Vaccination dangers groups online

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Does the Internet promote or thwart Democracy? « Sohum Parlance IIBy Eric Kirk Similarly, pseudoscience has found a second home on the Internet. Banned from the classroom, it’s making a comeback on Facebook and YouTube. For example, aggressive anti-vaccination communities have eagerly embraced the Web to spread their antiscientific statements on a scale that was probably never available to them in the pre-Internet age. A 2007 study by a group of academics from Canada analyzed all unique English-language YouTube videos (at that time, all 153 of them) that contained any messages about human immunization; the researchers found that a third of them were outright negative about its value and another fifth were ambiguous, with negative videos usually receiving much higher ratings by YouTube users. Of the negative videos, almost half contradicted existing reference standards on immunization (the anti-vaccination movement is also extremely active in the developing world; UNICEF reports that its recent awareness-raising campaign ran into powerful online opposition from vaccination-denialists). In addition to illustrating the appeal of cyberspace to advocates of pseudoscience, this case raises an interesting question about whether a technology company such as YouTube (and ultimately its parent company, Google) should verify scientific claims made in the videos uploaded to the site; if yes, how should they go about it? (Google faced a similar set of problems when it erroneously classified a video documenting prison abuse in Egypt as too violent, overlooking its social role.) The editorial and fact-checking layers of traditional media organizations would make it unlikely that such videos would ever be aired, for there is usually someone on staff to distinguish facts from opinions; how user-generated sites will cope with this challenge is not yet clear. Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Hahnemannian Homeopath Vaccination Information & Choice Network, Washington State, USAVaccines - http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/vaccine.htm or http://www.wellwithin1.com/vaccine.htmVaccine Dangers, Childhood Disease Classes & Homeopathy Online/email courses - next classes start December 2 & 3http://www.wellwithin1.com/vaccineclass.htm or http://www.wellwithin1.com/homeo.htm