r/SGU • u/Mozintarfen • 8d ago
It's the same argument.
Catching up on last week's episode and their conversation about vaccines reminded me of this.
Edit: I feel like some people are missing the point here. Both examples do showcase the same logic problem - it’s simply showing how dumb it is to say "X causes Y" in regards to vaccines and autism, not saying that 1990 was an important year for either case, it is just any earlier point in time when autism was seen as "less common". Pick a different date where that applies and the joke still works.
Autism diagnoses increased because detection improved. Asteroid counts increased because telescopes improved.
The whole is that telescopes don’t create asteroids, and vaccines don’t create autism. It is the same argument.
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u/Bathroom_Humor 8d ago
i knew it all along
autism testing causes autism
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u/Orion14159 8d ago
Same problem with COVID in the 2020 US administration
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u/rje946 8d ago
Can we simply stop counting? /s just in case lol
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u/Mozintarfen 8d ago
I feel like I remember them actually suggesting that too lol
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u/Orion14159 8d ago
You're absolutely correct, that was a real suggestion. Not as brilliant as suggesting getting bleach and UV light into the body.
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u/FarCalligrapher1862 8d ago
This is actually the wrong example. Vaccines do not cause autism, nor do they detect autism.
Telescopes do not cause asteroids, but they do detect asteroids.
So 1st point is correlation, 2nd point is direct measurement.
A better point would be “Vaccines cause near earth asteroids”
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u/futuneral 8d ago
Was going to post exactly this. What's "funny" though is I'm sure there would be some who'd reply to "vaccines cause asteroids" with "sure, makes sense"
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u/gingerblz 8d ago
I love how the first set of figures don't even have anything to do with Autism, unless that's what you already believed. The latter set, while irrational, is at least better than a non-sequitur.
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u/Serin-019 8d ago
Yes but where would our asteroid spotter programs be without autism? Huh? HUH?!
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u/squarecir 8d ago
There is a slight uptick outside of the increased diagnosis, but it's not related to vaccines. Could be that older people are having more kids.
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u/WokkitUp 8d ago
What them microscopes doin' btw?
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u/Mozintarfen 8d ago
Actually, in 1680 there were no bacteria. Now there are over 30,000 known species!
Microscopes cause bacteria!
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u/sdwoodchuck 8d ago
All I'm seeing is that we need to stop vaccinating these damned asteroids, because they get autism and then come our way!
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u/mlppaca 8d ago edited 8d ago
Microplastics cause autism. It's not proven, but at least it blames something bad. 🤣
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u/Mozintarfen 8d ago
You're being downvoted but if the current administration believed this instead, and reduced microplastics as a result, that would be a good thing!
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u/noctalla 8d ago
Not to mention vaccination levels in 1990 were probably higher than today.
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u/Mozintarfen 8d ago
Actually coverage is around ~10% higher today and average, and we have numerous vaccines that did not exist yet for things that were big problems in 1990.
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u/noctalla 8d ago
Well, that all depends on what we're talking about and where. The autism rate of 1 in 30 is specific to the USA. Worldwide it's about 1 in 100. So, while globally, yes, vaccination rates have gone up significantly since the 1990s, we should really be looking at data from the USA here. Next, we have to look at what vaccines we're talking about, and the one that gets the vast majority of the blame from the anit-vaxx crowd is the MMR vaccine. National MMR vaccination coverage in the USA generally rose to above 90% by the 1990s and remained high before experiencing post-pandemic declines in the 2020s.
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3d ago
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u/Holiday-Rip8028 8d ago
Ah yes, 1990, the year we started vaccinating.
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u/live-the-future 8d ago
That was actually my first thought...vaccines have been around for a long time before 1990. Not that evidence or logic are effective against anti-vaxxers...they would probably just blame some change to vaccines, or a new vaccine, or some ingredient that got added around that time. tHiMeRaSoOoOoOoL!!1!
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u/Mozintarfen 8d ago
I don't really think that is the point of the post though. The 1990 figure is primarily to showcase a year where autism was "less common". Given that autism has nothing to do with vaccines they could have said the year 1362 and the point would be the same.
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u/live-the-future 8d ago
Well, just a guess, but I don't think we had autism records going back to 1362. 😄
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u/SplendidPunkinButter 7d ago
That’s not even the same argument. Vaccines were not invented in 1990
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u/alahos 8d ago
Vaccines cause asteroids