The Risks of Vaccines

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I pretty firmly believe in vaccination. But I think that it is a mistake to just dismiss people who don't believe in vaccines as crazy lunatics. There's tons of evidence that vaccines do not cause autism. So I think that people should vaccinate their kids. This isn't really in the book, but you're sort of thinking about what are some of the ways that we could encourage vaccines.

Economist and author Emily Oster of Brown University talks about her book Cribsheet with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Oster explores what the data and evidence can tell us about parenting in areas such as breastfeeding, sleep habits, discipline, vaccination, and food allergies. Oster often finds that commonly held views on some of these topics are not well supported by the evidence while on others, the evidence appears decisive. Oster thoughtfully explores the challenges of using empirical work and balances our sometimes ignorance with common sense.