Max Headroom: Andrew Wakefield denies autism study fraud

The autism/vaccine guy speaks out: In recent weeks, Andrew Wakefield’s name, already synonymous with a questionable autism study from over a decade ago, has been dragged through the mud further amid reports that the report is an elaborate fraud. He still stands behind his study, claims the reporting of Brian Deer was completely, utterly wrong, and emphasizes that he did not personally profit off the study as reported. Credit to Alisyn Camerota, who hits him pretty hard with questions the whole way through. It’s weird that this interview isn’t getting much attention at the moment. (Note: He said he was going to upload some proof to his blog, but we see absolutely nothing new there.)

Shouting at your laptop If you’re like us and do searches on newsworthy political topics on YouTube every once in a while, you might run into this guy. This guy, a conservative, likes yelling really quickly. it’s his whole schtick. Here, he’s yelling about Keith Olbermann. He’s like a combination of Billy Mays (God rest his soul) the Micro Machines guy, and Rush Limbaugh. Mostly Rush.
Backed into a birther corner On “Meet the Press,” our boy David Gregory was chattin’ up our good friend Eric Cantor, basically trying to get him to say something bad about birthers. Cantor, eventually realizing that he couldn’t weasel out of Gregory’s line of questioning, gave him a half-answer on the question. Honestly, Cantor was right the first time. Why are we talking about this still?

Posted by Ernie Smith • 1 Comment • Permalink

It’s one thing to have a bad study, a study full of error, and for the authors then to admit that they made errors. But in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data.
British Medical Journal editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee • Explaining that the findings in an infamously retracted autism study in 1998 were not only false, but fraudulently made-up. BMJ claims that the Lancet study’s author, Andrew Wakefield, misrepresented or altered the histories of the twelve people used in the study. The result was a sharp drop in vaccinations, leading to a significant increase in measles cases in the ensuing years. Wakefield’s medical license was revoked las year as a result. He apparently received over $674,000 from a law firm that wanted to sue vaccine-makers, which was not made public until years after the study first came out. He does have some supporters who question the allegations, but if this is true, he’s an evil mother(#&@)!#. source

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Bad move, Bill GatesTip to anyone, anywhere, anytime: Don’t have a discussion using the phrase “death panels” in reference to health care. Because if you do, you’re going to show up on Glenn Beck’s news site, The Blaze. The size of this particular hornet’s next is freaking huge, dude.
judges ≠ scientistsThe legal decision that decided in favor of a family whose child was linked to her autism is gonna give hope to folks like Jenny McCarthy. The truth is, the science doesn’t support it. Neither does the case, which was found under grounds very specific to the situation.
Touré tokes up The Rolling Stone writer and MSNBC contributor had a pretty hilarious rant about California’s pot proposition, ending it with this clever one-liner: “The people who are railing the hardest against decriminalization are those who are most in need of a smoke!” Win.

Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

It slices, it dices, it helps Asperger’s patients … Oxytocin, a hormone often important to childbirth for females, has been shown to significantly help people suffering from Asperger’s syndrome, a mild form of autism. It helped, specifically, with social situations. For example, they were more willing to look at other people’s faces for 90 minutes after taking the hormone. This is a huge breakthrough for an often-challenging disease. source

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24 Jan 2011 01:26