The importance of being scientifically cautious when criticizing the administration of vaccines: "Retracted"' post truth

Abstract

The sociologist Robert Merton postulated that science is a concept used in order to denote the set of methods used to verify the truth of knowledge. Science is to go beyond empiricism, and try to make real hypothetical concepts (or check their shortcomings). In this line, Pierre Louis introduced the numerical method to achieve scientific ‘verification’ of the medical practice – “As to different methods of treatment, it is possible for us to assure ourselves of the superiority of one or other [. . . ] by enquiring if under these circumstances, a greater number of individuals have been cured by one means than another. Here again it is necessary to count. And it is, in great part at least, because hitherto this method has been not at all, or rarely been employed, that the science of therapeutics is so uncertain” [1]. The principal objective pursued through this method was to avoid treatments whose efficacies were not really proven...