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Dr. Bobsky
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2015
Location: UK's most densely packed city. It's not London...
 
2021-02-27, 13:51

There are ethical standards that scientists abide by. We are encouraged to whistle blow if those standards aren't met. This is why peer review exists and undergirds all scientific advances and publication.

So when you ask how do you know a vaccine is safe, what you're really asking is how do we trust the hundreds or thousands of scientists that have collected and analysed data leading to that vaccine. Part of this trust has to come from appreciating just how high scientists elevate truth, and the standards under which that is ascertained. We don't build models and find data to support them. We build models and seek data that would refute them. Our lives are spent trying to prove ourselves wrong. This is why the scientific method works, and why it has supplanted other schools of thought on discovery and understanding. As others have pointed out: the data is available for you to interpret on the vaccines. As far as my reading goes: the vaccines are working as they did in the clinical trials; we won't know their efficacy until the disease is under control, but all signs point to the fact that they are effective.

Last edited by Dr. Bobsky : 2021-02-28 at 09:28.
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