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Doctors I know say that it's almost exclusively educated people who decline vaccines. Uneducated people generally defer to the doctor's opinion. I think this i

Doctors I know say that it's almost exclusively educated people who decline vaccines. Uneducated people generally defer to the doctor's opinion. I think this is a lesson we should all take care to note: be humble. Knowing something doesn't mean we know everything, and it can hurt us to think so.

pmorici 13y ago
On the other hand; If the field of medicine is anything like engineering and computer science I'd rather chance my own opinion over trusting the advice of a random doctor w/o supporting reasoning. I've been given obviously crappy advice by way to many doctors over the years to just "take their word for it" because they have an MD next to their name.
- TwoBit 13y ago
  You trust your own engineering opinion over that of an expert professional engineer? The doofus who used to own my house was one of those kinds of people and I am still paying for it.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - pmorici 13y ago
    You're missing the point. There are a lot of engineers out there who claim to be "expert professionals" and may even have the credentials on paper but when it comes down too it aren't competent. This is evidenced by the large number of posts on HN dedicated to finding and hiring good engineers. People seem to assume that all doctors are roughly equal, or at least meet some baseline level of competency. I'm saying based on my experience in the engineering world and my first hand experience with doctors I don't believe that. So I'm saying that just taking someones word for it because they are a doctor is naive. I've lost track of the number of times I've been told totally nonsensical things by doctors that were just not sound advice which I confirmed by seeking another doctor's opinion and in some cases because what they told me to do made me sicker.
    - nathan_long 13y ago
      I'm sorry you've had bad experiences, and I'm sure you're very smart. But do consider: imagine you're building software for a doctor and he/she disagrees with your choice of database/programming language. You might not say it, but you'd probably think, "really? You probably don't know a function from a hole in the ground." Personally, I can't tell you what all of my organs do, much less what can go wrong with them, much less how that should be treated. I'm sure there are incompetent doctors, but I doubt there are many less competent at medicine than I am.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      Yes, when a single doctor tells you something it is worthwhile seeking more advice and more information. Nasking "whT happens if we jist watch and wait?" Is also a great question to ask. Luckily this isn't relevant to vaccinations because we're not relying on what one person says, but on an accumulated body of research.
- sanoli 13y ago
  Sure, don't trust the advice of any one doctor; that's alright. With vaccines though, you're deciding not to trust the advice of pretty much every doctor.
  - pmorici 13y ago
    I'm not really talking about vaccines in particular but even those aren't as cut and dry as you imply. Take a look at the common MMR vaccine. In 2005 they introduced MMRV which is the traditional MMR plus the addition of a chickenpox vaccine. The WHO recommends MMRV but US health officials don't express a preference one way or another. The side effects of each are different. So clearly there is some ambiguity there. If a doctor recommended one over the other I would want to know what his reasoning was before taking his word for it.
    - Fomite 13y ago
      That's not really a sign of ambiguity. Vaccination for varicella is tricky - if you're going to vaccinate against it, you need to vaccinate hard. It's a great working example of what's known as the "Paradox of Moderate Infection Control" - getting a handle on it just a little bit will cause worse outcomes than if you did nothing at all. The WHO then, making recommendations for the entire world, logically favors a single "Do it and be done" shot that piggybacks on their incredibly intensive campaigns for MMR vaccination. In the U.S., a varicella vaccine is a co-occuring part of the recommended vaccine schedule. It's a question of one shot or two, and managing slightly worse side effects for the MMRV vaccine, and thus absolutely sensical to leave it to the clinician and parent to discuss, because the likelihood of the child getting one and never getting the other is quite low, it's just a question of how.
      - pmorici 13y ago
        It sounds like you are agreeing with me. Because like you said you would want to discuss it with your doctor before making a decision.
        13y ago
- Fomite 13y ago
  Vaccine schedules are, just so we're clear, not set by "a random doctor w/o supporting reasoning". They're done by panels of doctors who are experts in that field, and the supporting reasoning is extensive and the result of many, many peer-reviewed studies.
- nathan_long 13y ago
  > If the field of medicine is anything like engineering and computer science I'd rather chance my own opinion over trusting the advice of a random doctor I'd certainly trust a random doctor's medical opinion over a random programmer's (my own). And I think a doctor should trust a random programmer's opinion about software over his/her own. In both cases, the solution is to find a reputable practitioner, not substitute an untrained opinion for a trained one.
- citrin_ru 13y ago
  You should trust expert opinion, unless you are expert in given area. To understand medicine you need many years of hard study. Several articles from wikipeida is not enough.
  - loqi 13y ago
    This is good advice, but it is sometimes difficult to tell whether or not expert opinion actually exists.
sdoowpilihp 13y ago
What you are alluding to sounds like it may have it's roots in the Dunning-Kruger effect. I can't seem to find it in the article, but I seem to recall there was also some research done that found people that were considered highly skilled in one area tended to over estimate their skill in many other areas. Anecdotally speaking, I can confidently say that as programmers, we love to do just this! If anyone knows the research I am referring to, I'd love to look at it again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

pmorici 13y ago

On the other hand; If the field of medicine is anything like engineering and computer science I'd rather chance my own opinion over trusting the advice of a random doctor w/o supporting reasoning. I've been given obviously crappy advice by way to many doctors over the years to just "take their word for it" because they have an MD next to their name.

TwoBit 13y ago
You trust your own engineering opinion over that of an expert professional engineer? The doofus who used to own my house was one of those kinds of people and I am still paying for it.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- pmorici 13y ago
  You're missing the point. There are a lot of engineers out there who claim to be "expert professionals" and may even have the credentials on paper but when it comes down too it aren't competent. This is evidenced by the large number of posts on HN dedicated to finding and hiring good engineers. People seem to assume that all doctors are roughly equal, or at least meet some baseline level of competency. I'm saying based on my experience in the engineering world and my first hand experience with doctors I don't believe that. So I'm saying that just taking someones word for it because they are a doctor is naive. I've lost track of the number of times I've been told totally nonsensical things by doctors that were just not sound advice which I confirmed by seeking another doctor's opinion and in some cases because what they told me to do made me sicker.
  - nathan_long 13y ago
    I'm sorry you've had bad experiences, and I'm sure you're very smart. But do consider: imagine you're building software for a doctor and he/she disagrees with your choice of database/programming language. You might not say it, but you'd probably think, "really? You probably don't know a function from a hole in the ground." Personally, I can't tell you what all of my organs do, much less what can go wrong with them, much less how that should be treated. I'm sure there are incompetent doctors, but I doubt there are many less competent at medicine than I am.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    Yes, when a single doctor tells you something it is worthwhile seeking more advice and more information. Nasking "whT happens if we jist watch and wait?" Is also a great question to ask. Luckily this isn't relevant to vaccinations because we're not relying on what one person says, but on an accumulated body of research.
sanoli 13y ago
Sure, don't trust the advice of any one doctor; that's alright. With vaccines though, you're deciding not to trust the advice of pretty much every doctor.
- pmorici 13y ago
  I'm not really talking about vaccines in particular but even those aren't as cut and dry as you imply. Take a look at the common MMR vaccine. In 2005 they introduced MMRV which is the traditional MMR plus the addition of a chickenpox vaccine. The WHO recommends MMRV but US health officials don't express a preference one way or another. The side effects of each are different. So clearly there is some ambiguity there. If a doctor recommended one over the other I would want to know what his reasoning was before taking his word for it.
  - Fomite 13y ago
    That's not really a sign of ambiguity. Vaccination for varicella is tricky - if you're going to vaccinate against it, you need to vaccinate hard. It's a great working example of what's known as the "Paradox of Moderate Infection Control" - getting a handle on it just a little bit will cause worse outcomes than if you did nothing at all. The WHO then, making recommendations for the entire world, logically favors a single "Do it and be done" shot that piggybacks on their incredibly intensive campaigns for MMR vaccination. In the U.S., a varicella vaccine is a co-occuring part of the recommended vaccine schedule. It's a question of one shot or two, and managing slightly worse side effects for the MMRV vaccine, and thus absolutely sensical to leave it to the clinician and parent to discuss, because the likelihood of the child getting one and never getting the other is quite low, it's just a question of how.
    - pmorici 13y ago
      It sounds like you are agreeing with me. Because like you said you would want to discuss it with your doctor before making a decision.
      - 13y ago
Fomite 13y ago
Vaccine schedules are, just so we're clear, not set by "a random doctor w/o supporting reasoning". They're done by panels of doctors who are experts in that field, and the supporting reasoning is extensive and the result of many, many peer-reviewed studies.
nathan_long 13y ago
> If the field of medicine is anything like engineering and computer science I'd rather chance my own opinion over trusting the advice of a random doctor I'd certainly trust a random doctor's medical opinion over a random programmer's (my own). And I think a doctor should trust a random programmer's opinion about software over his/her own. In both cases, the solution is to find a reputable practitioner, not substitute an untrained opinion for a trained one.
citrin_ru 13y ago
You should trust expert opinion, unless you are expert in given area. To understand medicine you need many years of hard study. Several articles from wikipeida is not enough.
- loqi 13y ago
  This is good advice, but it is sometimes difficult to tell whether or not expert opinion actually exists.

sdoowpilihp 13y ago

What you are alluding to sounds like it may have it's roots in the Dunning-Kruger effect. I can't seem to find it in the article, but I seem to recall there was also some research done that found people that were considered highly skilled in one area tended to over estimate their skill in many other areas. Anecdotally speaking, I can confidently say that as programmers, we love to do just this! If anyone knows the research I am referring to, I'd love to look at it again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect