15% of Americans agree that Tylenol causes autism

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Personally, I don't think people should be encouraged to voice their opinion about everything. Next step is often they start to "do their own research" and dismiss science and the knowledge of experts.

I think you’re seriously confused about the purpose of polls like this. It has nothing to do with encouraging anyone to voice their opinion on topics they’re not qualified to speak about—that ship sailed long ago—it has to do with determining how many people hold these beliefs. The first step in any attempt to combat misinformation is learning how widespread that misinformation is.

If you don't know what public opinion is then it is less likely you can respond appropriately to it.

Lol ... Agreed 100% on that one!

Reminds me of the Days of Rev Jim Jones .. Think this 15% may just be wanting to drink the Koolaid .

Fair point. Still, what does the public opinion matter in this case? Does it change anything? Scientists share what they know about the cause of autism and hopefully people will listen to that and change their wrong opinions regardless what they were thinking in the first place. More important then is the public opinion about how autistic people should be dealt with.

There are numerous examples of false, unscientific beliefs that you’ll find at least some people out there holding. There are people today who believe in Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. But most of the time we can safely ignore such people because there aren’t that many of them, and there aren’t very many prominent people (politicians, entertainers, athletes) promoting those views, let alone using them as a basis for federal policy-making.

That’s why polls like this are useful—if they found that less than 5% of Americans believed in the Tylenol-vaccine link, it would be much less concerning. Similarly, anti-vaccine views have skyrocketed since Covid, an important piece of information that we mostly know about through polls. By attacking the polls, you are shooting the messenger.

I am also not sure I agree that public opinion on how autism is to be dealt with is more important than public opinion on its causes. For one thing, you can’t separate the two, as a lot of these bogus claims are driven by the stigma around autism. When RFK calls it an epidemic that must be stopped, he’s essentially promoting a modern form of eugenics.

Moreover, while the Tylenol-autism claim is too new to know its long-term impact on public health, we absolutely know the impact the anti-vaccine movement has had—the reintroduction of diseases we used to think were gone forever in the developed world. That’s at least as important and worrisome as the neo-eugenicist claims about autism.