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1️⃣ 🧵 Our written evidence “Misinformation about childhood vaccinations: evidence & interventions” for UK House of Lords Childhood Vaccinations Committee is now public—led by Sander van der Linden with Kai Ruggeri, @drg.bsky.social, Heidi Larson, Thom & Jon Roozenbeek and me 1/10

2️⃣ Read the submission: committees.parliamen... We present multidisciplinary evidence on how misinformation undermines childhood vaccine confidence and coverage in the UK and beyond. 2/10

3️⃣ Childhood vaccine uptake in the UK remains relatively high, but confidence is declining and coverage has slipped enough to contribute to outbreaks of preventable diseases such as measles. Misinformation plays a causal role in this erosion of uptake. 3/10

4️⃣ We review historical and recent cases—from the Wakefield MMR hoax to HPV campaigns in Japan and Ireland—showing how concentrated misinformation can drive sharp drops in coverage and thousands of preventable cancer cases and deaths. 4/10

5️⃣ The evidence base includes systematic reviews and experiments demonstrating that exposure to vaccine misinformation reduces intentions to vaccinate and is linked to real-world uptake patterns, including via social media amplification. 5/10

6️⃣ We argue that fact-checking and traditional information campaigns, while valuable, are rarely sufficient because misinformation has a “continued influence” even after corrections, and much misleading content falls outside narrow “fake news” definitions. 6/10

7️⃣ Our key focus is on prebunking and psychological inoculation: short, scalable interventions that expose people to weakened doses of manipulation tactics, building cognitive “antibodies” against anti-vaccination narratives and improving resilience and sometimes uptake. 7/10

9️⃣ Our recommendations stress system level responses: investment in real time public health infrastructure to monitor and test interventions, tackling the online manipulation market (bots, SIM farms), and demanding algorithmic transparency and data access for independent research. 9/10