Journal questions validity of autism and vaccine study

[proverbialwisdom]

22. Other relevant examples of documented overt 'data manipulation.'

Last edited Sat Aug 30, 2014, 02:19 AM - Edit history (1)

Overview: http://www.ageofautism.com/2014/08/cdc-frauds-connections-between-the-destefano-paper-and-the-thorsen-affair.html
Brick, NJ (1997), DeStefano, Marshalyn Yeargin-Allsopp (the CDC's lead autism epidemiologist): http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1017&pid=184693
Boyle: http://www.ageofautism.com/2013/09/agent-orange-corporatism-government-coleen-boyle-and-autism.html

REASONS FOR OPTIMISM:

http://www.ageofautism.com/2014/08/our-story-so-far-both-mmr-mercury-laced-vaccines-cause-autism.html

(ignore the title)
By Dan Olmsted is Editor of Age of Autism
Posted by Age of Autism at August 28, 2014

...Thompson himself reported that he was under tremendous pressure to absolve thimerosal at all costs and run and rerun the analyses to remove the association between thimerosal exposure and tics.

Consequently, when the severely compromised manuscript was submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine for consideration for publication, it was soundly rejected with the following comments from the peer reviewers: (BRAVO REVIEWERS 1, 2, 3, although I don't pretend to understand their analyses)

Reviewer 1: In this paper, the authors seem to be hoping for and wanting to demonstrate lack of relationships. When a relationship does emerge, the authors essentially downplay it, even though…a) The authors argue for how strong the dataset is earlier in the paper and b) the authors explain why SEM is superior to alternative analytic techniques.

Reviewer 2: The authors’ conclusion that “thimerosal is not a major causal agent for tic disorders (p. 13),” is not in accordance with their own data. That is, it is not reasonable, on the one hand, to argue that the use of SEM reduces the probability of Type I error, and then, on the other hand, to ignore the one significant, positive finding because of “the lack of biological plausibility of such a relationship.”

Reviewer 3: In general, the arguments presented on page 13 that findings on the tic outcome variable were not seen as sufficiently persuasive to completely dismiss those findings. Only one citation is provided. Further, in the absence of complete heritability, evidence of heritability does not (as the authors seem to suggest), rule out gene-by-environment interactions or even direct environmental effects...If the authors are to convince skeptical professionals, parents, or public policy-makers of their point, they would be well-advised to address the purported mechanisms of effect that have been proposed.

The manuscript was then submitted to and rejected by the Journal of the American Medical Association before it was finally picked up by the Journal of Pediatrics Psychology and was published in 2012.

That whole anecdote with imthevicar paraphrasing Dawkins comes to mind. SCIENCE RULES.