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The story
Associate Professor Kazushi Matsumura of Osaka University’s graduate school appeared on a Bunka Broadcasting radio program to discuss his book, published in June, “Why Does Science Denialism Attract People? — From Flat Earth Theory to Anti-Vaccine Sentiment,” sparking discussion on 5ch. While some questioned lumping flat-earth theory and anti-vaccine sentiment together under the single label of “science denialism,” opinions split between those arguing “anti-vaccine views are the truly unscientific ones” and those saying “wariness over the shortened clinical trial period is only natural.” A back-and-forth over rising and falling life expectancy also continued.
What Are “Science Denialism” and “Flat Earth Theory”?
Bunka Broadcasting News, 9/9, 2026
Sociologist Kazushi Matsumura, an associate professor at Osaka University’s Graduate School of Human Sciences, appeared on the September 9 broadcast of “Otake Makoto’s Golden Radio” (Bunka Broadcasting, weekdays 11:30 AM–3:00 PM, hosted by Makoto Otake), and spoke about the contents of his book published in June, “Why Does Science Denialism Attract People? — From Flat Earth Theory to Anti-Vaccine Sentiment” (Otake Makoto was absent that day).
Source: joqr.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Some things have a chance of changing, and some things have zero chance of changing.
Heliocentrism is the latter.
Like people who think you can survive on 30 minutes of sleep a day.
It was still under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) — basically the human-trial phase — so there's no long-term safety evidence.
On top of that, past drug-scandal history means there's every kind of fraud risk: falsified papers, doctored trial numbers, cover-ups of serious danger info, and experts being bought off with money.
The "dream oil": PCBs.
The "dream chemical": CFCs.
The "dream medical technology": mRNA.
Why does science keep getting it wrong?
The heliocentrism/geocentrism debate and flat-earth theory are two completely different things, but I guess you don't know that and you're acting smug anyway.
Both heliocentrism and geocentrism agree the Earth is a sphere.
For the COVID vaccine, the government has officially recognized roughly 1,000 deaths and about 10,000 cases of health damage.
Ignoring things that are actually happening seems a lot less scientific to me.
What's scientific about people who got scared of a cold-like illness with an average death age over 80 and then went and got an untested vaccine? lol
They were making noise about it even before it reached Japan.
There was another article recently recommending COVID vaccination, so it's probably part of the same package deal.
Thought to myself, wouldn't that tank his house sales?
Because of antigenic original sin, if a variant emerges that triggers ADE (antibody-dependent enhancement) against the Wuhan-strain antibodies, it'll be the vaccinated people dropping like flies lol
Nostradamus's prophecies themselves are basically no different from religious end-times predictions.
The anti-vaxxers are (mostly) the ones who got vaccinated.
You won't find more credible testimony than that.
The unvaccinated true believers in vaccines are the real conspiracy theorists.
Adding to that —
Here's the source:
> Common factors: "young," "low income," "gets info from the internet/social media" — Over 60% of people who believe anti-vaccine claims have actually been vaccinated themselves, according to a 30,000-person survey by the University of Tokyo and Tohoku University [Shichihara Tanteidai★]
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That's just life expectancy recovering a bit after it dropped from getting the shot lol
Oh really, so it turns out there wasn't much lasting impact then.
There WAS an impact — that's exactly why life expectancy dropped lol
I get the flat-earth thing, but being anti-vax isn't necessarily unscientific, is it?
A proper clinical trial normally takes close to 20 years.
They skipped all that necessary caution, so of course people are going to be wary.
That much is just common sense.
You weigh that and then decide whether to get the shot or not.
Though the people who've made anti-vax their whole reason for living and wish death on every vaccinated person — those guys are scary.
It was built on mRNA and LNP technology that had already been researched for a long time, and governments poured in massive funding to run trials, manufacturing, and approval all in parallel — that's how it got to market so fast.
They didn't cut corners on safety, they cut the waiting time.
Every vaccine has side effects.
There's no way one vaccine produces the exact same effect across all of humanity given individual differences.
In Japan alone, several thousand people die every day from old age, chronic illness, and so on.
When tens of millions of people get vaccinated, you inevitably get a huge number of coincidental cases ("noise") — people who just happened to die of an unrelated cause the day after their shot.
It's a technology big pharma poured huge money into for years and then gave up on.
They only made it viable by suppressing the immune system.
Suppress the immune system against a virus and of course you're going to get an explosive outbreak lol
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
The book by Kazushi Matsumura featured on the program discusses both claims considered objectively false — like flat-earth theory — and fields where the science is still evolving — like vaccine skepticism — under the same umbrella term “science denialism.” That difference in treatment is part of what’s driving the pushback in the thread. One point the segment doesn’t mention: the vaccine side-effect and death figures the government has “recognized” come from the vaccination injury relief system, which is not the same as cases where causation has been fully proven. Also often overlooked is that the COVID vaccine’s short development time stemmed from a backlog of existing mRNA and LNP research plus running trials, manufacturing, and approval in parallel instead of one after another — not from lowering the safety bar itself.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geino/Sports News+) thread “From Flat Earth to Anti-Vaccine: What Are “Science Denialism” and “Flat Earth Theory”? — On Why Science Denialism Draws People In.”
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