Interesting comment. As a loving, attentive and very present parent of an autistic child, I find the 'vaccine caused it' argument spurious at best, infuriating at the least. He is what he is - nothing 'caused' it. But it's not hypothetical, fallacious, attention-seeking or pseudo-schizoid.
Very good lesson in basic logic; reminded me of my third year BA course long ago. In the social sciences we can refer to spurious correlation as 'third party variable error', and a current and particularly insidious example of it is the apparent link between vaccines and autism. There is a link, but it is through the occluded third or intervening variable that can be called 'drop-in intensive parenting'. In two-income families, which are most families, the child suddenly experiences much care and concern surrounding a traumatic event, first vaccination sets and the like. Then things go back to their relatively neglectful normalcy. The child experiences a second trauma, that of realizing only in a crisis will they be attended to in the way a young person imagines needful. Hence the general theater of the majority of diagnosed children; simply a manner by which it can force attentive demands upon its parents. Autism, a term from Bleuler (1908), is meant to refer to a general withdrawal symptom of schizophrenia, and not a state of reactive duress with the goal of attention-seeking. The fallacy here is of course blaming the actual chemical vaccination for the onset of autistic manifests. It should be noted that in this case, and many others, the actual source of the fallacy is not lack of evidentiality or careless thinking, but actual decoy projection on the part of the person choosing to ignore the evidence; in this specific case, the problem parents experience that work betrays their family time and their child-raising in general. In a word, the fallacy is used to cover over their own bad conscience, just as the child manifests a retreat into a pseudo-schizoid construction in order to cover over the absence of affection and attentiveness in their real world.
Interesting comment. As a loving, attentive and very present parent of an autistic child, I find the 'vaccine caused it' argument spurious at best, infuriating at the least. He is what he is - nothing 'caused' it. But it's not hypothetical, fallacious, attention-seeking or pseudo-schizoid.
Very good lesson in basic logic; reminded me of my third year BA course long ago. In the social sciences we can refer to spurious correlation as 'third party variable error', and a current and particularly insidious example of it is the apparent link between vaccines and autism. There is a link, but it is through the occluded third or intervening variable that can be called 'drop-in intensive parenting'. In two-income families, which are most families, the child suddenly experiences much care and concern surrounding a traumatic event, first vaccination sets and the like. Then things go back to their relatively neglectful normalcy. The child experiences a second trauma, that of realizing only in a crisis will they be attended to in the way a young person imagines needful. Hence the general theater of the majority of diagnosed children; simply a manner by which it can force attentive demands upon its parents. Autism, a term from Bleuler (1908), is meant to refer to a general withdrawal symptom of schizophrenia, and not a state of reactive duress with the goal of attention-seeking. The fallacy here is of course blaming the actual chemical vaccination for the onset of autistic manifests. It should be noted that in this case, and many others, the actual source of the fallacy is not lack of evidentiality or careless thinking, but actual decoy projection on the part of the person choosing to ignore the evidence; in this specific case, the problem parents experience that work betrays their family time and their child-raising in general. In a word, the fallacy is used to cover over their own bad conscience, just as the child manifests a retreat into a pseudo-schizoid construction in order to cover over the absence of affection and attentiveness in their real world.
Thanks for the clarification. I thought, I didn't know anything about this (the comp) Thank you, and belated happy bath day