The risks of risk communication

[A]n informed and properly motivated risk communicator would proceed deliberately and cautiously. In particular, because efforts to quiet public fears about vaccines will predictably create some level of exactly that fear, such a communicator will not engage in a high-profile, sustained campaign to “reassure” the general public that vaccines are safe without reason to believe that there is a meaningful level of concern about vaccine risks in the public generally.

That’s Dan Kahan, pointing out the need to tread carefully in risk communication because of the danger of reinforcing that which you’re trying to debunk.

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