Abstract

Recognizing others’ skills has the function of relieving each of us from the need to know everything. At the same time, in democratic countries it is desirable for people to debate issues of interest to them. But when the debate is not informed, people, starting from erroneous beliefs, oppose their revision and de-legitimize and despise competence. Taking for example the case of vaccines, the intervention focuses on some 350 natural barriers to the attribution of value to scientific knowledge and on possible antidotes.