Measles is on the rise. But telling anti-vaxxers they’re stupid won’t fix it

After reading the news that cases of measles have soared by 50% in the last year, I recalled the first time I heard an anti-vaccination conspiracy theory. It wasn’t from a member of Donald Trump’s administration, or part of a frenetic, grammatically challenged Facebook post – it was from a classmate when I was at school. Her family wasn’t waging a crusade against medical science: they simply gave credence to disgraced former doctor Andrew Wakefield’s study that wrongly asserted a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. Back then, the study had not yet been discredited.

One only has to stray into anti-vaxxer internet forums for a few minutes to see that they’re stuffed with conspiracy theorists, opportunists, reactionaries, and – worst of all – hubristic idiots. This is the vanguard of the anti-vaxxer movement. But behind that vanguard are a lot of concerned parents who are being convinced of wild and dangerous ideas because we – and by we, I mean those of us who recognise the incontrovertible fact that vaccines are essential – aren’t talking to them properly. A number of the anti-vaxxer vanguard may have started life as concerned parents, but have gradually sunk into increasingly extreme positions because the only communication they’re getting from the other side is that they’re foolish and irresponsible. Almost every week the internet produces another diatribe against anti-vaxxers, or a listicle of their “horrifyingly stupid” social media posts.

A neat example of poor communication by those who are trying to stem anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories is a 2017 study called “Misinformation lingers in memory” by the University of Edinburgh, which found that using myth-busting techniques actually increased participants’ tendency to wrongly believe in a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. In other words, simply repeating a vaccination conspiracy theory and then debunking it with facts makes people more likely to believe the conspiracy theory than they did before, because reminding people of the conspiracy theory – even in order to discredit it – lodges it deeper in the public consciousness. This is not only the fault of the people hearing these arguments – it is our failure; it is a failure of communication.

The Public Interest Research Centre , a communications organisation I sometimes work with, argues that miscommunications like these happen because we tend to think of human beings as fact-processing machines. We assume that if we make a factual argument loudly and often enough, people will eventually become overpowered by its inherent logic, believe it, and even start arguing it themselves. Most of the recent events in politics and society, including the finding that measles cases are increasing, should be evidence enough that this is assumption is entirely wrong, and that by leaning on it, we simply enlarge a gulf of understanding between us and the people we are trying to communicate with. Frustrated that they cannot see the world in the same way we do, we call them idiots and chancers, we denounce their beliefs – and then we wonder why they’re not coming around to our way of thinking.

Over the past 30 years, during which free-market technocratic politics has been the dominant ideology, populations have been encouraged to believe that there is an agreed set of facts that we all must adhere to for the greater good, and that those who question these facts are a dangerous menace. But in the last five or 10 years, this ideology has begun to crumble, and as a result more and more people are beginning to question who is giving them facts and what their agenda might be. Following events such as the Iraq war and the financial crisis, which were so defined by greed and deception, some public scepticism is rational and maybe even welcome. But the anti-vaxxer movement has been given a shot in the arm, no pun intended, by this general collapse of trust in the establishment, which has been largely misunderstood, dismissed or even demonised by the traditional gatekeepers of public discourse.

What began as scepticism about political ideals and ways of organising societies has spilled over into scientific disciplines where a shared agreement of the facts and reliance on empirical evidence is absolutely necessary. The anti-vaxxer movement is what happens when public scepticism is not fully understood or empathised with, and when defunct methods of experts shouting facts over and over again are the only response. The vacuum created by this lack of empathy is then filled by malicious actors who want to present themselves as the authority instead, and to erode trust in science to promote phenomena such as climate change denialism, or in a shared understanding of human rights in order to discriminate against others. This week, Darla Shine, the wife of the White House director of communications, went on a Twitter tirade (something for which she has form – having previously used the platform to question why white people aren’t allowed to use the n-word, given its use by black people) against measles vaccines. People like Shine, and Trump, take advantage of the general atmosphere of disinformation in order to assert harmful and inaccurate arguments as universal truths.

If we want to defeat the anti-vaxxer movement, we need to understand why it exists, and the increase in its popularity. We need to look at the wider context that allowed such a dangerous and obviously wrongheaded movement to flourish so unchecked. It might make us feel good to denounce anti-vaxxers as villains, but it doesn’t seem to be working. And as long as the attempts to stop anti-vaxxers fail, more and more children will be put at risk.

• Ellie Mae O’Hagan is a freelance journalist writing mainly for the Guardian. Her first book, on the sweeping changes in politics, will be published by 4th Estate in 2019. She tweets @MissEllieMae