Tuesday 27 January 2009

Lalala, we're not listening

Just quickly…
Gus the Fuss has linked to a piece on Age Of Autism which is "covering" a new study which again suggests that there isn't any evidence that thimerosal causes autism. The AoA piece is here: www.ageofautism.com/2009/01/feeding-the-hungry-lie-italian-style.html, but you can read a quick précis here if you like:

"A new study has shown that thimerosal doesn't cause autism. *insert fingers in ears* LA LA LA LA!!! WE'RE NOT LISTENING!! WE KNOW WE'RE RIGHT!! LA LA LA!!!"

The original piece, in "Pediatrics", is here.

Edit: I've just come across Orac's excellent explanation of this research and the stupidity of the anti-vax crowd.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

And the always predictable John Stone has already written a rabid response to the pediatrics paper in which he says:

I ask how it would be possible to draw any useful scientific conclusions from a study with such deficiencies in relation to the issues it purportedly set out to investigate? But I also reflect on the headline value of negative results for wider media consumption, as in the Associated Press report by Carla K Johnson, with contributions from Alberto Tozzi himself, Jennifer Pinto-Martin and Paul Offit [2] claiming this strengthens the evidence base for vaccine safety.

Stone's objections presumably being that only healthy infants were accepted for the orignal study.

Becky said...

Stone's main objection being that the study didn't give the results that he wanted it to show - hence he picks up on the perfectly reasonable caveats as set out by the authors, and claims they make the study worthless.

No, Mr Stone, they do not make the study worthless. They mean that the authors are being careful to point out that they accept that there are limitations to the study, and are stating it in advance before cretins like you gleefully rub your hands, take a great leap in your reasoning and point to those limitations as evidence that the study's results have been over extrapolated and are worthless. Oh - hang on, that hasn't stopped you, has it?

John Stone is a dickhead.

Unknown said...

Stone is a hoot. His objections are so totally predictable and I don't know if he actually can't comprehend what he reads, or his reasoning skills are non-existent or if he just has this huge mental block that doesn't allow him to accept anything that goes against his preconceived notions.

And he thinks he is so intelligent and erudite and that he is picking up things that everybody else is too stupid to understand.

He's great. I love him

Becky said...

I don't. I think he's a cock and hope he gets attacked by tigers.

Unknown said...

Cybertigers?