the dissenting view, not because they were still
undecided, but because they were not interested in generalities. Many par-
ents readily allowed that “MMR might be safe but not for my child”
(Leach and Fairhead 2007, p. 57).
Leach and Fairhead found that what often followed from this commonly
held view was detailed reflection by parents on their child’s particular
strength or vulnerability, immune system characteristics, and family health
history, all of which underlay concern about MMR or vaccinations in gen-
eral (Leach and Fairhead 2007, p. 57; see also Poltorak et al. 2005). The
danger or lack of danger presented by the MMR vaccine was not evaluated
in general terms but in relation to parents’ assessments of their child’s par-
ticular health pathway since birth and his or her genetic heritage (Leach
and Fairhead 2007, p. 58). Some survey responses included:
My first daughter had milk intolerance and was very ill for the first
two years of her life. We didn’t vaccinate her with MMR because she
was quite weak (p. 58).
I was more frightened of the potential side effects of measles
should I decide not to get Luke vaccinated. Had he been a poorly
sickly baby with allergies I might have considered single jabs (p. 58).
Some parents included a family history in their decision-making, such as
relatives with autism, arthritis, allergies, and autoimmune problems
(Leach and Fairhead 2007, p. 58). Others incorporated consideration of
the leaders of 10 such groups. This suggests that the anti-vaccine rhetoric is more in-tune
with parental thinking and attitudes (whether influencing or influenced by those parents)
than the population-level language of risk employed by pro-vaccine sources. The next sec-
tion of this paper addresses how this failure to understand the concerns of the public has
compromised the effectiveness of public health outreach campaigns aimed at promoting
vaccine uptake.
broad characteristics such as the child’s birth timing, maturity, sleep pat-
terns, and behavior (Yaqub et al. 2014). Some even worried about the pos-
sibility of unknown and undetected “weaknesses” in a child, which can be
understood to signify fear of even a slim chance of serious adverse events
(Leach and Fairhead 2007, pp. 58–9).
These personalized accounts do not align with current scientific under-
standing of immune response. But this effort by parents to figure out their
own children’s risk of adverse events should not be read as ignorance of

science or as an anti-science view. Instead parents appear to be incorporat-
ing established knowledge that immune responses do vary and are trying
to fill the knowledge gap regarding preceding or causal events. This per-
sonalized approach is also not clearly demonstrative of fear or selfish disre-
gard for public health either (albeit public health is threatened by this
behavior). Instead it shows attention to a parent’s priority—the well-being
of his or her child.
Additionally, the individualized approach accords with other health-
promoting influences on parents’ thinking. In what sociologist Deborah
Lupton (1995) characterized as the “new public health” that emerged in
the 1970s, public health discourse adopted the language of choice, em-
powerment, personal responsibility, and participation. The positive conno-
tations attached to those terms came to shape the “new” public health
citizen, patient, and parent into experts on and advocates for their own
and their children’s health and well-being (Petersen and Lupton 1996).
It should therefore be no surprise that qualitative research into parental
attitudes toward vaccination found that many respondents prioritized
choice regarding their child’s vaccine schedule, for example, in having
the option to select single versus combined shots (Brown et al. 2010, p.
4244). Parents also regarded themselves as personally responsible for mak-
ing those choices. Brown et al. reported that “parents felt that personal
research was expected of them” (2010, p. 4244; my emphasis).
It is within this person-centered framework that current expert parent-
ing advice in both European and American contexts promotes “active,
child-centred, and personalized approaches for improved child health
and developmental outcomes” (Leach and Fairhead 2007, p. 51). The in-
dividual particularities of each child are frequently highlighted in the
many parenting books available on sleep-training infants, negotiating tod-
dler tantrums, helping your child succeed in school, and so on. Similarly
for healthcare, with the exception of the “vaccine question,” parents are
strongly encouraged by their pediatricians and other front-line health
workers to actively engage in their children’s healthcare and to be experts
on their own child. This allied approach is seen to be better for children’s
health and better for overburdened healthcare systems that frequently
download health work onto the individual or caregiver in the name of

“personal responsibility.” In asking for active parents and compliant vac-
cinators, public health seems to want to have it both ways.
5. Missing the Mark in Health Promotion and Outreach

The presumption of ignorance can pre-empt genuine effort to understand the
public’s concerns. With this alternative account of the nature of vaccine anx-
iety among the general public in place, we can now appreciate the missed

opportunities by public health agencies to properly reach their audience.
Leach and Fairhead’s subjects wanted to make informed decisions re-
garding vaccinating their children, and they sought support for doing
so. They typically consulted social networks of parents, including par-
ent-lobby groups, for nonjudgmental discussion and access to the informa-
tion they needed. The children’s pediatricians were generally not consulted
in this process of inquiry, not because parents feared reproach, but because
they felt that the physicians had to support the “official” line (Leach and
Fairhead 2007, p. 64; see also Evans et al. 2001, Yaqub et al. 2014).
Government agencies confronting vaccine hesitancy (including the UK
Department of Health, Health Canada, and the CDC in the USA) have
followed a didactic model, establishing information campaigns meant to
educate parents regarding sound science, the social good, and a true appre-
ciation of the balance of risk (Leach and Fairhead 2007, p. 79). For in-
stance, in a Health Canada promotional leaflet titled “Misconceptions
about Vaccine Safety,” parents read:
Misconception: Vaccines are not safe.
The Facts: Vaccines are among the safest medical products available.
Prior to approval they are extensively tested and they continue to
undergo rigorous ongoing evaluations of their safety when on the
market. Serious side effects such as severe allergic reactions are very
rare. On the other hand, the diseases that vaccines fight present
serious threats. Diseases like polio, diphtheria, measles, and pertussis
(whooping cough) can lead to paralysis, pneumonia, choking, brain
damage, heart problems, and even death. The dangers of vaccine-
preventable diseases are many times greater than the risk of a serious
adverse reaction to the vaccine (Health Canada 2011).
Here the sound science and the assessment of risk were expressed relative
to population-level analysis, and therefore do not address the concerns of
parents who are assessing the risk in relation to their child. While the claim
that severe adverse events are very rare is meant to be reassuring, it side-
lines the very issue that the parents interviewed by Leach and Fairhead are
worried about.
Parent advocacy groups like JABS, on the other hand, engage parents on
their own terms. These groups were founded on the belief that parents
know their children best, and thereby have insight into their children’s
health not afforded to physicians and medical scientists (Hobson-West
2007). Members of these groups share tales of having their concerns re-
garding vaccination dismissed by health professionals, and those claiming
that their children were harmed by vaccines were routinely ignored (Evans
et al. 2001; Leach 2005, p. 8; Kirby 2006, pp. 9–31). While some accept

that a serious adverse event after vaccination is extremely rare, they think
that research into the factors precipitating those rare events must be a pri-
ority. Indeed, JABS and other British parent lobby groups have outlined
parent-driven alternative research priorities, and their public communica-
tions have called upon the British government to direct resources into pur-
suing these lines of investigation (see, for example, Fletcher nd). This is
not anti-science; it is a demand for participation in setting the research
agenda.
Specifically, vaccine hesitators want investigation into the admittedly
rare but serious adverse events that they associate with vaccines. The main-
stream insistence that, to quote the Health Canada (2011) brochure, “it is
often very difficult to determine if a ‘reaction’ was directly linked to a vac-
cine or was an unrelated ‘event’ which would normally occur in a popula-
tion,” is grounds for further research rather than secondary to the overall
social benefit that vaccination programs provide.
Starting in the early 1990s, when British parent networks perceived
lack of uptake of their concerns by the scientific establishment, they orga-
nized popular epidemiological research into this question. JABS was an early
user of web-based surveys, where parents’ responses were collected and vol-
unteer researchers analyzed any suggested patterns (Leach and Fairhead 2007,
p. 85).
Several theories have grown from this exercise in “citizen science” (Irwin
1995). The identification of common symptoms have led to the conclusion
that these children do not have just “autism” but a novel syndrome linking
bowel disorder and autistic symptoms (Trowther 2002). Wakefield and his
research team later named this syndrome “autistic enterocolitis,” and al-
though this disease category remains controversial, even vaccine advocates
like Fitzpatrick think it warrants further investigation (Fitzpatrick 2004b).
Still, it should not be surprising that citizen scientists find disconnect with
the mainstream insistence that MMR does not cause autism. This is not the
hypothesis that parent advocates are exploring.
Parent researchers are also exploring the possibility of “co-factors” which
make an admittedly small number of children vulnerable to vaccine harm.
This line of inquiry focuses on the family histories of afflicted children. The
JABS survey claims to have highlighted a number of common allergies in

the families of these children—asthma, eczema, hay fever—or a history of
febrile convulsions, fits, or epilepsy. They wonder if a small subset of chil-
dren with certain allergies can have allergic responses when presented with
several viruses at once (Leach 2005, p. 13; Leach and Fairhead 2007, p. 85).
This theory speaks to the individualized framing of the vaccine safety ques-
tion observed in the qualitative research on vaccine attitudes among parents.
While the safety of vaccines is sufficiently established for public health pur-

poses, parents want to know if vaccines are safe for their kids. Parent re-
searchers argue that population-level studies are “too broad brush” to pick
up patterns associated with rare adverse events from MMR that may affect
a very small proportion of children (Leach 2005, p. 17). Instead the science
supporting parents’ concerns are grounded in clinical case histories and med-
ical and biological processes in individual children.
Parent researchers also insist that the high number of parents reporting
autistic symptoms appearing after receiving the MMR vaccine regardless of
the child’s age sufficiently undermines the official claim that autism’s onset
can be coincidental rather than causal (Trowther 2002). This theory is dif-
ficult to defend, however, as the problems of sampling bias and reporting
bias present themselves in this claim.
But the point here is not to argue for the epistemic adequacy or in-
adequacy of these hypotheses. Regardless of their scientific merit, these
proposals—which were organized systematically in a 2002 report by
parent-researcher David Trowther—provide important insight for health
agencies into both what the public wants and how they measure institu-
tional response to their demands. For instance, those theories regarding
how combination vaccines may interact with the genetic illness histories
of particular bodies, the details of which are highly speculative but allow-
able within the expected limits of popular epidemiology, are instructive
insofar as they highlight concerned parents’ desire to know which children
will respond badly to vaccines. So is the charge that epidemiological studies
are “too broad brush” to pick up patterns associated with rare adverse
events. Trowther’s report was widely circulated among parent lobby groups
and is still available on-line. Yet I am not aware of any official acknowledge-
ment or response to this report.
To be sure, I am not suggesting that the public should redirect the pub-
lic health research agenda, but I will maintain (uncontroversially, I think)
that the public has a stake in establishing its priorities. I have aimed to
show that many members of the public frame the vaccine safety question
differently, focusing on the particularities of individuals rather than overall
response rates at the population level. While there are difficulties with
some of the parent-driven theories, what we have here is, at minimum,
the points where health promotion agencies ought to be engaging its pub-
lic, rather than the current practice of defining the problem and the solu-
tion for the supposedly ignorant public. It should be little surprise that
public outreach efforts are not changing public perception. To interpret
vaccine hesitancy as a misperception of the probabilities of harm is to ig-
nore the normative dimensions of risk assessment. Trivializing public con-
cern as confused “risk perception” also damages public trust, the very
ingredient needed for effective health promotion efforts (Wynne 1998).

And so, this is not an apologetic for lay perspectives, but a reminder
that these voices are part of the expert-lay communicative relationship that
fosters the trust seen to be so important for a well-functioning democratic
society that increasingly relies on scientific experts and advisors for nego-
tiating complex social and policy issues. Rather than characterizing the lay
public as deficient, whereby “outreach” is appropriately limited to scien-
tific education, scientific institutions and governmental bodies must elicit
public participation in framing and responding to the issues that the pub-
lic cares about. This is the best way that public health agencies can meet
their mandate of enabling and promoting pro-health behavior among its
constituents.
6. Trust and Expert-Lay Communications

While communication is not a panacea, early two-way communication
with the anxious public could have better directed public health outreach
efforts. Public health agencies could have learned that the public did not
need education into the astounding global health gains that vaccines have
afforded us. Resources could have been directed away from repetitive ep-
idemiological studies into the autism-vaccine link. In a dialogical expert-
lay exchange, questions can be refined, redundancies and crackpot theories
can be collaboratively rejected, and a coherent research agenda that is ac-
ceptable to both expert and lay perspectives can be formed. Dialogical
communicative practices also encourage trust by the lay public (Grasswick
2010, p. 394), who find the confident declarations of vaccine safety in ab-
solute terms to be disingenuous.
When we speak of trust, we mean “deferring with comfort and confi-
dence to others, about something beyond our knowledge or power, in ways
that can potentially hurt us” (Whyte and Crease 2010, p. 412). We some-
times have some control over who we choose to trust, while other situa-
tions render us helpless in the hands of, say, the emergency room physician
tasked with treating us (Whyte and Crease 2010, p. 412) In all trust sit-
uations, our position of epistemic dependence puts us in a vulnerable po-
sition. Members of the lay public as well as policy makers find ourselves in
such a position when we must rely on expert scientific advice.
The case for trust and epistemic dependency being crucial for the proper
functioning of science has already been well argued with respect to the
internal relations of science (see Hardwig 1985, 1991). Complex scientific
knowledge cannot be produced in isolation by careful self-reliant inquirers,
as there is too much for one person to know. Specialization becomes nec-
essary, thus creating a need for trust in the truthfulness, honesty, and
integrity of the researchers with whom one collaborates.16 The vulnerabil-
ity that this trust places us in (insofar as we can be potentially misled by

the expert) can be minimized but never eliminated.
An argument for the necessity of trust relationships external to science for
its proper functioning has been offered by Scheman (2001). She explains that
the many practical aims of the sciences require scientific claims to be accepted
by stakeholders outside of those specialized epistemic communities. In keep-
ing with our case study, public health science can only improve population
health if the lay public largely accepts and follows its recommendations. The
trust requirement once again places the outsider in a vulnerable position, as
“those who stand outside of science are urged to trust what goes on within its
domains not despite but precisely because of our not participating in its
innermost practices” (Scheman 2001, p. 34). The consensus statement func-
tions to encourage that trust. It is supposed to provide us, the epistemically
dependent outsiders, with the reliable scientific information that we need to
know. Yet the mechanisms used to ensure the credibility of that information
are internal to the scientific community—the negotiation of conflicting views
in academic conference settings and in expert journals, replication of findings,
peer review, and so on—and are therefore largely shielded from public view.
Thus the final step in the expert-lay exchange, where (if all goes well) the
public accepts the scientific consensus view, requires some degree of a trust-
ing “leap of faith” that the scientific experts have done their due diligence and
reported responsibly. The degree or extent to which that trust is adopted un-
critically should be minimized—if only for the reason that parents report be-
ing uncomfortable accepting expert advice on vaccination without proper
information and discussion (Evans et al. 2001, p. 907)17—through effective
communication practices.
The link between communication and trust-building has some intuitive
appeal and is already presumed in the policy elites’ dernier cri of championing
two-way communications in order to gain the public’s trust. But some
16. Hardwig’s arguments on epistemic dependency in science (1985, 1991) were, on

the one hand, radical, given the credence that epistemology lauds on the Cartesian model of
epistemic self-reliance, and also trivial, given the unquestionable presence of specialization
and collaborative research in the sciences.
17. Other reasons might include the ethical requirement to foster informed consent.
attention should be given to why communicative practices by scientific bodies

encourage the public’s trust. Heidi Grasswick (2010) lays some of the
groundwork for this conceptual link in her analysis of the important public
function of scientific whistleblowers. The reason that (credible) whistle-
blowers gain public attention is because there exists a lay expectation that
scientific communities share significant knowledge with the general public
or at least with those who stand to be greatly impacted (whether helped or
harmed) by this information. The whistleblower exposes the failure of scien-

tific institutions in fulfilling this expectation to participate in knowledge-
sharing practices. The often severe public response to these omissions reflects
the importance placed on this expectation. Furthermore, by looking at past
egregious cases like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, we can see how knowledge
suppression can erode the public’s epistemic trust in scientific communities.
The fraught relationship between African Americans and institutional medi-
cine continues today as a result of Tuskegee and other failures to meet the eth-
ical expectations that the public places on our medical institutions (Grasswick
2010, p. 404). On the flipside, by repeated practices of communicating
responsibly, scientific bodies build their reputations for being responsive to
public interests. They thereby gain and maintain public trust (Grasswick
2010, p. 394).
Yet there will be those critics who find these “fashionable” appeals to
public engagement, democratic science, and engendering trust to be a dis-
traction from science’s ultimate aim: to create reliable knowledge (see
Taverne 2005, pp. 214–18; Levitt 1999). This view misunderstands pub-
lic health science’s additional outreach mandate and fails to appreciate the
damage that has already occurred by not taking this communicative route.
When parental concerns over the safety of the newly introduced MMR tri-
ple-vaccine in the UK started to foment, those apprehensions called for a
hypothesis-building science of clinical case histories of individual children.
Yet parents faced a medical establishment and government organizations
that were reticent to entertain parent-driven concerns for fear that doing so
would lend credence to the dissenting view (Leach and Fairhead 2007,
p. 90). The British parent groups reached out to the scientific community
against all odds and found an ally within the medical establishment will-
ing to entertain their concerns and take their insights and experiences
seriously. This ally was Andrew Wakefield.
Without this willingness for engagement from the scientific and gov-
ernmental institutions mandated to pursue public health and the public
good, parent groups mobilized their own research agenda and permitted
Wakefield’s insidiousness and opportunism. Wakefield is deserving of
blame for inciting vaccine hesitancy and lowering vaccination rates. But
the scientific and policy establishment also contributed heavily to the
problem they are trying to fix by trivializing public hesitancy and framing

the debate as a conflict of science versus ignorance.
7. Against the Knowledge Deficit Model: A “Contextualist” Public

Understanding of Science
My analysis of the dominant framing of the problem of vaccine hesitancy,
as well as the failures to remedy the problem thus far, join a familiar line of

criticism found in the science communications and public understanding of
science literature. This literature has largely rejected the “knowledge deficit
model” underlying the framing of public resistance to science-backed policies
(Wynne 1991; 1992; 1995; 2006; Lewenstein 1992; Layton et al. 1993;
Evans and Durant 1995; Irwin and Wynne 1996; Miller 2001; Jasanoff
2005). Vaccine concerns and resistance have been previously tied to this crit-
ical approach to public understanding of science by Hobson-West (2003;
2007) and Leach and Fairhead (2007).
The “knowledge deficit model,” first identified by Brian Wynne (1991),
presumes that expert forms of knowledge provide a sufficient basis for
deciding the most important public policy questions. It follows that lay
beliefs that run counter to this expert knowledge are unacceptable and
must be corrected through education and public relation strategies. Those
who disagree do so because they simply do not understand the science.
Furthermore, the science is sound and comprehensive in incorporating
all of the values relevant to this policy decision (Brunk 2006).18
While scientists, bolstered by numerous science indicators surveys (see, for
example, National Science Board 1981; 1983; 1986), have taken the public’s
knowledge deficit as fact, sociologists, historians, and philosophers have plied
their research methods to explore the interaction of science and the public and
have found a much more complex knowledge exchange. Some have highlighted
the “contextual” nature of scientific knowledge—scientific facts are not as
unproblematic as the deficit modellers assumed. Instead social context and
lay knowledge play a significant role in how science is assimilated into public
understanding (Wynne 1995; Irwin 1995; Brunk 2006). Sociology of Scien-
tific Knowledge-practitioners like Bruno Latour (1987) have highlighted the
various social processes that precede the designation of any scientific knowl-
edge as reliable. The “contextual approach,” as Steve Miller (2001) called this
response to the problematic deficit model, opened the door to more dialogical
and communicative approaches to public understanding of science.19
18. Those values are buried, however, as the value-free ideal strongly persists in policy
circles (Douglas 2009).
19. Brossard and Lewenstein (2009) further divide Miller’s second model of public un-
derstanding of science, the contextualist foil to the deficit model, into three: contextualist,
While this contextualist critique has been influential in prompting both

the British Minister of Science to declare the “demise of the deficit model” in
a 1999 address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science and
the House of Lords to suggest that public unrest may not be due to misun-
derstanding of science but lack of uptake regarding their concerns (Miller
2001; House of Lords 2000),20 contemporary research by Brunk (2006)
and Wynne (2006), among others, indicate that the deficit model still pre-
vails and persists in interpreting public resistance to science-backed policy.

My research into vaccine hesitancy further supports that claim.
8. Conclusion
In this investigation into vaccine hesitancy, I challenged the orthodox
reading of the problem as stemming from public misunderstanding of sci-
ence and anti-science sentiments. I proposed that while the lay public will
suffer from some knowledge deficits with respect to the complexity of vac-
cine science, it is incorrect to assume that this explains vaccine hesitancy,
or that this hesitancy amounts to the public’s rejection of scientific claims.
Instead, concerned parents approach the question of vaccine safety differ-
ently than does the scientific establishment. This realization sheds new
light on why concerted efforts to reform public attitudes towards vaccines
have failed so far. By presuming the public is ignorant of the science, and
thereby directing outreach efforts at educating the public, health outreach
efforts are misdirected. The pervasive and reinforcing assumption that the
public only hesitates because it is ignorant shields science and government
institutions from examining their own practices with respect to earning
and maintaining the public trust. I share Brunk’s (2006) position that
those agencies demonstrate a knowledge deficit of their own when they
evade this self-scrutiny. In rereading the supposedly ignorant public, I
highlight the importance of trust and dialogue for remediating supposedly
intractable conflicts between science and society.
lay expert, and finally, public engagement models. The latter is the most desirable model
by their account.
20. The House of Lords claims to have shifted its focus from public misunderstanding,
articulated in the Bodmer report, to a communicative approach. A 2004 publication reads:
While the themes the Bodmer report deals with are still of crucial importance today—not
least to encourage young people to study and develop an interest in science—things
have moved on since this time. The public understanding of science approach has
been questioned as a deficit model of understanding. The implied relationship that
support for science can be achieved through better communication overlooks the fact
that different groups may frame scientific issues differently. (House of Lords 2004, p. 11)
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Public Misunderstanding

of Science? Reframing the

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1. Introduction: An intractable problem

on Excellence in Education 1983). The Bodmer report led to the formation

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2. The Catalyst: The Wakeﬁeld Scandal

“Ileal-Lymphoid-Nodular Hyperplasia, Non-Speciﬁc Colitis, and Perva-

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In a commentary that appeared alongside the study, Chen and DeStefano

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3. The “Ofﬁcial” Response to a Looming Public Health Crisis

those proﬁting ﬁnancially from the growing industry of “alternative”

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13. Image downloaded from http://www.utoronto.ca/virology/mby480/ VaccineSafe/

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4. Public Misunderstanding of Science? A Challenge

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download health work onto the individual or caregiver in the name of

5. Missing the Mark in Health Promotion and Outreach

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JABS survey claims to have highlighted a number of common allergies in

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6. Trust and Expert-Lay Communications

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16. Hardwig’s arguments on epistemic dependency in science (1985, 1991) were, on

attention should be given to why communicative practices by scientiﬁc bodies

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problem they are trying to ﬁx by trivializing public hesitancy and framing

7. Against the Knowledge Deﬁcit Model: A “Contextualist” Public

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While this contextualist critique has been inﬂuential in prompting both

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Cohn, M., and R. E. Langman. 1990. The Protecton: The Evolution-

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Fitzpatrick, Michael. 2009. Defeating Autism: A Damaging Delusion.

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Hobson-West, Pru. 2003. “Understanding Vaccination Resistance: Moving

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Ofﬁt, Paul A. 2007b. “Thimerosol and Vaccines—A Cautionary Tale.”

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Public Health Agency of Canada. 2011. Your Immunization Schedule—

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