I don't often have the inclination, or frankly the time, to wonder into the sordid world of fringe "science" and "conspiracy theory" , yet I have on a couple occasions. That said, I came across a posting on another site that I thought might be worth commentary. This youtube "movie" "Here Be Dragons" running about 40 min, was presented as a "how to guide to critical thinking". I suggest we examine that for a tick, shall we?
First, this guy doesn't mention the most common rhetorical misdirection, ad hominem. Of course, there is a reason for this-he uses the "guilt by association" version of it to set up his book sales pitch. Chiropractors and Yoga are in the same group as 9/11 truthers and palm readers....seriously?*
This is common fare in the peculiar from of charlatanry practiced by James Randi and his acolytes. I bought into it for awhile too, until I realized that it ,too, was just a sales pitch.
But it's worse than a sales pitch, he's flat out lying as well. The "pseudoscience" behind vaccines and Autism is said to have as much credibility as believing that eating rice causes black hair(because Asians eat rice). Umm, not quite. I'm a grad student in History so I've got access to academic databases, so I fired up "ProQuest" and searched "Autism AND vaccines" I got 271 peer-reviewed(the word of God to Randiesque charlatans, remember) hits on the subject. I learned something, there is a definite correlation between Autism and mercury(and lead) exposure, AND that several childhood vaccines(particularly one known as MMR) contained mercury as a preservative. Using that preservative was stopped in 1999 in vaccines destined for children, because of this concern. Did it cause Autism-it seems unclear(especially from my 15 min study), but it damn well is a greater case for "causation" than the silly derogatory ad hominem that worrying about it is tantamount to believing that eating rice makes you Asian!
I got 215 peer reviewed hits for "herbal remedies", with a couple of the abstracts I read seeming very positive.
At the end the penultimate of over the top thought control is employed. we are informed that History(incorrectly, by the way)does not entertain "holocaust denial", neatly painting any disagreement with the Dunning orthodoxy with that nasty brush. That sort of anti-intellectual nonsense really does belong in the "Dark Ages"...or actually NOT there, the "Dark Ages" were likely too enlightened for such silliness.
Of course, this is likely too long, you were warned to be very afraid of long arguments, were you not?
I love critical thinking, and knowledge, but that's not what's presented here. Instead conformist, even anti-intellectual, rubbish is presented to to get the gullible to buy a book. Think for yourself, and read things written by actual scientists or experts in a field, rather than listening to some tool try to sell you a book that will make you "feel" smart. Most of what you read is pure bull.
People like this do have some value, but in the end they are simply cashing in on the other side of what Randi calls "woo", and sadly in so doing cast hostility on honest inquiry...in order to sell books.
If you ever hear the "holocaust" associated with anything other than mid-twentieth century Germany, you can expect to be asked for money soon after, as in this case.
A true tragedy is that Mark Twain did not live to comment on the Randi cult.
*Recall, neither chiropracty or yoga are directly challenged....just maligned, and equated with conspiracy theory and holocaust denial, yet both focus on stress relief and muscle stretching that is in the "gee whiz" category of "beneficial"-or at least not harmful...so why challenge them? By the way, chiropractic care is lumped into a group of things "not approved by the FDA" (as though that enhances credibility...) yet chiropractic care is fully covered by Medicare. Personally I have no use for either government institution(or any of them .....), but the "critical thinker" here does, and uses them to advance his superstitious profit mongering.
By the way, I'd love to link to all those journal entries I mentioned...but I'm forbidden it by copyright law, all of the academic databases I'm aware of are only available by subscription....and I'm not quite that big on civil disobedience(though admittedly I've had access for the last several years, so I've not looked-got one let me know).
The journal article where I learned of the use of mercury as a preservative in vaccines:
Berg, Rebecca. "Autism-An Environmental Health Issue After All?" . Journal of Environmental Health 71:10(2009) 14-19.
The point is conceded by Dunning, however, on his own website!
My point was never about Autism, or vaccines, but rather that Dunning was presenting a sculpted argument in "Here be Dragons"-that is demonstrably untrue, the man is a liar and trying to take advantage of the ill-informed in the most cynical way. I don't cotton to that, not because I care if he makes money, or even if people are terminally stupid, but because such undeserved sniping makes it harder for honest inquiry to take place. Shame on you Mr. Dunning.
Comments
If there is a corrilation between mercury in vaccines and autism, then why have autism rates gone up when mercury was removed from the vaccines about 10 years ago
Scooter,
From what I've read, the mercury stopped going in vaccines in 1999, and all were "expired" by 2003. I could certainly see a reasonable increase assuming autism does not set in immediately. I'm no expert, however, and that "red herring" was not the point at all. The point is Dunning did not tell you-he equated a valid question with assuming that eating rice made you Asian, or that disagreeing with him was synonymous with holocaust denial. That's vile.
Let's keep the point on target shall we? I know nothing about vaccines, other than that Dunning lies about them, and that is enough. This is about the Dunning/Randi fraud, nothing else. (And I even think it is their fully just "right" to engage in this "fraud"...)
What I see is him explaining that correlation does not equal causation. Also, even if they used mercury containing vaccines until 2003, that's still 6 years ago and autism rates are still going up. If you think that correlation = causation we should be putting mercury back into the vaccines.
Perhaps if you are so clever you were able to find all this "peer reviewed" material on Google, you would have found out that MMR DOES NOT, AND NEVER HAS, CONTAINED THIMEROSAL.
Can this idiot be real? He spent 15 minutes on the subject Googled "Autism AND vaccines" and got 271 peer reviewed articles.
And how many of them were papers reporting research showing that vaccines don't cause autism?
Jee-ee-sus. Do tell.
Use of a ad hominem attack? Yes the author here refers to those he does no like as anti-intellectual and fails to support it other than search engine hits. (Hint, there are studies with negative outcomes.) The use of search engine hits as evidence is also a form of argument from popularity.
In short, the use of fallacies in the article is nothing but hypocrisy. Next time try addressing the substance of the arguments and maybe you can be taken seriously.
Of course MMR does not contain Thimerosal but DPT and other vaccines did. It is probably not reliable to say that Thimerosal was removed from 1999 or from 2003 for that matter except that many childhood vaccines would now be mercury free.
California reported a fall in autism numbers and it would be useful if there was a reliable month by month indicator of autism diagnoses. However I can say with a fair degree of certainty that there are more than three million individuals born in the UK since 1966 who have never been vaccinated and as far as is known none of them is autistic. It's not science it's arithmetic. The fact that vaccination is mandatory in the USA is the biggest single reason why the cause of autism has not been found years ago. The USA does not have a large enough population of unvaccinated individuals for it to be blindingly obvious that not one of them is autistic!
Tony Bateson
Oxford UK
Tony: Where did you get that data that unvaccinated kids don't get autism. All the studies I've seen show that there is no difference in the percentage of autistic kids between vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. Most were done using the Amish population.
There is absolutely no link between Autism and vaccines. You really should read credible, non-discredited studies. Based on your description of yourself, you're not a conspiracy theorist, so I assume you can actually be swayed by _good_ science.
I'm guessing the Andrew Wakefield studies are some that came up. Those have been thoroughly shown to be fraudulent but sadly it was still able to kick up this nonsense.
ttp://quay.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/a-response-to-some-vaccination-concerns/
I guarantee you Brian Dunning has done a quite a bit more research than you have on this.
ttp://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?cat=36
tony bateson,
Do you have any source for you claims regarding nobody out of 3 million unvaccinated and none with autism?
You notion that vaccination is mandatory in the US is factually wrong:
cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/30/health/webmd/main3221902.shtml
Massachusetts has the highest vaccination rate at 83.6%. I suspect the total number of unvaccinated people in the US exceeds the total number of people in the UK.
I can't believe that you used search engine hits as evidence of anything. If you actually took the time to read the bulk of the hits on the autism/vaccine link, you would find that the results overwhelmingly say that there is not one. The few papers that you found supporting the link would are probably the initial studies that have since been discredited. I can do a search for "aliens pyramids" on Google and get almost 6 million hits. This isn't proof that there is credible evidence supporting their claims.
Further, Brian is not laying down a belief system. If you would read or listen to any of his work, he is constantly stressing that you be skeptical of everything, even his opinions. Often he brings up a subject just to get people to do their own research. He admits that his writing is only a starting point and that anyone who finds his argument unconvincing should go do research of their own. This hardly sounds like the dogmatic money grubber you describe in the article.
Well and how many children that were not vaccinated died or were seriously ill in that time. A scare tactic such as "ohhh, there might be a corralation" and the extreme reluctance of parents unwilling to get their children vaccinated now (see UK comment) has lead to outbreaks of childhood illnessess long though "under control" As a preschool teacher I have lived through the horror of seeing students come down with whooping cough and being hospitalized. Ask any pediatrician how much time they have had to spend begging new parents to please vaccinate their children. My own childrens pediatrician has had to take refresher courses on childhood illnesses and their treatment that weren't covered in med school, because there was no need with widespread vaccines. Randi and Dunning do "critical thinking" for "profit"? wow, better than psychics that contact dead children for profit and offer to find your missing child... for profit. Give me science anyday, they've saved a few lives..
oh yeah and thanks for spreading more misiinformation. When someone reads your article and takes away not "Randi/Dunning Cult Leaders" but instead "oh there is good evidence vaccinations cause autism" (because hey people are like that) and they don't get their child vaccinated and the child DIES...remember, newspapers are trusted. You have that much power as a reporter. And when it comes to the lives of children, maybe you HAD better read all those google articles. Some things are worth taking the time for. As much as this was about Randi/Dunning, the minute you wrote about vaccinations, you were writing about the health of children. Pick up a PHONE an call a pediatrician next time instead of being lazy and using google university. How hard is it to google the phone number of a DOCTOR (real person, not google person). A real person would answer your questions, you could quote them, and you would be doing the responsible thing when it comes to children.
You used that word "penultimate". I don't think it means what you think it means.
Also way to go hand waving around the reason you don't even cite your sources.
At minimum the abstracts (and often full texts) of medical research are available from PubMed, Medline,ScienceDirect etc. Linking to these is clearly not illegal, especially as most include a linkable DOI. It is never illegal to quote from abstracts, especially for purposes of commentary. Pasting the entire study would of course be illegal.
So if part of your argument is that James Randi and Brian Dunning use faulty data, you really should be citing your own sources, as they do. Otherwise your entire article is ironically just a massive ad hominem attack.
Oh, I have an idea that Mark Twain and I would have been great chums - except for that nasty pipe he smoked. And no, that's not an "ad hominem" attack, Michael...
What wonderful comments! Virtually all of them miss the point, however. I have no idea, or frankly interest, in the relation of Autism to vaccines. I do, however have an interest in telling the truth, and that is not what Dunning did here. It is flamingly apparent that there WAS once mercury used in vaccines-that makes questioning a linkage valid, and not "dangerous", or an example of uncritical thinking! But for my purposes, it simply illustrates an agenda and a misrepresentation of a debate by someone who claims to be an "expert". I could have chosen any of Dunning's other simplistic arguments-but I thought vaccines would be the most current, and as such be the most interesting, and profitable to me(notice the difference...)
Notice the rhetorical trickery here? I point out a flawed argument, and I'm placed in the position of defending the opposite position...I believe that is what dunning calls a "red herring"?
The fact that vaccines did (and some still do) contain mercury doesn't matter, because there's no VALID study the links it to autism, or any vaccine for that matter. So going around telling people there is causes them to not get vaccines. This is dangerous, and Brian is using this point to explain that non-critical thinking can be dangerous.
A few thoughts:
First, Mr. Randi as you well know, "guilt by association" is a form or ad hominem-if you wish to find another latin term to define it, I shall bow to your semantic greatness.
Second, I used penultimate purposely, the "ultimate" in the "make everything a Nazi" form or argument is to ACTUALLY invoke the name of Hitler-that's usually reserved for starting wars.
Third, children die all the time, that's not an argument. Indeed, as I write there are likely children dying of violence in Iraq or Afganistan, or of disease in Africa, or any number of other means. This is an appeal to emotion, and has no place in critical thought.
Last, the journal where I learned of the use of mercury in vaccines in the past is now cited in the article-however ProQuest is NOT a google search, and from my understanding linking to it for a commercial purpose(as this is)is prohibited. The issue is actually not in dispute, however-even Dunning admits that on his website.
The guy who writes this blog is simply a fool, and not worth the dialogue.
This has to be the most stupid piece of text I've ever read.
I notice you've now cited a source. It's just an article (not a peer reviewed study) but regardless it seems to be much more balanced than your own article. It even points out that the vaccine-autism link should be dropped.
Great that you're citing now, but at what point dies this make Dunning a "liar"?
What is the specific claim he makes that you have issue with and can back up with credible sources?
There is no "misrepresentation" here. At one point it could have been a valid argument to try to make the association. But that was before the association was thoroughly _disproved_. So continuing to bring it up is dishonest. If this is the basis for your name calling of Randi and Dunning then you should really get your facts straight and aplogize. Or try to back up your statements.
It is also not quite true that Chiropractic is "fully covered" by Medicare. Only "Manual manipulation for subluxation of the spine" (tinyurl.com/ye97szf). In other words, Medicare considers Chiropractors to essentially be technicians for the purpose of limited context spinal manipulation.
The part of Chiropractic skeptics have issue with is what they try to do above and beyond spine manipulation, namely providing nutritional advice or to even act as a "Primary Care" physician (tinyurl.com/yeuret9). "Resolved, that doctors of chiropractic are primary care physicians. Be it further Resolved that the American Chiropractic Association continue to resist any future legislation that violates the proposition of the full scope of practice of chiropractic as it is embodied in the ACA Master Plan."
The issue is that Chiropractors would like to link all health issues to their arena. The ACA lists alcoholism. They view the AMA as "monopolistic". So yes, it is difficult to take them seriously
Penultimate still doesn't mean what you think it means. If you would like, I can google it for you.
other commenters have pointed out that this article is not worth the dialog. But because you presumably have readers it should be clear to then that virtually no statement in your article is backed up my modern scienc
The "holocaust denier" statement has nothing to do with whether you agree with him or not. It is about those who, like holocaust deniers, seem to willfully ignore all credible research or evidence (be it historical or scientific) which thoroughly debunk and disprove their claims.
It's not about the claims per se, but maintaining them after the rational world has moved on.
The rice analogy is exactly the same. Any time in the 21st century it is as absurd to link vaccines to autism as it is to link skin or hair color to eating rice.
You also keep linking to Skeptoid to say that he us admitting one thing or another but it is unclear (to me at least) what he is admitting to. The ingredients link does a great job of clearing up "vaccines are filled with poison" deb
Matt Johns says I am factually incorrect about some less than significant matters. If vaccination is not mandatory in the USA you could have fooled me. The last time I looked I saw that 98.2% of new borns were vaccinated. Now he tells me that Massachusetts has the highest rate at 83%. I would like to know the prevalence of autism in Massachusetts, how many autistic people are there compared say to Nevada County, California where immunisation take up is very low. Scooter asks where did I get the data. Simple I went out met the people, spoke on the phone to them, emailed them, went to conferences even coming to the USA where for example no one out of an audience of 350 people came up to tell me their child was autistic but unvaccinated! Exactly the same response that I got In Edinburgh, London, Gloucester, Stroud , Cheltenham and fifteen other UK towns and cities. The same with twenty to twenty five UK national and regional press articles and broadcasts. Tony Bateson UK
tony -
There is data available from fightingautism.org (which seems to be me to be fairly objective) and they have some state-by-state data:
www.fightingautism.org/idea/autism-prevalence-report.php
Don't seem to have per-county data easily accessible, but for the states:
Massachusetts:
In 2003, 1/190 kids
634% cumulative growth 1992 to 2003
California:
In 2003, 1/227
1086% cumulative growth 1992 to 2003
So taking an very naive (and most likely incorrect) approach, lowered incidence of Autism would seem to correlate with higher incidence of vaccination.
And in fact, a recent case-control study trying to find a link between MMR and Autism reached that same negative conclusion (tinyurl.com/y8gnkff) . Though the others are *very* careful to point out that this is really just evidence that the two are not actually related at all and should not really be used for evidence that vaccines reduce Autism.
Your ad hoc surveys I don't believe represent any causation.
Dear Adam:
Penultimate means just what I meant it to mean, as it always did-next to top, or next to bottom..in this case next to top....rather obviously, when context is considered. Seriously, grow up.
Ok, let's say the author is right. But why He doesn't give any links to the peer reviewed works He mentioned? It's easy to poo-poo the person that you don't like, but where are the proofs?
Give us the proofs! Let we see for ourself sources.
Thank you.
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