Correction: In the original version of this article, Kevin Mulroy’s name was misspelled.
Despite immense scientific evidence to the contrary, celebrity endorsement and a lack of scientific education have made Americans much more susceptible to the argument that vaccines can cause autism.
This research earned Ellen Watkins, a first-year undeclared student, the lower-division award of the UCLA Library Prize for Undergraduate Research.
She concluded that first-hand stories and “passionate” celebrity retelling is much easier for people to relate to than scientists who have conclusively found that there is no link between vaccinations and autism.
Watkins, along with fourth-year students Myer Rickless and Lincoln Pitcher, were recognized on Wednesday for their use of library resources in original undergraduate work.
Rickless, a history student, won the award for upper-division research for his senior thesis paper on 19th century British foreign investments. Pitcher, a political science and geography student, received the judge’s award for his thesis on congressional districts.
The three students received a total of $1,750 for their work.
Winners are chosen based on the quality of their work and the extent to which they used library resources during their research.
Watkins conducted her research for an Honors Collegium class on science and society, using largely online sources provided by the library. The final 22-page paper had 68 references.
“It was just a paper I had to write, but I got really into it,” she said.
During the ceremony, selection committee chair Kevin Mulroy quoted John Miller, Watkins’ professor, who said her paper was one of the best he has received in the last 10 years. Miller was not present at the ceremony.
“Hers was particularly well-done, well-researched and well-thought out,” he said in a later interview. “She’s certainly deserving of a first-place prize.”
In his thesis, Rickless found parallels between economic trends in the late 1800s and 2000s. In 1858 and 1862, the British government passed laws that gave banks limited liability ““ meaning that bank owners were only responsible for the value of their initial investments.
This encouraged owners to make riskier investments, which eventually caused the depression of 1890. A similar pattern was seen leading up to the market crash in 2008.
“With a more complete understanding of how foreign property rights were enforced in the past, the contemporary business community can more accurately assess investment strategies,” Rickless said.
Pitcher wrote his thesis on how the shape and restructuring of congressional districts affected an incumbent’s chance of re-election.
He has been working for Jeff Lewis, an associate professor of political science, on a historical database of congressional districts since his second year at UCLA.
He used this information and primary sources from the library to analyze 20th century voting patterns throughout the United States.
Ruth Simon, a 1958 UCLA alumna and retired university lawyer, established an endowment to help fund the award three years ago.
“The whole idea of the prize is to encourage use of the library,” she said. “When you’re dealing with a text that has a life ““ ink, colors, margin notes ““ you’ve got to see the real thing. … The book is the way.”