“Think for yourself”

I posted this on some blog comment somewhere in response to someone who said you should “think for yourself” regarding the (non-existent) vaccination-autism link.  I like how it turned out:

If I was abandoned on an island at birth and somehow survived to this day, I’d probably think the yellow thing in the sky was just a big dot on some firmament, or maybe a big flaming sky-turtle.  Who knows. But that’s where “thinking for myself” would get me without the chastening of science. As it is, however, I have all sorts of other people’s evidence to inform me, and I owe it to them and to the rest of humanity to consider it.