full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Heidi Larson: Why rumors about vaccines spread -- and how to rebuild trust


Unscramble the Blue Letters


One of the things that we found fascinating, and we've leearnd a lot in the last 10 years — this is our 10th anniversary, this didn't start yeasrtedy, this rumor problem — and one of the things we've learned is in our global monitoring, that Europe is the most stcepkial rgioen in the world. France won the pzrie, actually.

(Laughter)

By far. And actually some of those rumors have tvrelaed to other parts of the world. But we were trying to understand Europe. Hmm. Why Europe? I thought the US was really — had some of the most skepticism, but boy, I was wrong.

And a political scientist, a colleague we work with, Jon kdenney, he took our data from 28 European countries and he looked at it and croaeertld it with political opinion polling. And what did he find? He found that people who are most likely to vote for a populist party also were the ones most likely to strongly disagree that vaccines were important, safe or effective. What did we lrean? Vaccines cannot escape the political and social turbulence that surrounds it. Scientists were unprepared for this tsunami of doubt and qentiouss and dtisrust.

Open Cloze


One of the things that we found fascinating, and we've _______ a lot in the last 10 years — this is our 10th anniversary, this didn't start _________, this rumor problem — and one of the things we've learned is in our global monitoring, that Europe is the most _________ ______ in the world. France won the _____, actually.

(Laughter)

By far. And actually some of those rumors have ________ to other parts of the world. But we were trying to understand Europe. Hmm. Why Europe? I thought the US was really — had some of the most skepticism, but boy, I was wrong.

And a political scientist, a colleague we work with, Jon _______, he took our data from 28 European countries and he looked at it and __________ it with political opinion polling. And what did he find? He found that people who are most likely to vote for a populist party also were the ones most likely to strongly disagree that vaccines were important, safe or effective. What did we _____? Vaccines cannot escape the political and social turbulence that surrounds it. Scientists were unprepared for this tsunami of doubt and _________ and ________.

Solution


  1. learn
  2. distrust
  3. questions
  4. skeptical
  5. kennedy
  6. region
  7. yesterday
  8. traveled
  9. correlated
  10. prize
  11. learned

Original Text


One of the things that we found fascinating, and we've learned a lot in the last 10 years — this is our 10th anniversary, this didn't start yesterday, this rumor problem — and one of the things we've learned is in our global monitoring, that Europe is the most skeptical region in the world. France won the prize, actually.

(Laughter)

By far. And actually some of those rumors have traveled to other parts of the world. But we were trying to understand Europe. Hmm. Why Europe? I thought the US was really — had some of the most skepticism, but boy, I was wrong.

And a political scientist, a colleague we work with, Jon Kennedy, he took our data from 28 European countries and he looked at it and correlated it with political opinion polling. And what did he find? He found that people who are most likely to vote for a populist party also were the ones most likely to strongly disagree that vaccines were important, safe or effective. What did we learn? Vaccines cannot escape the political and social turbulence that surrounds it. Scientists were unprepared for this tsunami of doubt and questions and distrust.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
social media 4
polio eradication 3
vaccine confidence 2
early signals 2
paying attention 2
hyperconnected environment 2
percent faster 2
younger generation 2



Important Words


  1. anniversary
  2. boy
  3. colleague
  4. correlated
  5. countries
  6. data
  7. disagree
  8. distrust
  9. doubt
  10. effective
  11. escape
  12. europe
  13. european
  14. fascinating
  15. find
  16. france
  17. global
  18. hmm
  19. important
  20. jon
  21. kennedy
  22. laughter
  23. learn
  24. learned
  25. looked
  26. lot
  27. monitoring
  28. opinion
  29. parts
  30. party
  31. people
  32. political
  33. polling
  34. populist
  35. prize
  36. problem
  37. questions
  38. region
  39. rumor
  40. rumors
  41. safe
  42. scientist
  43. scientists
  44. skeptical
  45. skepticism
  46. social
  47. start
  48. strongly
  49. surrounds
  50. thought
  51. traveled
  52. tsunami
  53. turbulence
  54. understand
  55. unprepared
  56. vaccines
  57. vote
  58. won
  59. work
  60. world
  61. wrong
  62. years
  63. yesterday