Paul, the basic problem here is that whether vaccination confers more good than harm is a scientific question, but the websites you link to make either emotive arguments eg: “look at my baby. It was vaccinations I tell you”, or political arguments like “taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for this; pharmaceutical companies should pay out for all the autism but the government covers it up for them”, but there’s no analysis as to whether it really was vaccines that hurt the baby, or whether vaccines really do cause autism.
The stories sometimes refer to science. A bit. An article maybe mentions one specific scientific paper, or maybe quotes some scientist or academic – as if science was determined by their authority rather than evidence. There is hardly ever a link to the academic discussion of any paper mentioned, no attempt to put those snippets in context. For instance it’s never explained why the vast majority of relevant experts have dismissed the MMR-autism theory, never a link to a systematic review at, for instance, the Cochrane Library. The counter-evidence is barely mentioned at all, except to dismiss it out of hand as “part of the cover-up”.
Paul, if you’ve mistaken this stuff for scientific discussion, I can’t really blame you because that’s what the MSM has been priming you for all your life. It looks sciency but it isn’t science, just like in the MSM. You do realise that it was the MSM that hyped Wakefield’s baseless MMR-autism scare in the first place, using exactly the same techniques? About 3400 stories from 2001 to 2004, over 1200 stories in 2002 alone. The Telegraph pushed it really hard.