Statistics aren\u0027t as memorable as stories, and anti\u002Dvaxxers use stories to mislead, misrepresent and misinform.
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Indeed, just as vaccine skepticism led to many needless deaths from smallpox, skepticism in our time has caused countless deaths from COVID-19. Actually, that’s countable deaths, and in a new report, the Council of Canadian Academies, along with an estimate of the overall cost of misinformation during the pandemic.
Now, a quick quiz, if you will: Without looking back, how many ICU admissions did vaccine hesitancy cause? How about hospitalizations? Can you even remember the number of deaths? If you’re like most people, the answer is no. Which isn’t to play down the value of statistics. “Everything is number,” quoth the Pythagoreans some 2,500 years ago, and if we leave aside the weird, cultish elements of Pythagoreanism, their insight remains just as true today. Stats are indispensable to the scientific enterprise, to comprehending and controlling nature.
However, when it comes to science communication, stories are — or should be — indispensable, in much the same way statistics are indispensable to scientific investigation. When helping members of the public to understand, remember and, most of all, care about scientific information, nothing resonates like a good story.
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