The average American doesn't even know why they had to take science in high school. There are millions of functional illiterates in this country. I mean it sucks that people can't think critically or think The Doctors coming on ABC at 11AM have anything important to say but you're kinda asking a lot given my experience with humans. People who are against vaccination have that opinion based on fear. People are emotional, not analytical. Climate deniers work purely on this level, bringing economic conspiracy to a message based in scientific reality. Science isn't intuitive and most people think it's a class they got a 'C' in so asking them to build on skills they never learned is an exercise in frustration. I'm cynical as hell but we're fucked. Unless the scientists save us again.
This is not entirely the case. Might I suggest Drive by Dan Pink? He does a great job of comparing climate skepticism with vaccine skepticism and demonstrates that both are iterations of the exact same thought process from different ends of the political spectrum. Neither process is irrational, and neither viewpoint is "based on fear." It works more like this: 1) I align with this tribe. 2) This tribe holds these beliefs. 3) These beliefs are justified with the following facts. 4) These facts are in doubt, but my allegiance to my tribe is not. Therefore, our tribe is under attack. 5) Our tribe is under attack, therefore our remaining facts are all the more important. 6) I am a member of a besieged tribe with certain inalienable truths that are under constant attack by THE OUTSIDER. This is how you go from "I read this Andrew Wakefield study and it sounded bad" to "doctors are trying to poison my kid with mercury" as a rational, thinking being. In order to get out of the rut, you have to go to (7) and (7) is a stone cold bitch: 7) Everything I have so fervently believed for so long is wrong. I have lost faith with my tribe and am alone in the world. I must now find a new tribe and something new to believe, but there is no one to trust. How could I have been so wrong? Making it even harder, people trying to make it from (6) to (7) hear - you're a fucking idiot - you have no respect for facts - you're a conspiracy theorist - you're endangering my children - and working to leave them a bleaker world. ...'cuz you may not be a member of the tribe anymore, but that outsider? He's a dick.People who are against vaccination have that opinion based on fear. People are emotional, not analytical.