Fallacy and false syllogisms often arise when claims are made with no facts to back them up are made. In such circumstances, the claims skew the people’s view and judgment towards the falsified claim. As a result, people tend to shun the truth and embrace the unproven theory. The comic strip cartoons depict separate arguments related to autism causal claims.
The first comic strip that claims that MMR is the cause of autism in children. This claim is fallacious because there is no scientific proof that link MMR to autism. The claim is based on a newspaper article published in the late 1990’s. The fact that the children with autism had received an MMR vaccine does not necessarily point out to the vaccine as the cause of the autism. The autism might have been caused by other underlying factors that could have been overlooked in the studies that resulted in that conclusion. The argument of the second comic strip is that teddy bears cause autism. This argument too is a fallacy because it can be disputed for several reasons. Autism is a non-contagious condition which cannot be transmitted from one being to another. Also, teddy bears are non-living and cannot in any way be the causal of human diseases and conditions, autism included. It is just coincidence that the children with autism have teddy bears. The argument in the third comic strip that the pictured animal (a horse) is a cat just because it has four legs is also a fallacy. This argument is based on the general characterization of animals basing on their number of legs, limiting the characterization to only cats. It is common knowledge that most animals have four legs yet possess some different traits regarding size and species variations. This classification is therefore shallow and presumptive.
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The causal claims about autism have to be tested to be 100% sure that the claims are fallacies. In the first claim that MMR vaccine causes autism in children, the vaccine components have to be analyzed and their chemical qualities determined. Those components that could be related to autism, for example, thimerosal which is used as a preservative, can be removed from the vaccine production. The occurrence of autism in children can then be evaluated after modifications are made to the vaccine components. The claim that autism in children is caused by teddy bears can be tested by conducting a random study across populations to ascertain if there are children with autism but do not have teddy bears.
The vaccination scare document bears claims that autism in children is related to the MMR vaccine, as well as the counterclaim to this hypothesis. According to the document, a group of British scientists published a study in the Lancet which pointed out that the likelihood of developing autism and bowel disease was higher in individuals who had received the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine. The evidence of studies was the presence of measles virus in the digestive system of the children who had exhibited the symptoms of autism after receiving the MMR vaccine. The evidence was however incorrect and unexhaustive. Among the numerous studies conducted following this claim, no single study confirmed the evidence. In fact, there was no study that found the link between the combined vaccine and autism. As it later emerged, the scientist that spearheaded the false syllogism has offered money to his subjects to obtain samples. Besides, he had obtained money form legal attorneys seeking to file lawsuits against vaccine producers, and he had patented his own vaccine brand in the wake of the Lancet publication.
The exact details on how the MMR vaccine is associated with autism should be included in anti-vaccine studies such as the Lancet vaccination scare publication. This will help the readers and the public at large make objective decisions based on conclusive and proven findings. The vaccination scare document led the public into believing that vaccination was not good, and people avoided the MMR vaccine for fear of their children getting autism. Researchers and vaccine manufacturers have since tried to deal with this fallacy by removing or altering some vaccine components alleged to cause autism. However, these efforts have not been 100% successful in avoiding the fallacy.
