Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, Democrat and environmental activist

[alarimer]

39. She is a crank, like the Geyers and Wakefield.

Her publication record does not support here assertions:


From Science-Based Medicine:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/crank-conferences-a-parody-of-science-based-medicine-that-can-suck-in-even-reputable-scientists-and-institutions/

Dr. Herbert is, it turns out, a big fan of the idea that autism has something to do with neuroinflammation. Unfortunately, none of her publications persuasively presents evidence for this hypothesis, and lately she’s publishing in bottom-feeding alternative medicine journals articles with titles like Learning From the Autism Catastrophe: Key Leverage Points. Suffice it to say, Dr. Herbert is big on “biomedical” woo, so much so that anti-vaccine propagandist David Kirby likes to cite her and Age of Autism loves her. Unfortunately, for all her grandiose claims that neuroinflammation is a major cause of autism and that mold and other environmental influences trigger it, Dr. Herbert’s publication record does not support these assertions. Go ahead. Head over to PubMed and look at Dr. Herbert’s publication record. I’ll wait. She has listed 15 publications about autism, of which:

six are review articles
two are in alt-med journals, and one of these is an interview
one is a paper with dozens of authors reporting the results of mapping autism risk loci using genetic linkage and chromosomal rearrangements. (Dr. Herbert is solidly right in the middle of the huge pack of authors.)
Of the remainder, Dr. Herbert only appears to be first author or senior author on four publications on autism containing original research, and these appear to be all imaging studies of the brains of autistic children. In other words, Dr. Herbert is making claims far beyond what her publication record in the peer-reviewed literature can, even under the most charitable interpretation possible, support. Nothing in her publication record appears to support her concept of autism being a systemic, rather than brain-based condition. There’s nothing there to support a link between autism and gut disorders; nothing to support a link between autism and immune dysfunction; and nothing to support a link between “environmental influences” and autism. That’s not to say that there aren’t environmental factors that influence the development of autism; it’s just that there’s nothing in Dr. Herbert’s publication record to support such a hypothesis or to identify what, if anything, those environmental factors might be.

This is the “keynote speaker.” She is, however, faculty at Harvard University.