I don't quite understand the outrage about the CDC conducting a scientific study looking for possible connections between vaccines and autism, in the face of the absence of evidence. Why would be bad to narrow the error bars? Is the question itself some kind of heresy?
@LucreSnooker If it were indeed true that the scientific apparatus of the CDC finds the conclusions preferred by the current head, why would anyone trust the previous results?
@tr_babb If an actual scientist had the same stance as you illustrate ("dangerous ideas, legitimizing, ...") we would not trust them with conducting or summarizing research on that question, of course, because they are clearly tainted by normative preconceptions
You are not against flat earthers, but against networks of parents who saw their children develop autism after they got vaccinated. This does not mean that the vaccination was causal, ofc. The larger context is that vaccine injuries are sometimes not recorded by doctors (since it is "settled science" for many of them that vaccines don't cause harm, and it would be bad to give ammunition to anti-vaxxers), and vaccines and parts of medical research have unfortunately been politicized along party lines.