Scandals just keep pouring from the laboratories …
This has not been the proudest of weeks for science. Twelve years after publishing an article purporting to prove a link between childhood vaccines and autism, the prominent British medical journal Lancet finally retracted the paper in its entirety. But only after Britain’s General Medical Council found that the author of that article had been “irresponsible and dishonest” in his research, bringing medical science “into disrepute.”
That wasn’t the only controversy involving scholarly journals and the repute of researchers to flare up this week. Also in Britain, two prominent stem-cell researchers went to the BBC with their complaint that the peer review system has become corrupt. Flawed and unoriginal work gets published and promoted, while publication of truly original findings is often delayed or rejected, according to Austin Smith of Cambridge University and Robin Lovell-Badge of the National Institute for Medical Research.
Why would that happen?
Shock Update – and into the Globe and Mail? Check the comments, too.
More – Skepticism on the rise in Britain. Must be the shoveling.
Damn humans keep acting just like humans. Who could have seen THAT coming?
“Peer Review”
Science-speak for “doing that scam, man”
Believe what you wish about Wakefield, but you would do well to cast him more as a climate change denier than proponent.
The sin he committed and was thumped for was taking control blood samples at his son’s birthday party, which the GMC deemed a serious ethical breach. The chrystal clear connection between the MMR vaccine (and the measles component causing an unexplained effect in the GI tract of the affect kids which manifested as autism) remains solid.
The brutal kabukki theatre Wakefield just went through is much like the Will Smith’s character’s experience in the movie “Enemy of the State”, if you can’t repudiate his findings destroy his character, It was essentially a private prosecution with the lead plaintiff an employee of a newspaper who’s owner is also on the board of GSK, the vaccine manufacturer implicated in Wakefield’s research.
The way things are going, it’s looking more and more like we’re never going to get Warp Drive.
Face it, when the only celebutard championing your cause is Jenny McCarthy, it’s time to fold up the tent.
BRUCE, You may wish to check the resume of PGA tour pro and world renowned nice guy Ernie Els and his position in the Autism Speaks group. You all keep singing “hide the decline in cognitive function” post vaccination, just like Michael Mann does for climate change, and you are supporting the same tripe as Mann, sadly for the same reasons it would seem. The modern medical model (not emergency care, the pill for every ill paradigm) is the model the global warming alarmists are emulating. It’s kinda sad.
BBC seems an unlikely place to welcome and redress offenses against truth seekers. Doesn’t the beeb’s illustrious pension fund overseer have instructions to ensure most of their lolly is invested / tied up in assorted global warming “save the earth” moneymaking fixes and/or cons?
OT: What has happened to Jay Currie’s site?
“This Account Has Been Suspended”
http://jaycurrie.info-syn.com/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi
Private Eye and the late, lamented Spy both used the same term to refer to literary hacks who heaped effusive praise on each other’s work: log-rolling. What we’re seeing here is the scientific equivalent – you praise my paper, and I’ll praise yours, and we’ll both crap on anyone who disagrees with us.
Lancet does not have a very good reputation for putting science ahead of politics. Remember this one….
UK scientists attack Lancet study over death toll
A study which found that more than 650,000 Iraqi people have died since the US-led invasion was attacked yesterday by scientists in the UK, who claimed that the households interviewed tended to be located in violence-hit streets.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/oct/24/iraq.internationalnews
6 months on a leaking boat. Quite the boat LOAD of $@&#
“Barber and more than 300 scientists from around the globe spent last winter on the Canadian Coast Guard research ship Amundsen in the Arctic, studying the impact of climate change. It was the first time a research vessel remained mobile in open water during the winter season. The Canadian government provided $156 million in funding for the study”
http://www.leaderpost.com/technology/Arctic+vanishing+fast+researcher/2532081/story.html
as compared to
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
kate gotta have a read.
rd
The cause of all of this lying, cheating and deception is of course grant money and recognition. As long as these few are allowed to basically steel money without severe repercussions it will not stop any time soon.
What an odd world we live in, more ‘gates’ than fences.
*Why would that happen?*
[Why would that happen? To sabotage one’s academic competitors, Prof. Smith said. For example, the scientists judging a paper submitted to a journal may be working on similar work themselves, he told the BBC, and can publish their work first if they succeed in hobbling the competition.]
Whether stem cell research or the American economy or Toyota or the Albertan economy, it is about hobbling the competition.
The flawed “laboratory science” is happening and has legs and continues to be funded by govment because of corrupt politics.
In Canada, Chantal Hebert is still using the flawed science to try and revive the Trudeau-era strategy of divide and conquer, hoping it will work it’s “magic” on outing PMSH.
She says “There is a perfect federal-provincial storm brewing on the climate-change horizon in Canada and it is bringing to the fore the very kind of irreconcilable regional differences that once doomed Brian Mulroney’s Tory government.” Chantal Hebert
She should read this piece by one of her colleagues.
“As the science scandals keep coming, the air has gone out of the climate-change movement.” Margaret Wente
Ralph Goodale promised never again would there would be a divisive NEP policy coming out of the LPC. What he didn’t reveal was the strategy of sliding in behind the media’s pushing of the AGW “science” scam.
Govement funded corrupt science is happening because it facilitates the huge money and power grab.
Today Climate Gate, tomorrow Theory of Relativity Gate
According to the technical specifications
The C.C.G.S. Amundsen carry’s 31 people.
http://www.amundsen.quebec-ocean.ulaval.ca/amundsenenglish.htm
I wonder where the other 269 people were
Peter, there never *was* a connection between the mmr vaccine and autism. Countless studies since then have failed to find any link at all. I for one am finally glad to see exposure in the MSM about what we’ve all been saying about wakefield and his bunko study for years. He based his study on only 12 kids, with no controls, and drew a conclusion from that. He took blood samples without parental permission at birthday parties and performed invasive colonoscopies on young children. There is evidence suggesting he may have even faked his results.
The only reason people ever thought there was a link between the two was because children start showing signs of autism at the developmental age when they start receiving vaccines. This is coincidence by timing, and nothing more.
Unfortunately, poorly educated and scared parents who are looking for something, anything to blame latch onto blaming vaccines. This is incredibly ironic, considering that vaccines have been the single greatest invention in modern medicine in terms of preventing disease.
Jewish people. Carbon Dioxide. Lifestyles. Vaccines. Toyotas .
Small correction, Paul. Amundsen has a crew of 31, in addition, it has berths for 46 scientists. Maybe they buddied up 6 to a bed;)
Think about it folks. The liberal MSM was never prepared to skewer their own up ’til now that they can start to pin this crap on a third world soft-porn writing, choo-choo engineer. Remember the liberal racist mind set.
They don’t like true science…..might find a cure…the the money tree would die…it’s all about money, for science and power for the leftoids…
Anybody heard from Suzuki lately? Is he still playing the role of Colonel Klink at the Victoria Internment Camp For Climate-Sceptics?
I believe that the books of Enron were “peer-reviewed” too. You just choose your “peers” very carefully.
Enkidu, I stand corrected. I looked but i didn’t see any other information on pax numbers.
// Flawed and unoriginal work gets published and promoted, while publication of truly original findings is often delayed or rejected, according to Austin Smith of Cambridge University and Robin Lovell-Badge of the National Institute for Medical Research. //
There’s a remark I like —
“Don’t worry about anyone stealing your idea. If it’s truly original you will have to shove it down their throats.”
One problem with medical research is that so much of it is sponsored by drug companies, trying to prove that their drug works.
But in Canada, all is well now that we have a Pfizer VP helping supervise government reaserch funds —
Bernard Prigent, Pfizer’s inside man
But bizarre is not the same as original, or Chris Monckton’s cure for aids would be more famous.
They laughed at Galileo, but for every Galileo, they laughed at 100 Bozo the clowns.
peter
“””Believe what you wish about Wakefield”””
I believe that his methodology sucked, just as the methodology of of the climate scamers sucked, and it is that fact that tanked his reputation, nothing else!!!
Give Gaia a glowing billy goat for Earth Day.
Why? “… the goat-giver enjoys both a virtuous glow and the lovely gift you bought for him.”
…-
“Save the planet? Darling, that’s so last season
Ring-pull handbags and frocks made of milk?
Celebrity fashionistas aren’t helping ecology, they are glorifying themselves”
“In a largely secular society, we are still trying to figure out the practicalities of our ethical code. Too often, what is done in the name of our new god, The Planet, is steeped in self-glorification. At Christmas, when someone announces that, instead of buying you a present, he has given money to Oxfam to buy Africans a goat, what should one say? “Oh you shouldn’t have! Yes, if you want to make a charitable donation, do it with money you planned to spend on yourself, not on me.” Instead, the goat-giver enjoys both a virtuous glow and the lovely gift you bought for him. You, meanwhile, have nothing.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/janice_turner/article7017132.ece
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/02/and-now-for-africagate.html
and another!!!!!
“Al’s Pas Print.
…-
“Storm warning issued
WINNIPEG — A winter storm warning has been issued for all of southern Manitoba including Winnipeg.”
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/Storm-warning-issued-83720827.html
Mark, so the 15 to thirty fold increase in autism which directly correlates with the increase in vaccination schedules is just an inconvenient truth? Autism SPECTRUM disorder is a hydra headed beast that presents differently in different genotypes. The fact that autism is and continues to be unheard of (or nearly so) in many control groups of never vaccinated children is what?
As the post swine flu debacle moves to criminal investigations at WHO and the very folks behind that bogus effort are the EXACT same guys covering up the autism problem how will your opinion change?
If you recognize that the whole peer review process lets the science world play within “safe” parameters” which threaten no one’s hegemony or finacial interests how is it different except in time to entrench between global warming and vaccination? Don’t forget there was no internet when the medical model was being promulgated…imagine how we’d be getting screwed today if not for the net on AGW…and those buggers are still winning from a policy perspective, even though their entire thesis has been shredded.
“And now for Africagate”
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/02/and-now-for-africagate.html
The AGW trail leads to:
“The IISD is the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Although it calls itself a “think tank”, it is another environmental advocacy group in the same mould as the WWF.
Established in Canada in 1990, it was the brainchild of then prime minister Brian Mulroney,”.
More:
“Friends of the Institute
* Gary Filmon
* Brian Mulroney
* Maurice Strong
* Gro Harlem Brundtland
* José Goldemberg
* Sir Shridath Ramphal
* Jim MacNeill
Distinguished Fellows
* Jacques Gérin
* Mohamed Sahnoun
* Arthur J. Hanson, PhD
* Maurice Strong
* Jim MacNeill”
http://www.iisd.org/about/board.aspx
Where is Lizard Red-Green May?
Maurice Strong?
I’m shocked.
Mao Stlong, aka Canadian “Liberal leader” Boob Lae’s Uncle Mo, asks WUWT? That repolt was Reaked, says BoobMo.
Look at the political correctness: “potential inaccuracies”; “blunders”. Translation: Fraud.
The boofin says, “losing credibility”. It went down the flusher weeks ago, Mr. Boofin.
…-
“The Times: Top British scientist says IPCC is losing credibility
6 02 2010
Scientist says IPCC claims about African rainfall reductions due to global warming have no supporting data.
By Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor
Excerpt:
A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility.
Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on global warming.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/06/the-times-top-british-scientist-says-ipcc-is-losing-credibility/
Proof that the smarter in Englsnd left a long time ago, the only thing left are the inbred Jeds called the royal jelly family of the “literally” flying Dumbos, Duke of Diddly, “Charles of Bugger All”. Flying around the planet telling people to stop flying around the planet, in order to save the planet. Stick a fork in it folks, Globull Warming, it is over, all but the tallying up what this SCAM has cost the stupid, the governments and finally you and me the taxpayers who had no say in the lunacy. The poor,the hospitalized, the children without hope, in this world thank you. Idiots who believed the charlatans, Suzuki, Gore, waving squigly bulbs, dopeumentaries and fear about the endtimes. I hope you theives enjoy your ill gotten gains, because it has been on the backs of the most vulnerable of society. You are the lowest of the low Suzuki Puchari Gore Strong and you all know the rest of yourselves.
Peter, I am sick and tired of debating this issue with folks that are either too mentally rigid, or lazy, to see things from an evidence-based, scientific viewpoint. So congratulations, you can capitalize the word ‘spectrum’ to make yourself sound intelligent. Unfortunately, you make the amateur mistake of assuming correlation = causation. It doesn’t. The reason the supposed incidence of autism spectrum disorders (including PDD and Rett’s, etc. etc.) have been increasing over the past thirty or so years is because we’ve gotten better at recognizing and diagnosing them. Previously, we’d ignorantly call these children ‘retarded’ or ‘strange’, and they’d remain undiagnosed. Nowadays, we recognize the signs and they get the help they need.
Likewise, the signs of autism generally present in children when they become toddlers. Coincidentally, this is around the time children become vaccinated against Mumps Measles and Rubella and so the intellectually lazy among us shout CORRELATION = CAUSATION! and falsely assume something that is great for kid’s health is some sort of danger.
I’m really laughing at your claim that there are studies showing unvaccinated children have lower rates of autism. Mainly because this is an area of research I’m particularly interested in and I’ve looked at pretty much every credible study (and otherwise) released over the past decade*, and there are none. Unless of course you’re getting your information from the same bunko, pseudoscience sources that claim a link exists in the first place.
(re: I’ve actually diagnosed kids with autism…so this stuff is sort-of important for me to be up on)
‘”Peer Review”
Science-speak for “(we’re all) doing that (same) scam, man”‘
Yup, although apparently largely publicly funded, if nothing else, Climategate has hopefully highlighted the issue of research whoring for funding in maintaining an (UNscientific) ‘consensus view’ that suits their political MASTERS/MSM hyperbole…
Skeptics needed; CBC staffer Bob McDonald is still clinging to the AGW myth.
“The failure (of Copenhagen) was also due to an active campaign to discredit the climate science, based on leaked emails and a gross error in the IPCC report about the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas. While these errors are serious, and have been addressed, they don’t invalidate the overwhelming bulk of scientific research that says the Earth is warming due to human activity.”
Bob declares that the artic ice is in peril. Again.
Help to educate Bob.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/quirks-blog/2010/02/will-the-g7-ministers-see-the-arctic-ice-probably-not.html#socialcomments
Al Gore’s Weather (AGW): AGW “emails that were hacked into”.
>>> “Scientist says UN panel is losing credibility The leak was bad. Then came the death threats The incident has taken a severe toll on his health.”
…-
“I thought of killing myself, says climate scandal professor Phil Jones
TimesOnline ^ | February 7. 2010 | Richard Girling
THE scientist at the centre of the “climategate” email scandal has revealed that he was so traumatised by the global backlash against him that he contemplated suicide.
Professor Phil Jones said in an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times that he had thought about killing himself “several times”. He acknowledged similarities to Dr David Kelly, the scientist who committed suicide after being exposed as the source for a BBC report that alleged the government had “sexed up” evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq.
In emails that were hacked into and seized upon by global-warming sceptics before the Copenhagen climate summit in December, Jones appeared to call upon his colleagues to destroy scientific data rather than release it to people intent on discrediting their work monitoring climate change.
Jones, 57, said he was unprepared for the scandal: “I am just a scientist. I have no training in PR or dealing with crises.”
Scientist says UN panel is losing credibility The leak was bad. Then came the death threats The incident has taken a severe toll on his health. He has lost more than a stone in weight and disclosed he is on beta-blockers and using sleeping pills. He said the support of his family, and especially the love of his five-year-old granddaughter, had helped him to shake off suicidal thoughts: “I wanted to see her grow up.”
He remains at risk, still receiving death threats from around the world including two in the past week: “I was shocked. People said I should go and kill myself. They said that they knew where I lived. They were coming from all over the world.”
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2446016/posts
Actually, what is shocking with the BBC survey is that 83% of people got sucked in by the propaganda and 75% still believe it to be true.
Chauncey Gardiner comes to mind.
Good for Margaret Wente.
Thanks mark for injecting some intelligent discourse into the autism topic.
Mark, I hope you read this. You sound like a medical professional, and in fact if you are “diagnosing” for real, by law you are. Please compare your last comments with the bunk coming out of the AGW camp. In my view the only evidence that matters is the whole data set. If, with all things being equal, and the only variable being an accelerated vaccination schedule, you encountered a 15 fold increase in any condition, what would your first non-conditioned response as a science professional be. I would argue that destroying the reputation of the folks pointing out the correlation between an intervention and and an unintended consequence as decidedly unscientific. While the moving target for diagnosis provided by the DSM is certainly the reason for part of the change in numbers, it is a stretch to posit “that correlation” as the sole causitive factor, given the rapid onset and magnitude of the spike. I completely understand that it is difficult to accept that what you were taught by people whom you deeply repected is not accurate and it is even more difficult to believe that there are more acountants than scientists making medical decisions…but just like IPCC there is much smoke and little actual fire in the science. “Evidence” is not what an appartchik claims it is, it is the result of observation and tracking clinical outcomes. Just because vaccination is an epidemiological science doesn’t remove the Hippocratic maxim of do no harm. If an active intervention, no matter how well intentioned, can potentially harm a patient more than what the intervention seeks to prevent (cost/benefit) is it acceptable? I would argue it is not. If you are interested I can dig more but for studies of never vaccinated check out the Amish. There is also a huge medical practise in Chicago that doesn’t vaccinate and has data on tens of thousands of kids going back decades that should be esy for you to track down. When I started down this road ten years ago I got physically sick from what I learned. btw, projection may be a quaint Freudian term, but apply its concepts to you last post bashing me.
As far as the autism issue goes, I have to side with Mark. It’s been a while since I’ve last looked at the vaccine/autism link and then there was no evidence for it What was interesting was that there was evidence that autism may be connected to vitamin D deficiency.
No one has done a large study where they compare vitamin D levels of children and their mothers with an age-matched control group of children/mothers that don’t have autism and we need this sort of a study to determine whether the vitamin D link is real. I suspect it is and I put all pregnant women in my practice on 2000 IU of D3 once they find they’re pregnant. It’s probably too low but a lot more than they’re currently getting. (I can’t be as aggressive in vitamin D supplementation in pregnant women because this is one area of medicine where deviating from the orthodoxy can get one in trouble).
What has really struck me over the last year is the pervasive influence of the sunscreen lobby on parents. Instead of just running around outside children are now covered with sunscreen which means they have virtually no vitamin D production in their skin during the summer. Given the increasing evidence that low vitamin D levels are associated with a host of diseases I hate to think of what these kids are going to be like 20 years from now. I don’t think that lowering the incidence of basal cell and squamous cell carcinoma rates of people in their 50’s is worth the increase in melanoma, MS, Crohn’s and likely autism that vitamin D deficiency is associated with. Sunscreen only lowers melanoma incidence below 35 degrees latitude; north of that it increases it and virtually every case of melanoma I’ve seen has been on non-sun exposed skin.
It never ceases to amaze me that people will latch onto something like MMR vaccine as the cause of autism while ignoring other changes that occurred concurrently with widespread MMR vaccination. Decreased dietary omega-3 fatty acid levels would probably also correlate with autism although I haven’t researched this area yet. There are lots of interesting correlations that one can come up with and they may serve as the basis of a clinical study. Until I see the results of a properly done clinical trial where one has a few thousand children in each are with one group getting MMR vaccine and the other not, I’ll change my thinking. My guess is that such a study couldn’t be done now for ethical reasons.
What would be interesting is to look at autism incidence in children who had MMR vaccine as a function of latitude of residence of the child. My guess is that the further south one goes the lower the number of autism cases.
Peter, I suggest you look at:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/what-is-autism.shtml#hd1
and then explain why black children have higher rates of autism than white children.
The vitamindcouncil website is accessible to everyone and contains the same information that I’ve found in the medical literature but all the online journals that I have access to are behind paywalls.
A real scientist tries as hard as possible to refute his own research and, when that fails, enlists other scientists to do the same. If a theory survives this process then there may be something to it. Hang onto your belief that MMR causes autism if that makes you feel good, but I’ll go with my gut feeling that Vitamin D deficiency is the most likely culprit and ensure that all pregnant women and children in my practice are supplemented with Vitamin D.
Always appreciate your views loki. Google simpsonwood +autism, if you’re careful you’ll find the transcripts from an fda cdc meeting there in 2000, scary stuff. As to the vitamin d, issue, it along with vit c could probably reduce healthcare spending by 20% (of course those who will become unemployed or whose stock values will crater will do all they can to avoid that miracle). In the same way black’s extra melanin yields higher risk from vit d shortage there could be a genetic reason why blacks fail to excrete mercury as well other genotypes, which would account for the difference. But the spike in autism around the increase in vaccination schedules is very compelling evidence to me.
As for wakefield, it turns out he has been busy doing monkey research as surrogates for humans and has just published a damning trial in Neurotoxicology (available at fouteenmonkeys.org), with much more in the pipeline and in my view the usual suspects are trying to destroy his credibility.