Anti-Quackery & Science Blog
Wow! This is huge! I see I am not going to get anything done today - all these entries seem so interesting! Thank you for putting this together so nicely!
Bravo! Well done.
Okay, wow...that's a lot of reading to get done! I won't even pretend that I'll get to it all anytime soon.
But, just so I don't get in trouble, I will mention that our "Calling All Psychics" Rant wasn't written by just little ol' me. The Two Percent Company writes all of our Rants as a team. Just keeping me honest, here!
Thanks for all the positive comments everyone here and around the blogosphere.
Sorry for the few errors that sneaked in, I’ve sorted them out ASP.
When I was encouraged to host the Circle, I felt so honoured that I totally forgotten English isn’t my first language.
Anyway I've managed to round up the skeptical blogging and it could possibly be because of my cool last name (Hi
Brent 
)
To host the Skeptics Circle was a great experience.
Next skeptics’ circle is soon coming up over at Unscrewing the Inscrutable.
When you listen to the debate, remember that the autism parents have their alterior motives for wanting a link between autism and thimerosal. You should also remember that the medical community has their reasons for wanting no link between autism and thimerosal.
So when I see a study by the medical community that was peer reviewed by the medical community I have to ask if this is Kosher. When I see the medical community questioning whether there really is an autism epidemic, I have to say they are ignoring what is happening in the schools. When I see the medical community say it is just a matter of better diagnosis, I have to say that they have never experienced life with an autistic child. When I see the medical community say that the changes in children after vaccination are just "anecdotal", I have to say that they have not seen the video records that some of the parents kept. There is other linkage between autism and thimerosal such as what happened with thimerosal and teething powder. Of course, none of this ever gets into the medical literature because the medical studies were written to prove that there is no link between thimerosal and autism, not to determine if there really is one. Like all such studies, they achieve their purpose at the sacrifice of science.
I know what an autism epidemic means. It means that the nature or nurture question has to have nurture in its answer. Something happened that brought this epidemic and it has to cover the geography of the epidemic and it has to cover the time of the epidemic. I see this as the reason for questioning whether there is an epidemic and the statement that the epidemic can be attributed to diagnostics.
There is a saying "Never ascribe to malice what can be attributed to ignorance." At this time, I ascribe this attitude to ignorance on the medical community's part. Many of my fellow parents do not. I believe that is because the blindness to anything that might impugn vaccines seems so deliberate.
I am a parent of an autistic son. I am not hysterical. I have personally seen the regression that other parents have written about. I have seen my son join another autistic child in an elementary school of 250. My son is HIGH FUNCTIONING, yet his symptoms were so profound that I could never leave them undiagnosed. Maybe you can find the autistics between 40 and 60. I can't. I am not part of the lawsuit crowd, because I do not believe it is in the autism community's best interest to sue the medical community into oblivion. I have to laugh albeit bitterly at the "Junk Science" label having seen the sham that the medical community has made with their studies.
There is a lot to be said on the other side. It is too bad that our spokesmen are Kirby and Kennedy. Neither carries the credentials and both carry the baggage of alterior motives.
I think when writing a blog about mis-imformation you should be sure that you are not infact giving out mis-information. Dr. Shortt was in fact an MD - not a chiropractor with a business school background. Who are you to decide if Hydrogen Peroxide Therapy is safe or not?? What medical background do you have??
Maybe you should do some research before you start blabbing your big mouth.
Every time I walk out across the pasture near my house, I prove to myself once again that the world is flat. Except I'm wrong. As a former science writer for Boeing, I have always been one to investigate before I form an opinion. One opinion that formed over years of actual experience is that the world is not what it seems. Quarks really do exist, ESP is real, some people really do miraculously get better after odd therapies. . . on and on. I think it is urgent that we be skeptical about things we don't understand, but we should also be skeptical of skepticism for its own sake. It may comfort us to believe that science is the only answer, but as time goes on, we often find out that this is not the case.
I guess sometimes truth is stranger than fiction!
But nice writing.
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