I think few people believe things that have absolutely no justifiable basis behind them. Flat earthing, as perhaps some example of that, is in my opinion more a

I think few people believe things that have absolutely no justifiable basis behind them. Flat earthing, as perhaps some example of that, is in my opinion more about attention seeking behavior mixed with a bit of trolling than something people genuinely believe. But on normal issues, I think there are generally two sides to tell. And even if one side may be framed as being unjustified, so long as it is fairly represented I don't think people would generally take offense to it. The vaccination issue is a great example. I fully support vaccinations, but I also like to research all sides of issues and I was surprised to see how much of a difference there is between the way anti-vax types are popularly portrayed and their actual views. In general people simply castigate anti-vax as completely misinformed people who know absolutely nothing. This [1] is a rather monumental report from the National Academy of Sciences that took an extremely in depth look at this topic. In that 866 page report they analyze the data on correlations between vaccines and all sorts of nasty things. And one phrase you might find worth ctrl+fing is "The evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between". You'll find it repeated constantly throughout the report as the academy researchers come to their conclusion on the validity (or lack thereof) of a causal link between vaccines and all sorts of nasty stuff. And for many of these nasty correlations while the evidence is insufficient claim a causal link, it's also insufficient to reject it. Of course this does not justify turning against vaccinations. Even if there is a causal link found between vaccines and some of these various issues, the possibility of significant numbers of people choosing to not vaccinate would be catastrophic. For instance we're right now on the cusp of completely eliminating polio, much as we did smallpox. In fact you are currently more likely to get polio from a vaccine than in the wild. And some people might use that as a reason to stop vaccinating. But if they did, that would rapidly change. The one and only thing that's bringing us to where we are is people choosing to vaccinate. So it comes down to a matter of social responsibility. Vaccines are not without risk but whatever risk there is greatly outweighed by the collective benefits. So should you vaccinate? Absolutely. Yet I don't think any anti-vaxer would feel slighted by such comments. And I think you can provide a similarly fair treatment to most of all controversial issues today. The reason one side or another tends to think the other side is completely idiotic tends to get back to our divisions in society. People attribute disagreement on issues to stupidity or lack of knowledge without bothering to see why people feel the way they do. [1] - http://nationalacademies.org/HMD/Reports/2011/Adverse-Effects-of-Vaccines-Evidence-and-Causality.aspx http://nationalacademies.org/HMD/Reports/2011/Adverse-Effect...