Light blogging today, as I’m in the O.R. (Although there will be one more brief post, which, thanks to the wonders of Movable Type’s ability to let me schedule a time when posts are published, will be appearing early this afternoon, while I’m still working.The reason why I’m delaying it will, hopefully, be apparent.)
Light blogging or not, I couldn’t resist mentioning a post by Kathleen Seidel in which she’s picked up on something that I hadn’t noticed but wish I had.
In a long, multi-topic “roundup” sort of post, near the end, she mentions RFK Jr.’s essay Tobacco Science and the Thimerosal Scandal, which he published around the time of his infamous Salon.com article. In this article, he interviewed Mark and David Geier, the father-son tag team mercury wrestlers, who told him that they had a “forthcoming study” that, according to them, would show that autism rates were starting to decline since thimerosal had been removed from nearly all childhood vaccines in early 2003. Quite naturally, Kathleen assumed that the essay was referring to the latest “study” by the Geiers published in that far right wing pseudoscientific rag, The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons just a couple of weeks ago. RFK Jr.’s article was published to the web in late June, eight months before the Geiers’ study appeared.
Kathleen looked at the methods section of the Geier’s most recent paper and found something very interesting, namely that the Geiers paper, published in February, had looked at data from the VAERS database through August 31 and the CDDS database through October 4.
Draw your own conclusions.
MIne are the same as Kathleen’s: Given that it’s likely that their interview with RFK Jr. that was used in his essay very likely occurred several weeks before RFK Jr. published his essay and article, the Geiers had almost certainly decided what their study would show months before they had actually completed it. That was obvious to me by the statistically incorrect way that they “analyzed” their data, and, given this new information, it’s even more obvious to me now.
