Does the Shingles Vaccine Stop Dementia... in women... and even more than it stops shingles?

99% of scientists retweeted something they did not read nor assess

Over 5000 people have retweeted and over 4 million have seen a new preprint that claims that the shingles’ vaccines reduces the risk of dementia. The vaccine purportedly lowers the risk of shingles by 1 percentage point over 7 years; Apparently, it also lowers the absolute risk of dementia by 5.6% in women (Bigger effect!) and essentially nothing in men, according to this paper. Is this plausible? In this piece, I will provide at least 4 core problems with this paper

The larger question of my essay is: why did thousands of scientists RT a paper they did not read nor assess? The answer is, in part, because the conclusion was one they liked. Vaccines are good for you. Ergo, any paper that finds something good about vaccines must be true. Even if vaccines claim to do unbelievable things, such as prevent 1 in 3 dementia diagnoses. Because scientists have become cheerleaders they easily click on something that furthers their preferred narrative without any thought. What does this mean for science going forward?

Let’s explore the paper and the cult of cheerleader, groupthink, nakedly tribal online science…..

Here are the problems with the paper.

1. The paper is looking at people who got Shingles vax in their late 70s (e.g. 79)—- are you seriously telling me that 1/3 of dementia can be averted if you give a vax to a 79 year old? Surely much of the pathophysiology of dementia has already occurred (aka implausible)

2. The effect is just in women. How is that plausible?

3. The size of the effect is bigger than the effect on preventing Shingles itself, in absolute terms!

4. The benefit is for ALL types of dementia — not just one subtype. Vaccine has pleiotropic effects?

The parsimonious explanation is the authors have found some random noise or confounder in the data and spun a story of out it. And yet, the article was uncritically promoted by thousands. What happened? I have a few theses.

1. Only 1% of people actually read and process things they post. This applies even to scientists.

2. Many scientists are susceptible to confirmation bias — they like vaccines, ergo anything positive about them must be true

3. Most scientists are political hacks. Vaccines being an unalloyed good in all circumstances (e.g. 4 boosters in 20 year old man who had covid) is a Democratic idea. Most scientists are democrats. Given this is a live area of contention; they wish to signal it to their friends

4. Most scientists are not actually that smart. A thoughtful electrician or mechanic has a better brain, and with different education would outperform them.

Overall, the promotion of this preprint— straight to viral tweet and newspaper— and the uncritical reception speaks very poorly of the scientific community. Science may well be a liability for political movements going forward. False consensus may be used to drive political agendas. It already has, but will only intensify.