Vaccine Study Finds No Harmful Association, But Wait …

A Foregone Conclusion

A recent large vaccine study found no evidence of harmful association between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism spectrum disorders (ASD). That good news was celebrated everywhere from the health care trade journals to the mainstream media. “The vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella,” reported CNN, “doesn't bring an increased risk of autism, according to a new study of more than 95,000 children.” In a related interview on the same webpage, CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta argued that while “We don’t know what causes autism, but we know that vaccines do not.” Gupta went on even to suggest that “vaccines have been protective against autism.” That was, amazingly, precisely the most statistically-significant finding in the new study. That’s right, for one of the groups studied, receipt of the MMR vaccine was strongly associated with reduced autism risk. There is only one problem: it was yet another example of bogus Warfare Thesis science.

Historians have tried for years to disabuse us of the Warfare Thesis mythology. But their efforts have largely been in vain. The Warfare Thesis myth has always served as a powerful context for evolutionary theory and, false or not, evolutionists show no signs of forfeiting this powerful narrative.

Similarly, statisticians have tried for years to bring discipline to their field which too often uses statistics to “discover” a desired conclusion. One journal, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, recently even went so far as to ban altogether null hypothesis significance testing. But biostatisticians at Johns Hopkins rightly point out that ridding science of shoddy statistics will require scrutiny of every step, not merely the last one.

I point out the Warfare Thesis and statistical inference not as disparate examples of scholarship gone wrong, but rather as two very related problems. You might say statistical inference is one of the Warfare Thesis’ preferred tools, and this new vaccine study is a good example.

The study’s most significant finding was that the MMR vaccine is associated with reduced autism risk. The authors were right to seek some sort of confounding variables to explain this unlikely result. But this result, even if explained away, hints at the underlying challenges and problems in such a research study.

One problem is that the we are dealing with people. Different parents have different levels of concern. And diagnoses may be influenced by various factors. Second, autism spectrum disorders include a variety of symptoms and conditions. Statistical comparisons may be complicated by such factors.

Nonetheless, the authors concluded that “receipt of the MMR vaccine was not associated with increased risk of ASD.” While that is technically true, the opposite is also true. That is, receipt of the MMR vaccine was not associated with an absence of increased risk either. In other words, the uncertainty of their results is such that they are consistent with both no increased risk, or some increased risk. Either could be true, within reasonable levels of statistical confidence.

What the results do show is that the MMR vaccine is not associated with a dramatic increased risk of ASD. Receipt of the vaccine was not likely associated with a doubling of the risk, for example. But again, those results are subject to the caveats discussed above (which may be overriding factors).

The bottom line is that the study’s conclusions are false and irresponsible. And they led to yet more false and irresponsible proclamations in the media, with commentators such as Sanjay Gupta making demeaning comments about parents struggling with this difficult decision.

One might ask how papers such as this survive peer review? The answer is that the paper said exactly what the peer reviewers were looking for. You see, like all literature, the scientific literature comes in a genre, and today that genre is the Warfare Thesis. This is made clear at the very beginning of the paper, long before the data are considered:

Two doses of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine are currently recommended for children in the United States: the first at age 12 to 15 months and the second at age 4 to 6 years. Although a substantial body of research over the last 15 years has found no link between the MMR vaccine and autism spectrum disorders (ASD), parents and others continue to associate the vaccine with ASD. Parents cite vaccinations, especially MMR, as a cause of ASD and have deferred or refused vaccinations for their children as a result. Lower vaccination levels threaten public health by reducing both individual and herd immunity and have been associated with several recent outbreaks of measles, with most cases occurring among unvaccinated individuals.

There you have it. Science has revealed the truth yet resistance to the undeniable facts continues, posing threats to us all. There was no question where the paper was headed—the results were a foregone conclusion. There is no way the researchers were going to discover anything wrong with vaccines. Those were the ground rules that readers must understand.

And once the beachhead is established the media’s heavy artillery can be brought to bear, proclaiming how the science had once again debunked the recurrent myths of the ignorant, as commentators such as CNN’s Jake Tapper shake their head in disgust.

These new truths then, in turn, lead to laws such as the California law mandating vaccines for all public school students which Governor Jerry Brown signed into law today. The law forces parents to violate their conscience or lose their tax monies to a public school system they are not allowed to use. Brown is a good leader but this new law is unfair and a mistake.

Does any of this mean that vaccines are not a great public health success, or that they should be avoided at all costs? No, of course not. Vaccines hold great promise and have conferred great health benefits. But the choice of whether or not to vaccinate is not simply a scientific question.

The problem is not that this is a difficult decision for some. That’s life. The problem is that evolution’s Warfare Thesis has resulted in both faulty science and an environment of discrimination against and vilification of parents struggling with legitimate decisions.

h/t; Little John

Jeff Sachs Goes There: Anti-Vaxxers Go To Jail

Don’t Pass Go, And Don’t Collect $200

Given the dominance and confluence of the Warfare Thesis, its resulting scientism, and evolution’s apparently unceasing thirst for control over people, I kick myself for not predicting Jeff Sachs’ latest we-would-laugh-except-this-is-real threat that parents who do not vaccinate their children are committing a crime [1:50]. It is not enough that this past week the California legislature passed a new law that prohibits parents, who avoid the risk of vaccination, from sending their children to the public schools while nonetheless taxing those same parents to pay for the public school system which they are not allowed to use. These parents are a small minority and so are an easy target. But if Sachs has his way, unfair taxation will be the least of these parents’ concerns as they will be convicted as criminals for their choice to protect their children. Undoubtedly the state would also take their children from them.

Given the strong language from global warming (AGW) advocates about how those who don’t agree with them should be incarcerated, Sachs’ move is not too surprising. Please see this post , where I concluded that this vigilante justice could jump to other issues:

What we are seeing are classic defamation tactics. Evolution’s Warfare Thesis has lit all kinds of fires and emotions are running high. With evolution there is no law, just narrative. Today it focuses on climate, but it could jump to any number of issues.

According to Sachs, vaccination should be one of those issues. That fits nicely into the nineteenth century, mythical Warfare Thesis which was erected by evolutionists to protect their theory. One of the many targets of the Warfare Thesis were those anti-vaccination rascals. To this day evolutionists rally around vaccinations as another support for their scientism.

The fact is that vaccinations have done a world of good and there are plenty of reasons to vaccinate, but they also carry low-probability risk. Those are generalizations and the details are different for each vaccine and each patient.

The bottom line is that vaccinations often present a classic risk-reward tradeoff. They provide helpful protections, but they can present a very low risk of both short-term and long-term illness and death. Recently more than two dozen children in Mexico were hospitalized and two died after receiving vaccines. Authorities halted vaccinations temporarily. Tragedy has also struck in this country, such as in the case of Lorrin Kain, popularized in a recent book, who eventually died from her vaccination injuries. Even the official vaccine court acknowledged the vaccine injury, though the reparations were not nearly adequate.

For most people the risks are tolerably low, and the tradeoff favors the vaccination. But this isn’t a scientific analysis. Not only are the exact probabilities unknown (mostly because the Warfare Thesis has served to cloud and corrupt the science of properly evaluating the vaccine risk), but even if they were known, the risk-reward tradeoff cannot be set to a formula. It is a choice each parent must make for each vaccine, in consultation with their doctor.

None of this is controversial, yet evolutionary thinking demands a very different approach. It demands that while parents must have the choice to kill their unborn child, they ought not have the choice to make the vaccine risk-reward decision. What about the risk? Evolutionists deny the risk because, after all, correlation does not imply causation.

When I explained this evolutionists attacked me with their usual demagoguery. One evolutionist explained the problem is that I don’t accept the basic principles of science because, after all, unlike him I am skeptical that the species arose naturalistically:

The fact that the author of this post is a dedicated anti-evolutionist for whom no amount of evidence is enough to make him even question his convictions, and who has now apparently become an anti-vaxer is not surprising: if you don't accept the basic principles of science, then any application of science to human welfare is, by foregone conclusion, definitely negative

Note the dismissive language. Doubting that the species arose naturalistically makes me a “dedicated anti-evolutionist for whom no amount of evidence is enough” who does not “accept the basic principles of science.” And pointing out that the benefits of vaccines are accompanied by risks makes me “an anti-vaxer.” It’s all Warfare Thesis.

Another evolutionist attacked my post, making the absurd suggestion that the Lorrin Kain’s injuries may have been a mere coincidence, and threatening that he had “Saved and tweeted [the post] for posterity.”

It is disappointing that rational discussion is not possible, but this is the environment that the Warfare Thesis has created. The above Jeff Sachs video in which he calls for the criminalization of parents choosing not to vaccinate, for example, appears at Business Insider under the heading: “Watch Jeff Sachs destroy the anti-vaccine movement in under two minutes.” It is all about attacking the “deniers.” Meanwhile unlikely hypotheses are insisted to be fact, and anyone who doesn’t go along will incur their wrath, and maybe their indictments.

The Warfare Thesis, Scientism and Vaccines

Hugh Hewitt Unhinged

Evolution is not merely a theory about biology. It is a much broader movement, tracing back to the Epicureans, that is more of a worldview than a particular theory. Of course evolution calls for a strictly naturalistic origins narrative. But it also has its own world view. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the so-called Warfare Thesis. Simply put, the idea is that naturalism is the pinnacle of scientific progress and that anyone who questions the dogma that the world arose spontaneously must be driven by nonscientific, religious motives. Hence there is a war between religion and science as scientists inexorably uncover new truths which the pious resist and oppose where they can. The Warfare Thesis can be traced back to the eighteenth century with thinkers such as Voltaire, Hume and Kant. Voltaire initiated what would become the unstoppable mythology of the Galileo Affair, reporting that Galileo had “groaned away his days in the dungeons of the Inquisition, because he had demonstrated by irrefragable proofs the motion of the earth.” Neither were true but this myth endures to this very day. Hume, with his arguments against natural theology, and Kant, with his celebration of the Enlightenment, portrayed the pious and the providentialists as naïve obstructionists. By the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries textbooks were informing students that Christians believed the Earth was flat until Columbus proved them wrong. Though the Warfare Thesis is well known to be a myth, it has an enduring and compelling appeal. No less a historian than Daniel J. Boorstin—Distinguished Professor of history at the University of Chicago, Director of the National Museum of History and Technology, and Twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress—promoted the flat Earth myth in his 1983 book, The Discoverers. Unfortunately, now in the Year 2015, the Warfare Thesis not only shows no signs of abating but is gathering yet more strength. Its misconceptions, stereotypes, delegitimizations and “we versus them” mentality are reaching a fever pitch.

One of the corollaries of the Warfare Thesis is scientism, the view of science as the objective source of truth. Poets deal with subjective feelings but scientists, in their spotless white lab coats, deal in unimpeachable facts. It is not uncommon to see “science” referred to as the authoritative source of all kinds of truths. We are told, for example, that products are scientifically proven and that research has now explained why people hold religious beliefs.

But scientism is not limited to advertisements and tabloids. In a recent Washington Post editorial piece, Fred Hiatt bemoans the fact that public opinion is not always aligned with scientific consensus. Hiatt’s opening sentence leaves little doubt what’s coming: “Sophisticated readers know a science denier when they see one.”

This is all Warfare Thesis. There are science “deniers” and there are sophisticated people who can spot them. If you disagree with “science” (as if there is such a monolithic thing), you are not a concerned or thoughtful citizen, you are a denier. In this “we versus them” world, the negative connotation is obvious.

Hiatt criticizes the “southern Bible-thumper denying the fossil in front of his nose.” Ah yes, those “southern Bible-thumpers.” They’re still denying the fossils, aren’t they. We really should do something about them.

Hiatt goes on to quote from polls showing that 88 percent of scientists believe genetically modified foods are safe to eat, compared with only 37 percent of the public; that 87 percent of scientists believe that climate change is mostly caused by human activity, compared with only 50 percent of the public; and that 98 percent of scientists believe that humans have evolved over time, compared with only 65 percent of the public.

Shouldn’t the public accede to the professionals? Shouldn’t we all accept the fact of man-made global warming? One wonders what Hiatt would do with the 13 percent of scientists who don’t go along with the politically-charged conclusion.

Hiatt apparently is not bothered that climate research is not exactly double-blind. Blackballing, funding pressures, career threats, peer-review manipulation, editorial board controls and even shutting down journals altogether are all part of the “science.”

Does Hiatt understand that science is conducted by humans and not robots? Humans with political, cultural, religious, social and career pressures and concerns. A few years ago global cooling was the concern. Indeed, as philosophers well understand, scientific consensus changes with the seasons and is hardly a paragon of truth. Scientists thought continental drift was crazy and that genetic mutations must be independent of need. Even Einstein rejected quantum mechanics. All of these are now well accepted.

None of this means that man-made global warming is not true. In spite of the data adjustments, and in spite of the thoughtful concerns that have been expressed, it may well be true. But we don’t need to start calling names when people aren’t sure.

What is disturbing about Hiatt’s editorial is that it appeared in the Washington Post, one of the nation’s leading newspapers. This dangerous exhibition of Warfare Thesis stereotypes and scientism is what leading opinion makers are thinking.

Nor is this merely a rare mistake of one journalist. This month’s cover of the venerable National Geographic magazine, pictured above, could hardly be a more explicit proclamation of the Warfare Thesis mythology. Inside Joel Achenbach explains the battle. He propagates the Flat Earth myth because, as he explains, some guy in South Dakota in 1893 built a flat-Earth model. And Achenbach ridicules any doubt about man-made global warming as a conspiracy theory. “The idea that hundreds of scientists,” writes Achenbach, “from all over the world would collaborate on such a vast hoax is laughable.”

Laughable? Apparently Achenbach is unaware that scientists “from all over the world” have agreed on all kinds of theories that were later discarded as clearly false. And what about the scientists who do not agree? Even James Lovelock admits that he was “a Little Too Certain.” Dismissive language and delegitimization are not helping.

Vaccines

This latest round of the Warfare Thesis has also featured concerns about vaccines. The most significant work in the formation of the Warfare Thesis was Andrew Dickson White’s 1896 volume, History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. White took the mythology to new levels, covering a wide spectrum of topics including vaccinations. Today, vaccinations continue to service the myth as evidenced by various commentators.

Radio journalist Hugh Hewitt, for example, has been castigating parents who do not vaccinate their children, assuring his listeners that vaccines are safe and the decision is a no-brainer. What about the many vaccine injuries? Hewitt echoes Hume with the absurd refrain that correlation does not imply causation. How then does Hewitt advocate vaccines in the first place?

But Hewitt has no time for such fine points as he belittles those who don’t go along. It’s Hume and White all over again. The lie that vaccines are safe because correlation does not imply causation did not begin with Hewitt. It is a common explanation used to dismiss and ridicule questions regarding vaccine risk.

CNN has also been attacking the vaccine issue. Reporter Sanjay Gupta recently interviewed the U.S. Surgeon General, urging him to recommend a federal law mandating vaccinations. Gupta became increasingly concerned in the interview, suggesting to the Surgeon General that those who do not vaccinate have sinister motives. Gupta unequivocally declared vaccines to be safe while the CNN anchor Jake Tapper was visibly angered at the thought of anyone declining vaccinations.

We are now living in a Warfare Thesis driven culture. Vaccines, as with the other topics that have been subsumed by this mythology, are far more complicated than this dangerous scientism allows. Vaccines have a long history of causing a wide spectrum of injuries and death. That is a scientific fact that all responsible researchers and health practitioners understand.

The message that vaccines carry no risk is simply a lie and an example of the dangers of White’s false history. Consider Lorrin Kain who died on December 22, 2009. In the spring of 1994, at the age of 6 weeks, Lorrin’s parents took their baby to be vaccinated. Their lives would never be the same. Lorrin sustained severe brain damage and would have uncontrolled seizures for the rest of her life. At the age of 15 she finally succumbed. And now the Kain’s are being told that the decision to vaccinate is clear-cut and that vaccines carry no risk.