Talk:Tuskegee syphilis experiment

So apparently few of the "positives" (if any) ever got the disease.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. The outcome appears to have been "the natural history of syphilis is no syphilis at all". 82.161.30.183 (talk) 20:30, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Not so. Based on the one table shown, 18 original negatives were reclassified as positive due to acquiring syphilis. However, all the positives remained in the positive category. MarmotHead (talk) 20:36, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

A test of the zero hypothesis (that a "syphilis positive" does not increase risk of death) gives a 12% probability of seing 276 or more dead among the 443 "positives" (p-value 0.12). Usually, p-values must be under 0.001 to be considered statistically significant for validating the alternate hypothesis (that syphillis kills). The results show those "syphylis diagnoses" were worthless to say the least. 82.161.30.183 (talk) 21:20, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Your test just shows that my casual interpretation of a table may have been lazy. MarmotHead (talk) 13:21, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Effect on antivax movement?

Here it is suggested that the distrust in the medical community fomented by the experiment had a more lasting and significant effect in the form of opposition to vaccines specifically among Black Americans. A web search for "tuskegee vaccination" and "tuskegee antivax" reveals that the experiment is indeed commonly brought up by antivaxxers. --91.7.7.226 (talk) 23:44, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm sure it had an effect. The important thing to remember is that even in the case of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, the lie wasn't that vaccines work. It was a completely different breach of trust. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 08:03, 30 August 2016 (UTC)