What’s amazing is that reporters are commiting the same mistake as previously. This morning on Canada AM, Beverly Thompson (one of the co-host) told a scientist that the retraction does not eliminate vaccines as the cause of autism :eek:
Some things never change. The stupid… It hurts 
Calcium is a heavy metal now?
A sadly appropriate article in the NY Times about that illness and the after effects even decades later.
Drunken college girl (defintely not a woman). Not sober enough to say no, not bright enough to avoid booze, and not personable enough to join a sorority. It’s not a very flattering phrase.
I should have made this clearer, because I didn’t understand this the first time I read it, either. I think Chelation leaches calcium as it strips any heavy metals from the bones, but I’m no expert .
The revelant section is all the way at the bottom, along with a listing of several other deaths.
While it’s discouraging to hear that some media outlets are not getting the full implication of the Lancet’s retraction, overall there are indications that the news media are beginning to recognize the foolishness and dangerous consequences of antivax hysteria, and are reflecting this in their reporting.
The N.Y. Times has been a bulwark of good sense and solid science reporting. Recently the Chicago Tribune has been taking on autism’s “false prophets” and doing articles on the damage done to autistic children from pseudo-medical treatments to fix their "vaccine damage.
Andrew Wakefield is now based in Austin, Texas working at a facility doing autism “research”, pulling down a hefty salary, continuing to spread antivax propaganda and defending his actions in the MMR scare. More good commentary on Wakefield and his bizarre worship by some autism activists here.
Agreed, some have managed to hold back on the hysteria. I have a subscription to the Tribune and have been very impressed by their articles - front page, big headlines, not buried in the back - on the untested “treatments” for autism that are being peddled to desperate parents.
Huh?
I thought it had been. According to This American Life episode 370 “Ruining It For the Rest of Us”. (starts 20:37 on the podcast).
I’ll buy that. Junk science needs a platform to disseminate, and news shows needing to fill air time want all of it they can get. I’m not quite sure how much to blame the reporters are, yet - it’s a tough job, keeping up with medical news, and you don’t grab viewers with, “Coming up at 11 - a story with adequate footnotes and research outlining how there may possibly be some new findings that we’ll have to follow for a couple of years and see if it pans out.” Instead you get, “YOUR PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES WILL KILL YOUR CHILDREN!!!” (They won’t.)
I do fully blame them for giving equal weight and credence to crackpots and crackpot ideas as they do to established ideas and blocks of scientists, though. That is egalitarian bullshit.
Like (I’m sure) a lot of people here, I got chicken pox the natural way when I was a kid in the seventies, and I have possible shingles looming in my future thanks to that. I wish people would use the internet for something other than posting pictures of their kids - this information is all out there. Instead, they hear something on the news and don’t bother doing any research to vet it.
This was a very badly done story - the study is invalid because it wasn’t random enough? You and I know why this is a bad thing, but they didn’t explain that to Joe and Jane Public at all. Not randomizing your study means he started out with a conclusion and looked until he found data to support it. No wonder people are so taken in by junk science, if this is the level of reporting going on at even the CNN level, when they are making a half-hearted attempt to say junk science is bad. I came away from watching that clip thinking that your average US American mother didn’t get the right message at all.
(Sorry for the multiple posting - I’m not reading this thread in the right order at all. All the junk science must be scrambling my brains this morning.)
Because at most colleges, Journalism, Communications, etc. are the Majors For People Who Want To Stay As Far Away From Math And Science As Possible.
True enough.
Well, most of them would probably tell you that the vaccine will leave you vulnerable to shingles even more, on top of the danger of the shot itself.
And they’d be wrong.
While shingles has been reported following vaccination, incidence appears less than in those who’ve had chickenpox infection. The “danger of the shot” is not a realistic fear, as it has a good safety record akin to other vaccines.
In addition to what Jackmannii said, chicken pox in adult can be VERY nasty, potentially leading to a life-threatening pneumonia and encephalitis (inflammation and swelling of the brain). And, should a pregnant woman get chicken-pox, the fetus can get all types of horrible complications. The Wiki article has a list if anyone’s interested.
‘Double think’ never fails to amaze me. Orwell was a genius.
Also, see if you can follow this logic: Dr. Wakefield is a scientist (to a lot of people), he was wrong, therefore scientists are wrong, therefore therefore science is a load of crap.
Don’t try to fight it. This logic is one of the things that made Kansas the butt of jokes it is today.
Isn’t a retraction a much more serious issue than simply saying the original article was wrong? I mean, if a sound scientific study suggested that there might be a link between the vax and autism but was then proven not to be true, the original article would probably stand but be considered superseded. But by retracting the article, the Lancet is saying that it should never have been published at all. Is this correct?
I don’t even understand what just happened here.
Hmm, maybe he’s saying that if DDT was still in use that mosquitoes would be extinct and malaria wouldn’t be an issue?