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Retracted autism/vaccine study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds

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Re: Retracted autism/vaccine study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds

#81

Post by nl »

davidj wrote: post #61
nl wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty clear this is a troll account (ie, one that exists to post controversial statements in order to cause grief). Here are some examples: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1782355 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1935416 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1994504 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2041013 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2027532 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2018434 http://new…

those posts are my honest replies. I don't invoke name calling and try to backup everything with sources. I do get downvoted a lot here, I do not have multiple accounts or use my account "as a troll account." My postings are sincere and I honestly have a dissenting viewpoint in general both online and offline. My friends often remark that I like debates. If you disagree with me, let me know. My philosophy in debating…

Debate is pointless if you ignore contrary evidence.

For example, it's pretty clear that you are anti-vaccine. It's fine to hold that opinion, but as I'm sure you've seen the overwhelming evidence against your point of view I don't see any need in re-hashing the arguments.

In cases like this you may not be consciously trolling, but in my view arguing a dissenting view in the face of such overwhelming evidence exhibits the same damaging behavior patterns that a troll engages in. Given that, I think the appropriate response is exactly the same as the response to a troll, ie: a perfunctory link to counter evidence on Wikipedia (for the sake of casual readers), and a downvote.

Re: Retracted autism/vaccine study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds

#83

Post by aheilbut »

philk wrote: post #3

The sad thing is even though the study has been thoroughly discredited[1], it continues to hang around and be cited by anti-vaccine activists. [1] Even sadder is that they cite Wakefield being exposed as a fraud as evidence of tampering by "Big Pharma".

The sad thing is that for a lot of this sort of propaganda to be effective, it don't have to prove anything; it suffices to just raise the question and spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Re: Retracted autism/vaccine study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds

#84

Post by jseliger »

johngalt wrote: post #23

I don't understand the Anti-Vaccine crowd. I see no possible way for what they espouse to be morally responsible. Without vaccines the mortality rate of children to these diseases would be higher than the total rate of autism. This means that you would have more kids die than get autism even if every case of autism was directly caused by a vaccine. This leaves us with two options for the beliefs of the anti-vaccinati…

I don't understand the Anti-Vaccine crowd.

Although I certainly don't condone the anti-vaccine crowd, I do at least understand them: most of the "crowd" has only vaguely heard the idea that vaccines may be linked to autism. A distant relative (who had a seven year old and was pregnant with baby #2) repeated her worries about vaccines to me over Thanksgiving, and when I told her there was no real link to autism she reacted somewhat skeptically, so I told her to read _Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure_, which discusses why people want to associate vaccines and autism.

The shortest, most obvious version is that most people have trouble disentangling correlation and causation: kids tend to develop obvious signs of autism around the same time they get vaccines. So people think one causes the other when they don't.

Furthermore, most people don't have the training or inclination to really study the data. Journalism, in the meantime, promotes the "two sides of the controversy" school of writing, which often works well for politics and other areas without clear right answers. This works appallingly poorly in matters of science, where right answers are often demonstrably right but non-scientists have trouble distinguishing between competing claims, especially when multiple credentialed sources make compelling-seeming arguments. For more on this, see James Fallows' recent discussion in another context: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/year-e... .

You can see the same kind of thinking in reporting on global climate change, which is almost certainly happening and being caused or accelerated by things we're doing. Yet you often see a climate scientist discussing this, on which there's widespread consensus (and consensus that more study is still needed) followed by a bogus climate skeptic. Same thing for vaccines. People hear this stuff in the air and repeat vague claims at family gatherings, but most of them (and us) don't really understand them.

Re: Retracted autism/vaccine study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds

#85

Post by jamesaguilar »

Alex3917 wrote: post #48
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are the HN users you're talking about? Promoting using GPA for hiring? That doesn't sound like the anti-higher-education HN I know and love/tolerate :)

Fair enough, a lot of people in general obviously do that though. I guess my point is that I see people posting stuff here all the time that's contradicted by science, but people only call it out on socially acceptable issues. For example, if I had a dollar for every time I saw someone on HN criticizing the methodology of a study they haven't actually read then I wouldn't be doing a startup right now. And yet these p…

Wait . . . there is science suggesting that using GPA as a component of hiring leads to bad outcomes? I wouldn't have thought this would be the type of thing that could be studied easily, but I'm always willing to learn.

Re: Retracted autism/vaccine study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds

#86

Post by dmlorenzetti »

aheilbut wrote: post #83
philk wrote: post #3

The sad thing is even though the study has been thoroughly discredited[1], it continues to hang around and be cited by anti-vaccine activists. [1] Even sadder is that they cite Wakefield being exposed as a fraud as evidence of tampering by "Big Pharma".

The sad thing is that for a lot of this sort of propaganda to be effective, it don't have to prove anything; it suffices to just raise the question and spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

While the book doesn't touch on vaccines, I found Oreskes & Conway's "Merchants of Doubt" a fascinating read on the subject of how easy it is to spread FUD (or at least UD) about science.

Re: Retracted autism/vaccine study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds

#87

Post by fhars »

Mz wrote: post #52
pharrington wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason people are so hostile about this is because the anti-vaccination belief is objectively wrong and literally fatal. It is directly analogous to believing AIDS isn't spread by HIV.

I don't think it's quite that simple. Most scientific views boil down to "belief" -- by that I mean that most people are essentially taking the word of some expert or other without themselves genuinely understanding it and, also, the lovely drawings of the solar system, tectonic plates, etc that you find in scientific materials are basically made up fantasies. If you used any kind of meaningful scale for the solar sy…

At 33 million miles to the millimeter, the about 4000 million miles from the sun to Pluto would be around 120mm. Just beause you had an error in your calculation doesn't imply that either your teacher nor science as a whole are wrong.

Re: Retracted autism/vaccine study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds

#88

Post by ylem »

johngalt wrote: post #23

I don't understand the Anti-Vaccine crowd. I see no possible way for what they espouse to be morally responsible. Without vaccines the mortality rate of children to these diseases would be higher than the total rate of autism. This means that you would have more kids die than get autism even if every case of autism was directly caused by a vaccine. This leaves us with two options for the beliefs of the anti-vaccinati…

I think there are a few factors at work: 1) In the developed world for people with good incomes and health insurance, people live in relative safety and misjudge risk. Many diseases are rare or nonexistent, so are not viewed as risks as compared to autism (which may receive more media attention, than say the last measles outbreak). 2) Difficulties with distinguishing correlation/causation 3) Interested parties intentionally muddying the waters. The tobacco industry is a prime example of this and Merchants of Doubt makes for excellent, albeit chilling, reading. 4) A desire for control--it's easier to blame someone else if your kid gets autism then to ascribe it to unknown causes. For a parent (who believes that the risk of not vaccinating is small), it may be more satisfying to believe that they can protect their kids against autism, rather than face the fact that either due to unknown environmental or genetic (or an interplay between the two) factors, their child may become (or was diagnosed with) autism and there is nothing that they can currently do (have done) to prevent it....

Re: Retracted autism/vaccine study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds

#89

Post by yters »

Mz wrote: post #58
hartror wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you immunize yourself or your children for things like MMR now? I think science and doctors are getting better at studying the holistic approach you talk about, and some things will be born out by the facts and others won't. I am glad things are working for you and your family, and certainly I would contend that a sufferer of a disease like CF is a someone who can rely on herd immunity and boost their immune sy…

Would you immunize yourself or your children for things like MMR now? My sons are both legal adults, so it is no longer my decision to make for them. I don't have plans/expectations to have more kids. I would be very reluctant to get anymore vaccinations. I have done better without them. So far, I haven't really had to make any decisions regarding some "position" along those lines. I don't recall the last time I had…

Do you have any lifestyle/diet resources you can point me to?

Re: Retracted autism/vaccine study an 'elaborate fraud,' British journal finds

#90

Post by yters »

pharrington wrote: post #57
Mz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's quite that simple. Most scientific views boil down to "belief" -- by that I mean that most people are essentially taking the word of some expert or other without themselves genuinely understanding it and, also, the lovely drawings of the solar system, tectonic plates, etc that you find in scientific materials are basically made up fantasies. If you used any kind of meaningful scale for the solar sy…

Your "social proof" has a name, its called anecdotes. While occasionally reasonable in the small scale, it is absurd to believe local observations have any merit in the grand scale. "Most scientific views boil down to 'belief'" this almost sounds like your saying that nothing can truly be knowable. This is the path of nilism, not reason. Science has a rigorous process, peer review being part of it. One does not have…

Of course, those studies are based on what gets funding. So, science is not a pure pursuit of truth wherever it leads, but a pursuit of the truth that gets funded. Sometimes only part of the truth can be more misleading than an outright falsehood.
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