Highlighting risk of diseases is most effective in changing attitudes to vaccines, US study finds

Giving people information about the dangers posed by communicable diseases is more persuasive at convincing sceptics of the benefits of vaccination than trying to counter misconceptions about vaccine risks, a US study has shown.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,1 asked 315 people recruited through a crowd sourcing website—Amazon Mechanical Turk, which pays people for completing tasks—to fill in a questionnaire testing their attitude to vaccination and other health issues.

The next day the participants were …