tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62873734186363028902024-03-13T22:10:12.957-07:00The Science PoliceMaking the world safe for good science... One rant at a time.The Science Policehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01565182138762026435noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6287373418636302890.post-68059455732869821322009-03-08T18:14:00.000-07:002009-03-08T20:20:08.390-07:00Dispatch from The Times (UK): Paper linking autism and MMR vaccine verrrrry naughty<span style="font-family:lucida grande;">As our first "real" post, The Science Police decided to go with a threefer -- three dispatch targets for the price of one. As <a href="http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2009/01/british-medias-favorite-diagnoses.html">the neuroskeptic predicted</a>, much ink is being spilt these days on autism and the MMR vaccine. Namely, the fact that the whole link between autism and the MMR vaccine was started by a 1998 paper that, we are finding out, was very badly behaved.<br /><br /><br /></span> <span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;" >(1) You can't say that</span> <span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><br />The 1998 Wakefield et al Lancet study<sup>2</sup> includes just two easy to parse lists of the <span style="font-weight: bold;">twelve</span> individuals included in the study, all of whom had received an MMR vaccination. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Eight of the twelve</span> (66.67%) children were judged by their parents to have developed autistic behaviors shortly after receiving their MMR vaccinations. That IS IT, my friends. No matched control group. No replication in a larger, more representative sample -- or using alternative measures that we could expect would be more reliable. No common-sense checks that should bear out if the ridiculously large effect size was indeed representative (e.g., did autism diagnoses spike in 1988, the year MMR vaccines were introduced in the UK?).<br /><br />In short, <span style="font-weight: bold;">this should not have been published in the first place</span>, particularly by a medical journal that should see the public health implications a mile away. Sensational claims need to be supported by sensational(ly rigorous, high-quality and not made-up) data. Like <a href="http://www.randi.org/jr/">The Amazing Randi</a> sez,<br /><blockquote>"Look, if I told you that I keep a goat in the backyard of my house in Florida, and if you happened to have a man nearby, you might ask him to look over my garden fence, when he'd say, 'That man keeps a goat'. But what would you do if I said, 'I keep a unicorn in my backyard'?"<sup>1</sup><br /></blockquote><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;" >(2) Evil or ignorant?</span><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Now we come to Andrew Wakefield, the first author of the study. Turns out he was paid what would today be <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article1027642.ece">$80K by lawyers</a> planning to sue vaccine manufacturers to run the study. And his study's "self-enrolled" participants were the very same vaccine suers. Oh, and on top of all that, <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5683671.ece">he also made up the data</a>.<br /><br />The psychologists among The Science Police wonder, is Wakefield someone who knew what he was doing, and why it was wrong -- but did it anyway? E.g., for fame, money, love, etc. Or is Wakefield a True Believer -- someone who just never thought things through deeply enough to see any one of the many serious, and important flaws in the study -- and perhaps was even motivated a true desire to help people. This would be a POLL in itself, if we weren't more interested in your opinion on another matter... </span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;"><br /></span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:lucida grande;" >(3) Who just f***ed up?</span><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">This shiny nugget was published in 1998. It's March 2009 now, and <a href="http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-summary.htm#gmc">the legal hearings aren't expected to conclude until April</a>. The Science Police are here to ask why it is taking over a decade to settle this thing. We put it to you in the poll below. </span><br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"></span><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><br /><br />Finally, The Science Police thanks <a href="http://briandeer.com/">Brian Deer</a>, a journalist who seems to have developed an amazing sense of smell, for his help keeping the streets safe. And for better people than we, who have been covering this stuff <a href="http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/2007/07/andrew-wakefield-mmr-autism-and-gmc.html">early</a> and <a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=370">giving the events a human face</a>. </span><br /><br /><br /><p style="font-family: lucida grande;" class="title"><sup>1</sup>Maddox, J., Randi, J., & Stewart, W.W. (1988). "High-dilution" experiments a delusion.<em> Nature</em> <strong>334</strong>, 287 - 290.</p><p style="font-family: lucida grande;" class="title"><sup>2</sup><a href="http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-paper.htm">Wakefield, A.J., et al. (1998). Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children.<span style="font-style: italic;"> The Lancet</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">351</span>(9103).</a></p>The Science Policehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01565182138762026435noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6287373418636302890.post-38317318785782374242009-03-07T20:57:00.000-08:002009-03-07T21:42:49.572-08:00Here comes the fuzz...<span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Welcome to the online home of The Science Police, a loose confederation of empirical vigilantes. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">The Science Police serves the larger scientific community by:</span><br /><ul style="font-family: lucida grande;"><li> Reducing complexity to a series of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_&_Order">Law And Order</a>-style guilty / not guilty decisions </li><li> Raining down raw and unfiltered (and probably ineffectual) Justice </li><li> Including animal pictures</li></ul><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">The Science Police collect and disseminate dispatches of the following types:</span><br /><ul><li style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Neighborhood watch</span>: observations of bad scientific practice in the wild, day-to-day behind-the-scenes type behavior that doesn't pass <a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/smell_test">the smell test</a><br /></li><li style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">You can't say that</span>: where bad science and bad peer review meet and explode. as so often happens, The Science Police are forced to clean up the mess<br /></li><li style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Who just f***ed up?</span>: why did this bad thing happen, and who the hell is supposed to fix it? you decide.<br /></li><li style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Evil or ignorant?</span>: when we know who f***ed up, we ask whether to hate the player or the game -- this is The Science Police guilty / not guilty verdict, modeled on the classic social psychology person vs. situation frame<br /></li><li style="font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">Revolution!</span>: dispatches involving frontier justice, delusions of grandeur, talking out of turn, etc<br /></li><li><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);font-family:lucida grande;" >Self-evidently awesome</span><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">: things that The Science Police enjoy when off duty, probably involving animal pictures</span></li></ul><br /><span style="font-family:lucida grande;">Keep a sharp eye</span>.The Science Policehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01565182138762026435noreply@blogger.com0