CDC Cover-up?

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When any professional journal accepts and publishes the research of others, there is legally and professionally implied affirmation of the research content (the only alternative would amount to an admission of publishing inaccurate, false or plagiarized research). The Oxford University Press (OUP) makes this clear when it states that "it is a core part of our objective to encourage the widest possible dissemination of our journal content. We offer a comprehensive suite of licensing services to meet the needs of institutions, pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, and publishers worldwide." Does that mean that every OUP staffer must agree with the claims of published research? Of course, not. But, it does state that, for the sake of the first-publication rights gained by the OUP of the research, the OUP affirms the research insofar as it hasn't been retracted or discovered to be inaccurate, false or plagiarized. To that end, I used a term of art in the technical-writing industry (I worked professionally as a technical writer and editor in Silicon Valley and Utah) when I stated that the European Journal of Public Health "disagreed" with the claim that "[a]necdotal evidence has no place in the scientific process."


Indeed. But, the research did state at its abstract that "[c]onclusions: Anecdotal evidence may contribute to evidence-based public health practice, especially in widely debated public health issues." It also stated at its discussion that "[t]hese findings are also strongly supported by the anecdotal evidence. For example, in a TV interview, the mother of 3-year-old girl had reported: ?When I got a letter for Katie [first child] there was a show in the TV about a child with measles. He was miserable. I took Katie immediately for MMR. But for Emma [second child], there was so much publicity about MMR and it's links with autism that I am not comfortable.?" The research showed in this case that anecdotal evidence both encouraged and discouraged parental choice about the vaccinations of two children. So, depending on the point of view of the reader, the research showed that anecdotal evidence either helped or hurt the family discussed. The conclusion, therefore, was hardly based entirely on negative research results, in my opinion.

Regardless, the whole of the published research discussion suggested the influence that anecdotal evidence has in persuading parents' choices. This is what I meant when I said that the research disagreed with the statement that "[a]necdotal evidence has no place in the scientific process." Obviously, it does, and the research discussion proved it. Whether the anecdotal evidence helped or hurt in any single case, or would in the future, is irrelevant to what I wrote.

Jon Rappoport isn't a logician (neither am I, but I understood his example), so his description of the ability to prove something using logical obversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obversion was a little too brief.


The logical obversion of the Time magazine writer's statement "[n]ow one of the authors of a 2004 study that found similar vaccination rates among children with and without autism?" suggests a strong indication of further tampering with the study's research evidence as her statement claimed that both "children with and without autism" were surveyed. Rappoport questioned why she treated that fact dismissively and suggested that, if there was any variance between the two groups, it would be statistically important to admit. He compared the fact, and its idea of vaccine-exposure culpability, to the ordinary presumption of virus-exposure culpability.

... The following statement was made: "Anecdotal evidence has no place in the scientific process".

You used an abstract from an article to counter that statement.

I posted a link to the article... which states clearly that anecdotal evidence was effecting the uptake of the MMR vaccine. It states that parents are resisting due to anecdotal evidence (ironically enough because of the wakefield study). Nowhere in the paper did it state that the anecdotal evidence was a valid part of the scientific method.

Cherry picking... You have been cherry picking, finding a statement that supports your argument, even when it is out of context and is further countered by other statements in the same study.



This study was not about whether or not anecdotal evidence had any play in scientific method. This was a study to find out whether or not anecdotal evidence was having any effect on use of the MMR vaccine.

Since you used this to counter "Anecdotal evidence has no place in the scientific method." You have failed in that goal.

This paper shows exactly what we have been saying... Anecdotal evidence has an impact on parents opinions of the MMR vaccine, and as such a negative impact on public health.

here is the part that is about parent's views:


And here is the part about the negative impact:


I believe I see where you are going with this whole thing... but making anecdotal evidence the subject of a study does not make it part of the scientific method.



Anecdotal evidence is biased at best, inaccurate at worst, cannot be repeated, and is evidence not acquired through experimentation. It is inconsistent, and is most often correlative. The reason that most people that feel vaccines cause autism is because between the ages of 3 and 5, the human brain is going through radical changes - developing. While autistic spectrum disorders can be diagnosed before then, it is uncommon because it is a pervasive developmental disorder which are most often spotted during our most profound times of development (which is why the spikes in diagnostic periods are 3-5 and then puberty). It is simply correlative that this comes after the end of the primary vaccination schedule.

I present you with a couple other things that are correlative, but not causative.



and



Anecdotal evidence leads us TO the scientific method. MMR Vaccine causes autism!... so we ask the question: does the MMR vaccine cause autism? Then we use the scientific method to find out the answer. It has been done over and over and over... Repeatable conclusion. But the experiments that have proved it have not, ever, included anecdotal evidence as part of the experimental process.

Oh... and for the record... Your quotes from the journal simply state that "We present papers that have been peer reviewed, have not been discredited or retracted." Scientific Journals are, by definition, unbiased... Several of the physics journals posted concurrent papers in support of M-theory, string theory and super symmetry... Three incompatible.(at this point) theories... Does this mean that the journal supports any of them? No. It means that accurate scientific method was applied to a data set.

Then, please explain the research statement that:


Next, explain the research statement that:


The statements, considered together, show a parent who was influenced by anecdotal evidence to get her first child vaccinated, then was influenced by other anecdotal evidence to avoid getting her second child vaccinated. If the researchers' intent was to impugn the influence of all anecdotal evidence, then it failed spectacularly by including a statement by a mother who admitted that she was influenced to HAVE HER FIRST CHILD VACCINATED specifically because of anecdotal evidence. Did you miss that fact, or are you focused so intently on the so-called negative influence of anecdotal evidence that you can't see the so-called positive influence even when it is presented in the research itself? The researchers weren't stupid. They knew what they were writing. They meant to include the good and bad of the matter of anecdotal evidence.

Then why did Translational Neurodegeneration http://www.translationalneurodegenerati ... 6/abstract remove the research paper "Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young African American boys: A reanalysis of CDC data" by Brian S. Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., on Aug. 27? Professional journals don't operate in a vacuum. They are legally part of the team that gets research published. As such, their professional business reputations, interests and obligations are front and center in what they publish. The so-called scientific method isn't as perfect and sterile as you seem to believe it is. I wish it were.

Last edited by AspieUtah on 03 Sep 2014, 11:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

Umm... The statements preceding that excerpt explain it... You are taking it completely out of context.

"Our review identified some important issues on MMR uptake, such as the influence of pressure groups and their online messages on MMR uptake,42 lack of adequate information from the health professionals and confusing messages from media, rendering parental decision-making difficult.

The importance of the media's adverse publicity on MMR uptake has been supported by both research and anecdotal evidence. The major communication channels that are studied to have an impact on the population are TV, the press and the internet. Studies have shown TV and the press as important sources of health information for the public. A study showed that 60% of people receive their information on health matters from the TV and newspapers. Only 20% received their information form the internet. Pareek and Pattison,10 in their cross-sectional survey of a large sample, reported that 38% of their sample got their information on MMR from TV though majority of them viewed health professionals as the most trusted source."


NOW... this next part, which you took out of context... is immediately following the block of text above... IS REFERRING TO THE BLOCK OF TEXT ABOVE.

"These findings are also strongly supported by the anecdotal evidence. For example, in a TV interview, the mother of 3-year-old girl had reported: ?When I got a letter for Katie [first child] there was a show in the TV about a child with measles. He was miserable. I took Katie immediately for MMR. But for Emma [second child], there was so much publicity about MMR and it's links with autism that I am not comfortable.?44"

And then... Directly below it is this text...

"Both the research and anecdotal evidence showed that media's adverse campaign after the Wakefield study had decreased the confidence of both the public and health professionals about the safety of the vaccine. Anecdotal evidence also showed that media could play a role in improving the uptake by communicating about the threat of measles. Research evidence for the effectiveness of media's campaign on improving the uptake is inconclusive."

It is explained by reading the ENTIRE paper and not cherry picking quotes out of context.



Not at all... But THAT, at this moment, is NOT what we are discussing... no one here... not a one of us has stated that anecdotal evidence does not influence people... period... no one has said that... I actually stated that myself a couple messages ago...

BUT... ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE IS NOT SCIENCE. It is not now, nor has it ever been part of the scientific method. The whole study was about how anecdotal evidence was effecting the vaccination rate. Yes... one person in the study said that anecdotal evidence MADE her vaccinate a child... but the overall trend was 50% of the goal for heard immunity...

This paper does not, was not intended to, and does not claim to make anecdotal evidence part of the scientific method.

I feel like I am discussing this with someone from fox news.

Thank you for acknowledging that fact.


I didn't say it did, but, what about pharmaceutical marketing claims? What about well-funded sympathetic third-parties ("True Americans For Vaccination of Our Children," for a made-up example) introducing their own anecdotal evidence that favors vaccination? Are those activities helpful to the "scientific method"? Today's research papers become tomorrow's marketing strategies. The actual researchers don't need to introduce persuasive soft facts; they know that others will do that for them. The research in this paper suggested strongly that such activities could be used to influence public opinion. Otherwise, there is no need to state the obvious: that the public is becoming more and more aware of the risks involved in certain vaccinations. Speaking of which, why DID the Tripedia DtaP vaccine product-information insert admit that autism was discovered to have been an after-release result of the vaccine? Could it be, just possibly, that pharmaceutical corporations realize that such admissions don't sell well, and, therefore, need some massaging after the researchers hand-off their scientific-method studies to the marketers?

Last edited by AspieUtah on 03 Sep 2014, 11:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

From the link you provided:




This statement would be accurate if you left out the word "business." I don't know what professional journals you subscribe to, but most are not in the realm of business or profit. Most are funded by the dues of the members of professional societies that put them out, not a company or money making organization. If a journal retracts an article, it is almost exclesively because either the data is false, the data analysis is false, or a significant portion of data was excluded to provide a false impression of the results. So the reason this article was pulled is because the re-analysis was done using a faulty cohort model to achieve the desired results by someone who openly insisted that Wakefield was right and that thimerosal caused his son's autism on record as early as 2000.

Wikipedia.org points out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ ... ss_aspects that:

^Worthless to your argument.
There is a big difference between the companies that do nothing more than print the journals and the organizations that actually peer review and make decisions on which journal articles are included. Elsevier, Wiley, and Springer make exactly ZERO decisions on what goes in.

By citing this study in response to the statement, "Anecdotal evidence has no place in the scientific process." You DID in fact say that.

You may not have used those words, but that was the implied and inferred intent.

This is the third time in this discussion that you have made a statement that has clear intent, and then stated "I didn't say that. In this case, no... you did not - directly... however, in the other two cases... you did... in fact say what you claim you did not.

Your arguments are all over the place, are cherry picked and when someone pins you down, you claim you didn't say that... You argue against points that were not being made by the other people in the conversation and appear to have no genuine understanding of the issues, the methods or the stances of your sources.

At this point... I am going to go back to my previous stance... Your inconsistencies make meaningful discourse impossible, as such... I am extricating myself from this complicated web of misunderstanding that comes out of you.

You have my apology for re-engaging you after my first declaration of such.

Then why did you write:


...?

Or, by citing the research paper, I supported the statement and referred to the mother who was influenced by positive anecdotal evidence of vaccination as reason to express my support. But, we both know that isn't true. My problem with your presumption is that it doesn't provoke the simple question "Do you support the statement?" I will clear up the matter now: I oppose the statement because, while anecdotal evidence has no place in the so-called scientific method (despite what the cited paper suggested to the contrary), it does have a place in the resultant marketing and public dialogue. If anyone believes that such resultant marketing and dialogue influences the scientific method after the fact, then we have a whole different matter to discuss.


Thank you.

You might as well stop... I am not reading anything else you post.

Please, honor the request and leave it be

Again, the organizations that put out the journals are not the companies that print the journals. You still seem to have trouble realizing there is a huge difference.

Publishing companies seek profits. They do not put out the journals, just publish what they are given.

Professional organizations seek to maintain the highest standards and professional reputation via accurate and thorough research. They make the decisions. The journals are their field's research representation.

Publishing companies print journals.

Professional organizations create those journals.

Kinko's will print your brochures because you pay them money. They could care less what you put in. In the same manner, publishing companies print journals because they are paid to. They do not care what goes in.

Professional societies have the entirity of their reputation and credibility at stake, so they have a vested interest in maintaining the highest standards for accuracy and honesty in their journals. They aren't worried about stock value, corporate bonuses, or quarterly profits. They are worried about maintaining their integrity and the integrity of their field.