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When it comes to vaccines - why are people talking about 'Fallacious logic' ?

Reversed burden of proof and misuse of statistics for causal inferences

Some people will reject vaccinations based on unwarranted beliefs.  For example, the claim that the body has a ‘natural healing potential’ or that ‘natural’ is always better. This may lead people to believe that suffering a ‘natural’ disease in order to achieve subsequent immunity is preferable to being vaccinated, which is the exact opposite of the actual risks.

Many adherents of ‘alternative medicine’ hold unwarranted beliefs and are sceptical of vaccinations.

Research has shown that these unwarranted beliefs are particularly shaped by ‘cognitive variables’, a psychological term which describes the ways in which people process information.

It is these cognitive variables that separate unwarranted beliefs from conspiracist beliefs, which is primarily influenced by perceived threat and emotional variables.

These cognitive variables include:

  • An intuitive cognitive style; accepting ‘gut feeling’ as a better guide to truth than evidence.
  • Ontological confusions; people may struggle to differentiate metaphorical from factual statements, for example taking statements that ‘trees can sense the wind’ or ‘old furniture knows things about the past’ literally.
  • Being receptive to pseudo-profound statements, for example considering a statement such as ‘wholeness quiets infinite phenomena’ to be profound.
  • Susceptibility to causal illusions; believing that one event affects another when in fact there is no causal relationship, for example that your favourite football team won a game because everybody watching it from home was wearing the team jersey.

This theme attacks science and vaccines using fallacies. These can include:

  • Impossible expectations, for example that science must guarantee that vaccines are 100% safe and effective.
  • Appealing to absence of evidence to make unwarranted causal attributions.
  • Refusing to accept that coincidences are possible.
  • Misuse of statistics.

Is there any truth in it?

As with any other medical product, there can be no guarantee that a vaccine is 100% safe and effective. Sometimes uncertainty is difficult to deal with, and fear or aversion is perfectly understandable.

Confusion can also come for example when vaccination rates are increasing at the same time that case numbers are increasing, as can happen during a flu epidemic or COVID-19 wave.

What could I say to someone fixed on this belief?

Dialogue between patients and healthcare professionals is most productive if it is guided by empathy, and an opportunity for the patient to affirm the reasons underlying their attitudes and to express understanding for that. That’s why it is important to understand the attitude roots behind people’s overt opinions. To affirm a person’s underlying attitude root does not mean we need to agree with the specifics of their argument. For example, we can acknowledge that:

As with any other medical product, there can be no guarantee that a vaccine is 100% safe and effective. Sometimes uncertainty is difficult to deal with, and fear or aversion is perfectly understandable.

Confusion can also come for example when vaccination rates are increasing at the same time that case numbers are increasing, as can happen during a flu epidemic or COVID-19 wave.



Having set the stage through this (partial) affirmation, we can then proceed to correct the patient’s particular misconception.

If we wait until we have 100% proof that something is safe, we will never do anything in life. Imagine if we refused to get in a car unless the driver could prove 100% that we would not have an accident.

Although vaccines are not 100% effective, their benefits still far outweigh their potential adverse effects. Similarly, many other treatments we take for granted are also not 100% effective (e.g., when we take ibuprofen for a headache), but we are sufficiently confident that the drug will help.

Almost nothing in this life is 100% certain and the fear of severe side effects can lead to seeing connections that do not exist. However, public health organisations and independent researchers have very reliable monitoring systems to track all potential side effects of vaccinations, using powerful statistics and taking into account all potential causes.

Where can I find out more?

Additional information: 

Academic references:

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