"Anti-vaccines" and "pseudosciences" worry scientists

Scientists from different sectors have expressed concern about the progress of the pseudoscience that "has an immediate negative impact as the case of the movement HIV vaccines"And in the long run because" they go against critical thinking ", four days a day to discuss why these beliefs become followers.

"Beforethe meeting of the terraplanistas In Columbus (City of Buenos Aires), we have already noted with concern the advance of pseudoscience and the urgent question we are facing is:

Pedrosa, who lives in Madrid where she is a professor at the university, said that "the advancement of these beliefs is not trivial: on the one hand, it has an immediate impact, as it is the case with the anti-vacuum movement whose consequences we see today with, for example, the measles germs in New York"

"But they also have an impact because they attack the critical thinking of a society used to thinking without scientific evidence, return to the magical thinking"He added.

About the "National and International Meeting of Terraplanistas" which was held in March in Colon and gathered 80 people, criticized the scientist the support provided by the municipality. "It's a problem because we see it public funding for this kind of magical thinking"He said.

In the same vein, Conicet biologist and researcher Diego Golombek said that "magic explanations, sometimes simplistic and miraculous, throughout the story, the theme is to understand why they find an echoand the answer is very complex. "

"On the one hand, the doubt, which is what science offers, a lost ground historically in the face of sure answers, even if they are false; on the other hand the conspiracy theories, those who go against something, have a driving force that during the course of evolution he has always been very powerful"Said the researcher.

Golombek pointed out that in the field of pseudoscience, one can think two groups: "Those like Astrology, where if a person wants to pay attention at the horoscope it's his life and those who have a public impact like the movement HIV vaccines because if a person does not vaccinate his children can increase the viral load of a whole society"

"What we should examine of science is how to communicate our ideas because on the side of reason, we see that it does not work, so we have to invent in another way, perhaps more emotional or more complicit", Added Golombek.

The incidence ofMeasles continues to grow in the United States, where at least 704 cases were counted in 2019, the highest figure in 25 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who insisted on the importance of being vaccinated against the declared disease eradicated in 2000.

In a report published yesterday, only 18% of patients did not know whether they had been vaccinated or not.

As, Europe recorded 82,596 measles cases last year, a figure that tripled the number of people infected in 2017, according to the World Health Organization's (WHO) regional office, which indicated that in 2018 72 children and adults are dead for this disease on the continent.

"It's about a global problemIn Spain, for example, the government has launched a new campaign called #coNprueba, which is part of the plan to fight pseudotherapies and pseudoscience, "said Pedrosa.

In this context, the Argentine Association of Astronomy organized the conference "Science and non Science: to erase the myths "May 4 at 17:00 at the Cultural Center of Science, where will intervene, besides Golombek, the physicist Alberto Rojo, the mathematician Guillermo Martinez, the researcher Ana María Vara and the science journalist Valeria Román