Journal: study linking vaccine to autism was fraud

linky

Now (and not to be provacative) how the autism/vaccine people going to spin this one?

My troper wall

Old story is old. The mainstream media is just now catching up.

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

Ugh. That study has been so very thoroughly discredited by now, it saddens me some people still believe it. That journal article was used in my Ethics in Science class as a prime example of 'How To Misuse Statistics'.

To be honest... I'm not sure the discovery that they fabricated the results will make any difference at all to the antivaccine crowd.

edited 5th Jan '11 10:27:49 PM by LoniJay

Be not afraid...

This is very, very old news.

Underneath the bridge The tarp has sprung a leak And the animals I've trapped have all become my pets

"To be honest... I'm not sure the discovery that they fabricated the results will make any difference at all to the antivaccine crowd." - Loni Jay

Indeed. They haven't exactly been known for listening to reason.

Old. Given a choice between bad data and a You Can Panic Now story vs "whoops this was wrong nothing to worry about" journalists are going to go with the first.

Fight smart, not fair.

The original study was retracted from the journal last year, and the author lost his medical licence; the only real difference now is someone is actually saying the word "fraud".

That and we get a handy, public friendly, description of how the data was warped.

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Well, I thought it was already well established that it was a fraud, because it abused the statistics and methods to make it look like there was a connection when there wasn't.

I can't remember exactly, but I don't recall there being talk of the results being actually made up. Not that that really makes a difference to how wrong the study is.

Be not afraid...

Old news, but not well known outside the scientific community. I only know about it as MMR was the subject of my first year assignment.

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

Soooo....anyone want to browse the antivax denier blogs for claims of "CONSPIRACY!!!!11"? You know they've already started screaming.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

Linky from the first website I thought of for advocating the link between vaccines and autism. All I'll say is their claims are nothing less than epic facepalm fuel, and that's ignoring the comments section (which makes me feel ill reading it).

My troper wall

Necroing to get away from the discussions of DOOM! because the hippie whose elderly gas-guzzler is parked in front of the house next door added a new bumper sticker saying "I stand with Dr. Wakefield." And I want to leave a note on her*

windshield pointing out that science isn't really about opinion.

The child is father to the man —Oedipus

do it! In a non-damaging way.

Or put it on your front fender.

"Science isn't about opinion" would actually make a good bumper sticker.

I'm baaaaaaack

the link in the OP is no longer functional. Anyone have a more recent link?

Very big Daydream Believer. "That's not knowledge, that's a crapshoot!" -Al Murray "Welcome to QI" -Stephen Fry

Nineteen Eighty Four was wrong. If you see someone float up in the air like a soap bubble, and he claims that's what he did, maybe it doesn't matter that such is impossible. But if you see clear skies, and everyone else sees them as well, you'll still get killed if you go outside when a tornado crashes through.

Yet at the same time, and perhaps proving that story's point after all, it seems to no longer matter to public opinion whether there's a tornado or not—if you think there's one, you'll read all the news coverage that says there is, and if you think there's not one, you'll read all the news coverage that says there isn't, and at no point will you look out the window to see if there's actually a tornado.

(That metaphor got way more convoluted than I intended it to.)

edited 7th Apr '12 5:51:26 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

that first part seems like such a non-sequiter, feo. O_o

Anyway, I see your point, confirmation bias and all that.

Very big Daydream Believer. "That's not knowledge, that's a crapshoot!" -Al Murray "Welcome to QI" -Stephen Fry

Can someone explain to me what an anti-vaccine versus pro-vaccine person is? Someone who believes it's true or doesn't? The terms are being used rather specifically.

I'd guess Anti-Vaccine means that they believe that the cons of vaccines outweigh the pros, IE they think autism is more likely and it outweighs the chance that they'd get infected with what they're being vaccinated against.

Very big Daydream Believer. "That's not knowledge, that's a crapshoot!" -Al Murray "Welcome to QI" -Stephen Fry

In my experience with a friend who believes it..the anti-vaccine crowd tend to be the crowd who also believe that "natural" cures are best and listen to every pseudo-sciencey website tellin g them about all the horrifying toxins in their food and medicines.

edited 7th Apr '12 6:15:19 PM by Midgetsnowman

Pro-Vaccine: believes that it's an effective form of preventative medicine. Anti-Vaccine: believes that vaccines are part of a vast conspiracy by big-pharma to make us all sick. Also nanobots get involved from time to time, as do the Illuminati.

"Roll for whores."

Mercury causing autism/other mental/learning problems is also a popular theme.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

But of course.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Thread Hop: no surprise here. What would be surprising is if the True Believers started vaccinating their children again becuases of it.

hashtagsarestupid

Whenever I hear this, I ask people if they know what a "natural" cure is called when it's been tested and found effective. The answer, of course, is "medicine." There is absolutely nothing that you can buy from a pharmacy that didn't originate as a "natural" cure, except homeopathic medicine, which is only natural to the extent that placebo is.

(I don't include the negligible amounts of actual medicine in homeopathic products in that statement because they are just that: negligible.)

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

I've tried explaining that to the girl i knpow like this. her response is akin to "I'd rather not risk it anyhow"