What Science Can Say About Vaccines: And What It Can’t Say

Interesting times for science are in store given the incoming administration. RFK, Jr. has been tasked to make America Healthy Again. He will fail where he encourages women to kill the lives inside them, because killing (in case you’ve forgotten) is the opposite of health.

But he might have some success with vaccines. For instance, at a recent interview he said he is against mandatory vaccinations. This brings up the excellent question of what can Science say about vaccines, and what it cannot. The answer will turn out to the same, with only small differences, for many questions similar to vaccination.

Science can answer questions like these, all with more or less certainty, depending on circumstance:

What is the projected range of vaccine protection in a population of given or assumed characteristics? If the vaccine is given in this group at this location, how and with what speed might the disease it protects against progress or decline? What is the range of symptoms and maladies the unvaccinated will experience? What is the protective benefit in the source of these diseases of naturally acquired immunity? How much better is that acquired immunity than the vaccine?

What is the proper dose, perhaps tailored by biology, to achieve the claimed effect?

What are the projected harms caused by the vaccine? Does the vaccine cause other diseases? In what distribution will injuries and other diseases be found?

Science cannot answer questions like these:

Who should get the vaccine? When should it be administered? Where should it be administered? What is the population that will receive the vaccine?

Is it better or worse to suffer the disease? What level of vaccine injury is acceptable? What level of risk of vaccine injury is acceptable? How much better or worse are the symptoms of the disease than the vaccine?

At what level of protection, adjusted by whatever circumstance, should the vaccine be administered? What level of risk for the disease is acceptable and what unacceptable? Is naturally acquired immunity better or worse than the vaccine?

Should it be made mandatory? For all ages in all circumstances? All doses? Should people be made to carry proof of their vaccination? Should a person be fired or otherwise hounded from society for preferring naturally acquired immunity, or because this person does not care about the disease? Should people be forced to care about a disease? Should people be barred from worship until they are vaccinated?

What should be done to scientists who are wrong in their predictions? What about those scientists who lie or are caught exaggerating?

The conclusion is this:

No question of moral, ethical, religious, theological, societal, or legal importance can be answered by Science. Not one. Science cannot even provide the questions.

Science can only answer technical questions of the kind “If we do X, what happens to Y?”. Science can only report, in dry language, the answers to these questions. Science cannot decide what to do with the answers, except for the narrow exception of how these answers play in other technical matters. Science cannot tell you what to think about the answers, though it can try to tell you the reasons for the answers, limiting these reasons to scientific explanations.

Science can answer questions about its answers in the form of conjecture, such as when a decision maker says, “You, Mr Scientist, said that if X was true, then Y would happen. What happens if I can cut X in half?” (which, you should see, is the form of the first question). A scientist can never venture an opinion, in the name of Science, about the value of cutting X in half.

Now Science is, of course, practiced by scientists, and most scientists are people. And all people have opinions on moral, ethical, religious, theological, societal, and legal matters. So it becomes a temptation worse than a Congressman asked to go on a trip with Jeffrey Epstein (or whoever his replacement is) not to mix the scientist’s opinion on these things with his Science. The mixing becomes in practice almost impossible to avoid. But it must be guarded with as much vigilance as a Harvard faculty sniffing for right-wing applicants to its Physics Department.

The fault is scarcely scientists’ alone. We are often told to Follow The Science! by non-scientist rulers who are shy about imposing their desires, and look for an excuse (or “justification”) that deflects blame for these decisions. You can argue with a man, but who dares argue with Science? The argument switches from what is right and what is wrong, which is notoriously difficult, to obscure details about mathematical formula or the like. The decision maker can then paint his opponents as “anti-Science” and “deniers”. Or he can point to his cabal of like-minded scientists, with impressive “degrees”, and imply their intelligence in matters of differential equations applies to morals. When experience has shown that, often, the last person you should seek for moral advice is a science geek.

It is scientism to move from “If we do X, what happens to Y?” to “We must (or must not) do X”. It is scidolatry to scream “Follow the Science!” This is why I am fond of saying that when a man says “Follow the Science!” he always means “Follow me!”

The CDC was certainly a scientism, and not scientific, agency during the covid panic. For instance in their mandating no rent should be paid, etc.

Subscribe or donate to support this site and its wholly independent host using credit card click here. Or use the paid subscription at Substack. Cash App: \$WilliamMBriggs. For Zelle, use my email: matt@wmbriggs.com, and please include yours so I know who to thank. BUY ME A COFFEE