I wouldn't grade Dr. Bakker very highly if this were an exam. He was asked questions and didn't answer any of them directly. Instead he chose to tell a story of his own preference. Sorry, but if we wanted that, why not just go read his blog or something? Telling inconclusive but interesting anecdotes is a great use for blogs.

I wish the editors would push back on guests who try to do this. I would be happier to read, "Dr. Bakker decided he didn't actually want to answer your questions and submitted a free-form essay instead; you can read it on his web site at ..." than be presented with an illusion that he actually paid attention to what we asked. If he did pay attention, he should credit those who motivated his answers.

Since "science" is "the formalization of the way we know anything at all about anything", it's not really a matter of "not fitting a system". You could try eating only rocks to "not fit the nutritional system", but you'd rather quickly end up dead. Not all systems work. Rejecting a broken system in favor of a less broken one is not symmetric with rejecting a working system in favor of a fatally flawed one.

Although some subset of Christians seem to be very disturbed by the implications of the fossil record (and phylogenetics from DNA sequencing, if they pay attention), there is a good case to be made that these details of the history of life on earth are not wholly incompatible with the Christian world view.

However, recent findings in cognitive science and neuroscience are perhaps more directly challenging. Whether it is religious experiences induced by magnetic fields (or certain types of supposedly spiritual experiences seeming identical to certain types of epilepsy caused by defects in neuronal biochemistry), or the inseperable nature of mind and brain (as shown by reams of brain injury data, effects of psychoactive substances, fMRI imaging, sensory deprivation experiments, and so on), or the degree to which our morality and actions are instinctive and not necessarily fully within our control, scientific research seems to be painting a very different picture of man-the-sometimes-thinking-animal than has Christianity or other traditional religions. In particular, notions of will and soul that appear central to an understanding of Christianity seem increasingly at odds with neuroscience.

What is your opinion on the compatibility of Christinaity with cognitive science? Must one or the other adapt in order for the two to exist harmoniously, and if so, what form might that take?

Well, I was sort of expecting the OP to say that he pointed out that the machine was not in fact millimeter wave and was actually x-ray backscatter (based on inspection). That he did not makes me wonder about the exact identity of the scanner.

He told you first that the machine was X-ray backscatter, and then that it was millimeter wave? Or you read the signs that it was backscatter and he said it was millimeter?

Agreed, except why single out vaccines? It should be every prescription or procedure. Just record everything and do data mining. You wouldn't even need a dedicated VAERS then, as all the data relevant to safety would be embedded in the standard medical records.

Indeed. But that doesn't make the statement in that health magazine (which I believe is just reprinted from a CDC fact sheet, or pretty close) any more relevant. It shows that infants have an immune system, but that's hardly in dispute. More relevant information would include things like strength of immune response to a vaccination vs. response to a cold. Otherwise it's just a reassuring-sounding trick to fool the scientifically illiterate into doing the right thing. Personally I take a pretty dim view of people doing the right thing for the wrong reasons; although it seems efficient at the time, it produces a brittle system in that if you don't know why you're doing what you're doing, you don't know how to react when something changes or you receive new information.

I wouldn't exactly call VAERS reporting "a scientific process". The disclaimers on the database read like the ones on Slashdot polls.

If it were scientific, the doctor would call you a week after the injection and ask how her health was and if she suffered any major or minor maladies, and the answer whatever it was would go in a database.

Or, heck, all adjacent pairs of medical interventions could go into a database, whether it had anything to do with vaccinations or not. There is much you can do with lots of data; the health care system is designed to squirrel that data away into various different filing cabinets, not look for patterns. Medicine has a long way to go yet to be a data-driven science in the way that, say, advertising is. (Kinda makes you think about our priorities as a culture, eh?)

Even with the lack-of-reporting bias, VAERS still can be used to detect particularly problematic vaccines, simply because some reports do get through, and there's no reason to expect the legitimate ones are suppressed more than the illegitimate ones. The assumption is that _none_ of it is virus-related. So, okay, sample size is smaller and statistics are noisier, but you can still detect obvious trends with careful statistics.

Don't forget to multiply by the risk of catching the disease when you say "high risk of death".

The calculation for at-risk populations can be very different for low-risk populations. That's why, for example, countries in temperate climates don't bother vaccinating for yellow fever unless people are going to be traveling.

Er, wait, so female protanomaly colorblindness isn't a result of genetics because the rate is only 0.01%?! Sadly, blanket statements are no substitute for statistics.

Actually, a lot of early vaccines don't really contribute to lifelong immunity, even if the immune system is mature enough to generate some protective temporary immunity. Vaccine catch-up schedules for older children often skip one or more injections.

Also, a lot of young children don't get sick any more because of herd immunity. If you don't vaccinate them, though, you have to be extra-confident the herd that they are interacting with is adequately immune. (If you herd your babies, which we generally do, then you do need to have the baby-herd immunized to get protection.)

Welllll, those thousands of other bacteria and viruses aren't usually injected into us in quantities high enough to often cause a low-grade fever. Let's not use bad evidence, even if the concerns are unwarranted or part of mass hysteria or whatever.

The VAERS database is open. You can check yourself to see if your entry is there (assuming you know enough to find it in anoymized form).

    https://vaers.hhs.gov/data/index

It's because compliance rates are higher for younger children, all else being equal. So if you _can_ vaccinate at 6 months, the argument goes, why wait until, say, 12 years, when the chance you'll actually get it done is lower?

It implies that even if they make decent machines, you don't want to buy from them because they will use their legal rights to make your life more difficult.

Thanks, but if there's a less hostile option, I'll take it.