"Ignorance" and the Mormon Intellectual

By Common Consent recently had a post titled "The Perception of American Ignorance" by blogger SteveP. He gives the example of many Utahns refusal to accept climate change as an example of American ignorance and gives a clarion call for us all to become better informed by relying on scientific magazines and newspapers to form our opinions and to listen to those in authority. Of course, he makes the obligatory slight against those who believe that there could possibly be anything harmful about vaccines. Now whether or not climate change (formerly known as global warming) is occurring is irrelevant to this post. (But note that we should all be attempting to reduce our impact on the environment.) What disturbed me is that when a commenter brought up the issue of vaccination with sound evidence that it is harmful, Brother P and his supporters simply dismissed the idea as pseudo-science and the rest of the comments devolved into a lot of back-patting on the other commenters' acceptance of climate change. So Brother P, is it only scientific if it agrees with your worldview? If you're asking others to examine the evidence and open themselves up to changing their opinion about an uncomfortable issue like climate change, shouldn't you be willing to do the same to do the same with the challenging issue of vaccination?