Did the “CDC whistleblower” William W. Thompson apologize to Andrew Wakefield in a text message?

Faking a text message, which would surely be refuted at some point, if not real, seems very bizarre. I think the ‘i’ wouldn’t necessarily autocorrect if it came from Thompson’s phone and it wasn’t an iPhone. Also, I’m not sure the cursor is massively suspicious – it’s just a screenshot of the conversation from a computer screen – perhaps Wakefield took a photo of the screen to make it seem (somehow) more genuine, rather than just the screenshot as a raw image. The content of the conversation is the most dodgy thing to me, the rest is all explainable in some way.

To add further confusion, I don’t know how Macs do screen shots, but Windows screenshots don’t include the cursor.

Also, a “friend” of yours now has a screenshot featuring “Back” on their Facebook page.

Because the “iMessage” is located at the bottom, it shows that both Wakefield and Thompson have iPhones (otherwise it would just say Text Message)….

Again, i’s always autocorrect on iPhones.

“To add further confusion, I don’t know how Macs do screen shots, but Windows screenshots don’t include the cursor.”

Its a photograph of the screen taken with an iPhone. You can see that in the exif data.

It seems silly to try to determine whether or not this test message exchange is real based on what you can see on the screens given that:
1. It is child’s play to fake this. (See comment #32, and there are no doubt other ways)
2. There is no way to validate the text exchange without access to the servers they traveled on (as pointed out in #17 and never going to happen)
In addition, Wakefield is already a proven liar. Why wouldn’t his acolytes be the same?

So, let me see if I get this story straight:

Wakefield didn’t know how to take a screenshot from his iPhone, so how did he get it to the computer screen that he took the picture from?

“Wakefield didn’t know how to take a screenshot from his iPhone, so how did he get it to the computer screen that he took the picture from?”

Wakefield emailed it to that blogger. She took a picture of her screen. She’s since added a copy of the screenshot to her blog.

Why do you think it is impossible (in today’s day and age, with Mega-Mega Pixel digital cameras & mobile devices), to catch non-blurry pictures of UFOs and Bigfoot?

For example the same reason you mention – they have something to hide. If the image was already on a computer, why not just email it – why take a picture?

Something is rotten (again) with this one….

@Science Mom- Why would someone photograph a screenshot?

I wouldn’t deign to even try and answer that given the cast of clowns involved. But the one with the cursor in it is highly pixelated and looks like a photo of a computer.

I’ve studied computer forensics. Small details like a mouse pointer appearing on a shot of an iPhone can make or break a case.

Why would “Doctor” Wakefield send the screenshot to The Truth Barrier, and not, say, AoA or Hooker? I don’t follow the anti-vax people in great detail, and I thought I knew most of the players. I’d never heard of The Truth Barrier, until now. If “Doctor” Wakefield did send it to someone else first, who, and why sent it to The Truth Barrier?

And, naturally, I have failed my HTML. 😛 There’s poetry there….

@DLC – you just have to scroll back up with your finger….

Lots of really good points raised here that bring a lot of suspicion on the validity of the conversation….only Thompson now can confirm or deny in a way that would put this to rest.

Bit strange that quite a highly educated Brit would prefer “honorable” over “honourable”.

“but delivers photo-3.png. ”

She changed the photo she had there. The original photo there was

http://truthbarrier.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/photo-3-576×1024.png

It’s still on her server, but she appears to have pulled it.

It has been commented online that the dimensions of that first photo don’t make sense. They don’t match an iPhone screenshot.

And, why title an image “photo-3-576×1024.png” anyway? Why not take the title the iPhone gives you?

I meant to write–she seems to have pulled it from the blog article. The original is still, for now, on her server.

Notice that the border has been changed. It was black or very dark purple originally. Now it’s blue.

Why is she editing this? What’s the border supposed to look like?

Honestly, though, does it really matter whether this exchange is real or not? Even if Dr. Thompson genuinely feels guilty about not publishing that data b/c he believes that it was clinicaly significant and/or that it would have validated Wakefield’s fraudulent study, he’s still wrong, for all of the reasons Orac (and others) have already discussed.

Any bets on when the first version (photo-3-576×1024.png) get’s pulled from her wordpress media library (and, hence, the link stops working)?

@Karl

I’m old enough to remember when some people would insist they had to staple the floppy disk to any paperwork it came with before filing it.

can’t remember where, but I recall seeing someone post a grainy camera-taken picture of a screen to document ‘proof of something’, claiming that somehow the camera shot was more reliable as ‘proof’. A simple screenshot could be easily edited/faked, but the photograph would show more evidence if someone later edited it…

or, in short: someone doesn’t understand technology.

After doing some testing, I can’t get my iPhone not to auto-correct “i” to I, unless I turn auto-correct off…..

Orac:
The ‘grainy photo’ is VERY weird.

The most notable thing is the moire pattern that appears in the image. This is caused by the pixel grid of the camera sensor not alligning with the pixel grid of the display. However, it also depends on how the display technology works. I don’t have any kind of Apple device with a ‘Retina’ screen, so I can’t say for sure what difference that would make, but IN GENERAL, you only see that kind of moire when rephotographing a CRT display (which has a more distinctive separated dot pattern, and in which only a single pixel has it’s phosphors lit by the electron scan beam at any moment) and NOT on any kind of LCD display (which has a smoother blend between pixels, which all stay lit more or less all the time). Moreover, LCD screen are flat, and the photo shows curvature in the bar at the bottom, consistent with it having been displayed on a CRT.

The next weird thing, is the resolution of the ‘original’ iPhone screen. It’s a very blocky lo-res version.

The third Weird thing is that if you DL the image from the Farber site, and adjust the levels, you’ll see
remnant detail in the apparently black borders. Note especially that the visible bits of text are considerably sharper than the text in the screen-cap.

There’s also EXIF data in the file, indicating the photo was taken with an iPhone 4S. Google Maps identifies the GPS coordinates logged in the photo as corresponding to 214 W 102nd St, New York, NY 10025, (an apartment building). I have no idea how accurate Google Maps might be at picking out a specific address from the GPS data. The EXIF indicates the photo was taken on 9/2/2014 at 5:12PM GMT. (EXIF data can he hacked of course, but not that many regular folks know how to do that.)

The screen-cap posted on Ferber’s site is 1136X640, indicating it was captured on an iPhone 5. There are no tell-tale signs of ‘Photoshopping’ in the screen cap, though given that nature of the bit-map, an undetectable forgery would be possible. However, as already noted here, it’s easy enough to just create a text exchange with some other “William.”

The ‘grainy photo’ is in the native resolution of the iPhone 4s, it does not appear to have been cropped and/or resized. It’s possible to reframe an image somewhat in Photoshop (i.e. zoom in a little) and then resize it back to the native resolution without an obvious loss of resolution, but I doubt that was done here. A more likely manipulation would be a simple Photoshop adjustment to make the background darker than the screen-cap in the foreground. I would guess that was indeed done.

SO, WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE? With the appropriately DeStafano-ish qualifiers, the looks to be:
1) a screen cap was taken on an iPhone 5 (which could have been anywhere)
2) that file was probably reduced in size, lowering it’s resolution
3) that file then found its way to New York City, where it was opened in a computer (probably a Mac)
4) the Mac video-out was hooked up to an old-school big-screen CRT TV/Monitor, probably to make the image big enough to be rephotographed tightly.
5) the monitor display was photographed with the camera of an iPhone 4s.
6) the iPhone photo was captured to a computer, opened in a photo editor, the background significantly darkened, and saved with no further adjustment.
7) That photo was compressed into a bandwidth-friendly JPEG, and uploaded to the Web.

SO, WHY WOULD ANYBODY GO THROUGH ALL THAT?
I gotta get some lunch, so I’ll have to come back, and I need some time to mull it over anyway.
…………….
Another separate weird thing: When you look at the full-res screencap Orac posted above, but on the Ferber site, it appears to extend lower than it does here, and to contain the text “Text exchange between Dr. Andrew Wakefield and Dr. William Thompson, Aug 27, 2014.” That’s not part of the actual screen-cap. It’s HTML. The screen-cap image is inside an HTML table with it’s background set to blend exactly with the gray behind the camera logo and ‘Send’ at the bottom of the screen cap. Thus, the site designers have clearly attempted to give a false impression that the names and date are part of the screen-cap (otherwise those grays would not match exactly), but they didn’t actually Photoshop the image, so they can say “it was just a design choice by our webmaster!”

sadmar,

the most simple answer would be that the people involved were concerned that someone would look through metadata…just as is being done. People who don’t really understand metadata, but know it exists.

So, they take a picture of a computer screen. That way they get the image and no metadata.

Then they take the picture, open it and save it to try to remove the metadata. Why they adjusted the size at the same time? Maybe they thought they needed to do something to remove the metadata.

Of course, this begs the question, if you have an image that you think might have metadata saying “Andy’s iPhone, legitimate screenshot”, why worry about the metadata?

I gave up trying to understand Wakefield years ago. I can’t bend my mind into such a logical pretzel and abandon ethics.

@Lowri,
Not only that, but you can see the measles virus with a pill camera, too.

I’m calling a Hanlon’s Razor on this one:
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

There may be a perfectly stupid reason for the cursor and screenshots – Farber.
There’s no telling what convoluted path an ignoramus will take to accomplish something rational people see as completely straightforward.

At this point I’m classifying Thomson as Unreliable and Sympathetic to the Anti-vaccine delusion.
Given his press release wherein he makes thinly veiled accusations of scientific incompetence (minimally) or outright fraud (maximally) against his coauthors when he stated, “I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article …”, and “I believe that the final study protocol was not followed.”.
He then shuts down public discussion/rebuttal of those accusations by his coauthors by stating, “I will not be answering further questions at this time.” and lawyering up.
That, to me, is about as mature as some playground wussy pointing a finger at his teammates and shouting, “They’re the ones who broke your window Mr. Wilson.”, then taking his ball and running home.
Add to that his admission of communicating with Hooker the past year and, to me, it becomes clear you’re not dealing with a very rational or savvy person.

As someone in an earlier Orac article comments noted, Thompson is really a psychologist, not a statistician. He should be versed in statistics, but maybe that wasn’t his strong suit. It is quite possible he is just too ignorant of statististics (cf. Hooker) to understand that he is wrong and really doesn’t know what he is talking about.

In my opinion:
He is another Dunning-Kruger professional who thinks he’s more competent and knowledgeable than he is, and is now ignorantly spouting his idiocy to the detriment of all.
He really believes he is smarter and than his collective coauthors when the opposite is true.
I also get the creepy feeling from his writing of a smarmy – “I’m more moral than my coworkers and the organisation.” attitude.
This guy is a disaster. Just plain bad. He’s dangerous because he’s dumb and in a position of responsibility.
He’s presently gone into seclusion, but if any of these later revelations are even slightly true, he may come back out feeling the zeal of a delusional evangelist who has the dubious protection of “whistleblower” lawyers to keep the heat from getting too intense lest he cry “professional oppression!”.

Any bets on when the first version (photo-3-576×1024.png) get’s pulled from her wordpress media library (and, hence, the link stops working)?

I suppose one could easily enough wget the whole thing, but I have things to do.

I suspect this image may be the original one used to fake this exchange. I could be wrong but the sizes of the dialog balloons is remarkably similar.

“Except that what was accomplished was taking something with no metadata (it doesn’t look like iPhones embed an XMP block into screen-shot PNGs) and coverting it into something that does.”

I did say I don’t think they know what they are doing, or I should have if I didn’t.

While there are metadata in that iPhone picture of a screen, it isn’t the original metadata.

I suspect the people involved didn’t know how to see or edit metadata but realized it was there. Hence this odd way of scrubbing the original metadata.

Or, they are just doing very strange things and making things more complicated than they need to be. She’s running a blog. She knows how to upload pictures. Why not upload the original instead of the iphone-takes-picture-of-computer picture?

Sadmar

“The 576×1024 .png is just a 90% reduction of the 640×1136 original. This may have been done automatically by the web-authoring software…”

wordpress doesn’t do that. At least modern wordpress doesn’t.

Very, very similar – though there are differences….though the differences could be explained by using a template & making changes via a program.

I think someone used a stock image of an I-Phone screen to create the Wakefield texts image. The image I have taken from Twitter is, I think, an April Fool joke that also fakes an I-Phone screen-shot. The dialog balloons have been altered a little but the smoking gun is the brighter blue color on the bottom blue balloon, unless I-Phones do that for some reason.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison.

Kreb – those images are SMALL! Any chance you can make them bigger?

Sorry, posted a thumbnail by mistake. Try here: http://twitpic.com/eba1ut

“I think I’ve nailed this one.”

Sorry, Kreb. The images are way too different. The ballons are different sizes and cropped different by the header. The background behind the ‘enter-message’ field is different, and yes in all iPhones using the new version of the Message app, the blue balloons get progressively lighter as they scroll up the screen.

I did learn, though that the balloons are only blue if the Text was sent from another iPhone using the Apple Message app.

Those aren’t that close, to my eye.

The curvature of the top balloon is off, and the sentence fragment reinforces this. That would be a lot of Photoshopping detail.

Yes, Wakefield endorses its veracity.

KayMarie:

Your eyes are fine. It’s a feature.

Besides the possibilities you mention, there are two other ones. Wakefield could be the victim of a hoax, by either (a) an anti-vaxer trying to make him feel happy and vindicated or (b) a non-scrupulous pro-science person trying to get him to publicize a fake exchange which would then be revealed in to make Wakefield look bad.

Yes, Wakefield endorses its veracity.

I missed this. Does someone have a pointer?

(Note that I’m standing by the Helter Skelter proposal.)

“Has he endorsed it?”

He tweeted it and I think put it on his facebook page.

Brian,

one more thing–Wakefield and Segal and others are pretty clear that they think very little of Thompson now. They’ve set him up to become one of their enemies. Even if Thompson came forward and said these were faked, Wakefield would just say, “See, he’s gone back to the payroll of Big CDC”.

Segal’s recent statement includes ” Above all, we don’t want to lose sight of the fact that William Thompson was aware that young children’s lives were needlessly being destroyed”

and Wakefield on Jake’s blog “Although it is a moot point, I remain perplexed as to quite why a man who participated in a prolonged scientific fraud – one that likely resulted in harm to many children – should merit anonymity on his terms. ”

1) Which is it? Are Wakefield and Thompson in some sort of mutual admiration society or is Wakefield contemptuous of Thompson?

2) If Thompson says that Wakefield lied about the text messages, he’s already set up to be discredited to Wakefield’s audience. (which I know I covered above)

I go away for several hours and what do I find? Oh my.

I’ll jettison my arts/advertising background for the moment and not make a call about the matchy-matchy issue as I have a headache and looking doesn’t help it.

I put my faith in most humans’ ( except the highest functioning ones and I’m even not so sure about them)
well-known tendency to behave very similarly over time:
so I ask-
who is Andy and what does he do? Why is he famous?
who is Celia and what does she do? Why is she famous?

I wouldn’t trust either of them as far as I could throw them.

@Annie: Thanks. It’s certainly an odd way of going about things and seems to fall a bit short of explicitly stating that it’s genuine.

It looks legit to me, Krebiozen

https://mobile.twitter.com/DrWakefield

If it’s fake, someone has been faking a long time.

I still gotta wonder, why did “Doctor” Wakefield release this thru some backwater, mostly not anti-vax blog, and not something with a little more impact, like AoA?

iPhone 5, OS7.1.1

I only get “Back” as an option when I don’t have the person in my contacts list AND it’s not an iMessage (which this clearly is).

You’ve got to be kidding me. The author of the study comes out and says “I covered it up” and all you people can do is say “you are anti-vaccine” Get this through your head, We are NOT anti-vaccine. We are anti-letting people who on record have shot up black folk with syphilis, (Tuskegee), Brought Nazi scientists to the states to run our Medical, scientific, and space programs (operation paper clip) put garbage in vaccines and shoot our children up with it. Vaccine technology may be wonderful, and it probably is, but NOT when they put garbage in it that brain damages your child and then knowingly cover it up. You keep your head in the sand at your own risk.

@Orac – congratulations, I think that may be anti-vax troll #99999…one more & you win a Kewpie Doll…

At least ORAC is doing a little investigating. All Celia Farber did was post some suspicious text spoon fed to her by Wakefield. With skills like that, it’s no wonder Farber has not had a career for two decades.

The third author of the study out of five comes out and says “I covered it up”

FTFY. This was before division-of-labor statements were in vogue, but c’mon. You’ve just conceded that you can’t even understand the meaning encoded by an author list, much less the contents.

Wait, this is Celia Farber? Ok all credibility lost on this one.

Meanwhile, back at HG:

(a.) estrogen kicks a drunken tosser of ethyl mercury out the door.
(b.) testosterone invites it to sleep on the couch.

(c.) 5x more prevelance of autism in boys than girls
(d.) the girls that have *autism* had higher levels of testosterone in the amniocentesis fluid

Boyd Haley, retired chemist University of Kentucky, Lexinton
https://youtube.com/watch?v=oMXZEFX7jUM&feature=youtu.be
——————————————-

Throughout history, when the slaves get uppity then an edict goes out to destroy all the first-born males —

Think Exodus/Moses.

Well, in my version of the Bible, The Lord killed the first born males on behalf of the slaves, to help force their freedom. What cult do you belong to that tells the story the other way around? Or are you drinking the bong water again?

as for humourous v. humorous

Autocorrect much??

Dammit. Johnny beat me to it. Yeah, the slaves were the Israelites. They were slaves to the Egyptians. When Moses came back and said, “Let my people go (you damn, dirty apes [apocryphal])!”, Pharaoh said, “Nyet!”

So God sent ten plagues, the last being the death of the first born of every house. Because the Israelites did the whole “blood-on-the-door” thing, God spared their firstborns. Ah, but not Pharaoh. Even after seeing nine plagues come and go, he thought Moses was bluffing.

Tim might be thinking of a later book in the Bible, the Gospel according to Matthew. In it, the author describes how Herod ordered the execution of young Jewish males near Bethlehem because he was told by the Magi that the new King o’ The Jews had been born there… Hardly because the slaves got all “uppity.”

But we can’t blame Tim, really. The AoA crowd, especially Kent Heckenlively is all about violent religious imagery when it comes to vaccines, because THAT will help autistic children:

“What I can say is that on some level, my prayers to God for an understanding of the autism epidemic have been answered. I now know why they fear us so much. I can’t prove it, and as a lawyer I understand that’s the real show. But I know.

And yet, as thankful as I am for an understanding of what has happened to my child and so many others, my heart is heavy. The Dark Forces which in the past have destroyed the careers of those who have found clues to the afflictions of our children and other disease communities are once again on the move. You may very well read about their actions this week. And I can’t do anything to stop them…

But if you’re in good with the Lord, bitching with Him, or haven’t put in a call lately I think this might be the perfect time to send up a flare. You might even think about reciting psalm 94.

God knows there are some wicked people out there trying to keep our children from getting better. If you’re listening God, and it meets with Your approval, this week would be an excellent time to deal with them.”

And who can forget the re-creation of the Blood Libel dinner on a Thanksgiving a few years back?

Brian Deer,

Having no dog in the causality race, I think betting is still open on the Brian Hooker story. Just because he’s an obsessive and makes mistakes, it doesn’t mean that in ten years harassing CDC he hasn’t turned something up, even if it’s not quite all he thinks.
In fact, given the scale of a government bureacracy like that, it would be more surprising if he didn’t.

If he has turned something up he is keeping it to himself. I’m pretty sure* there is nothing to the either the black kids getting MMR story or the thimerosal tics association.

If he had something of substance why would he publish a lousy study and collude in that awful video, instead of playing his card(s) straight away, or at least alluding to further dreadful revelations to come? Have there been hints of more to come that I have missed?

It’s a curious business; the taped phone calls, emails and now these text messages. It feels a bit as if someone is rather ineptly beta testing some sort of media manipulation program. The text messages are just one more (purulent) drip in a pre-planned campaign, perhaps.

* 90% plus, I would say, if I were being nuanced.

ordered all newborn males to be killed

Ok, Johnny. You caught me with a ‘nit’. I’ll not pick at it any farther.

@ Krebiozen:

Orac is correct: you are very bad.
But your ‘texts’ may excellent uses if your friends can take a joke.

I’m not in the medical field, but have enjoyed following this story for the absurdities many of you have pointed out. I found the site by accident when researching one of the early posts about the “Bombshell” revelation. I searched for hours that first weekend looking for something to either validate or discredit the story. I was astounded at the sheer number of conspiracy sites who were shouting that this was the biggest revelation ever…that the CDC had been doing fraudulent studies, and on an on. On Sunday of that weekend, I contacted a friend who teaches epidemiology an asked him what he knew about the claims. He did some searching and he, too was astounded by all the conspiracy sites. At that time the CDC had made no statement, the “whistleblower” was supposedly in hiding in fear for his life and the lives of his family. There was nothing in pub.med at the time.

I’m wondering now when all these sites are going to turn on their “whistleblower.” If it really was the bombshell they all claimed, one would think they would have reacted much differently to a man who concealed information for 10 years or so that if revealed would have reduced the number of Autism cases in that time period. And, yet they’re all calling the whistleblower a hero. That seems illogical to me. If I were a parent of a child who got the vaccine in question, and then developed Autism, I would not be calling him a hero for providing info after my child was affected. That they haven’t yet turned on Thompson seems indicative of just how irrational these people may be.

Yesterday, I saw a post about the HPV vaccine killing young women. Shades of Michelle Bachman!! And, today these same sites are posting another “bombshell” about Thompson admitting that Mercury causes Autism.

@Johnny Re: first born v newborn

Yes. The newborns that hadn’t yet gone to slavitude class.

{Damn nits — perhaps if there were some prescribed medication for puritis available??, no, wait….}

joseph

when I’m not shouting “God Save the Queen” at people in my bowler hat

If you are shouting at the people living in your bowler hat, you may want to do something about that, or you end up like Tim @162.

opps, sorry Narad ^^ that one’s for Sadmar

You know, these comments read like a bunch of people desperately hoping that the text messages are fake. It’s now been three days since this story was first published. Surely, if the texts were fake, Thompson’s lawyers would have fallen over themselves to publish a further statement dancing their client’s involvement. The author of this thread directly contacted the lawyer regarding these text messages and hasn’t had a response.

Becky, I don’t know about speak, but they certainly don’t text like teenagers. There are too many vowels for a start.

To me their text efforts are more like the dialogue in The Beverly Hillbillies.

To me their text efforts are more like the dialogue in The Beverly Hillbillies.

Speaking as someone who watched the whole thing through in half-hour segments when it aired locally at 4 a.m. and considers it to be a quintessential utopian play, I feel obliged to demand justification for this likening.

joseph,

Personally i live in Hong Kong, I consider my archaic, and possibly irrelevant, “u”s and the use of “s” over “z” to be one of the last bastions of my Britishnessship (when I’m not shouting “God Save the Queen” at people in my bowler hat that is).

Heh, PGP will probably think you’re serious. I actually own a bowler hat, an old theatre prop that a friend gave me, but I have never worn it in public; I think my (American) wife would probably disown me if I did.

I read a paper years ago about Greek-Cypriots living in the UK being more Cypriot in their behavior than those living in Cyrpus. The idea is that people hold onto their cultural values more strongly when surrounded by people with different ones. I suspect Wakefield plays on his posh Englishness as part of his appeal – I have been surprised by how some people in the US (mostly ladies of a certain age) react to my English accent (less posh than Andy and I’ve picked up a bit of estuary along the way) – so it wouldn’t surprise me if he had turned off autocorrect on his phone to maintain his image when texting.

Well fun as it is I do think some of the logic being used here is a bit dodgy. For instance, some people seem to be taking some suspicious things about this (purported) text exchange as evidence of one kind of fake – then other ‘evidence’ for another kind then adding them up – even if they are mutually contradictory. Some of the things about the construction of the image (mouse cursors etc) seem to play both ways – if its genuine why would someone make such a questionable image as ‘proof’, if its fake why produce such a questionable image and expect it to be accepted. Maybe some of this is simply evidence that whatever is going on someone made a bad job of it. Trying to analyse the spelling is even more of a dead end. I’m British and I always use american ‘z’ spelings and I know a lot of people who do. In fact I worked for a company for a long time where all documentation for external purposes was done in a american spellings. Also my father in law always texts in immaculately spelled english. (Signing a message in the middle of a conversation, which also happens to be in the middle of the screen seems like the most strange thing to me – speaks of premeditated orchestration not fakery though)

What we are saying here is this is just an image. Its of no value as evidence of anything and there are some reasonable questions on its provenance. Given the priors for Wakefield I think it is more than reasonable to suggest orchestration and presentation (his actual MO more than outright fakery) but some of the ‘analysis’ is starting to stretch proper use of logic (imho).
It’s enough to say the prior for anything from or connected to Wakefield is a position of distrust and so we simply disregard this distraction as being anymore than that. Trying to take it beyond that is pushing credibility -doesn’t mean its not true though!

Bad man or nor, I can’t resist….
http://twitpic.com/ebavbj

I think my (American) wife would probably disown me if I did.

How about a tall derby?

@Krebiozen – hmm – it’s OK for me is I cut and paste it. Sorry if it’s not working. 🙁

Anyway, ChrisP has kindly relinked it up there ^^^ (Thanks Mr P!)

How about a tall derby?

Now I would wear that, but the wife doesn’t like any of my hats – I have a top hat, a brown trilby, a black trilby and a straw hat that has seen better days. Sadly my head seems to have grown over the years and none of them really fit any more. She did buy me a baseball cap, but I can’t bring myself to wear it in public. So much for acculturation.

Something else quite telling about the thread at Farber’s site is the small number of comments. There are none of ORAC’s readers taking her to task. Could Farber be censoring the comments the way she censors the truth?

@ Krebiozen:

On hats:
my late mother worked in the fashion trade and once gave me sound advice that people who have oval-shaped faces can wear any type of hat and not look ridiculous.Thus I have worn all sorts of hats over the years altho’ I have recently settled upon a tweed cloche when it’s cold and a beige cotton bucket-ish thing ( that I can shape to resemble Bergman’s hat in Casablanca) when it’s rainy or sunny.

Hat choice revolves on the width of your jaw in proportion to the width of your face near your eyes. You have to try them on. Witness Jude Law in a Bowler. Pretty good. Fedoras work on a more diverse set of men but Australian hats are difficult to wear well ( unless if you are living there then It’s alright I suppose – function over form).Taxi driver caps are not easy to style and Baseball caps are impossible ( except if you’re a female model with long hair preferably black). .

The first picture was of a picture taken at
latitude 40; 47; 53.02 longitude 73; 58; 6.65
Weston Observatory
381 Concord Rd
Weston, MA 02493 with an iphone 4s and the second picture is a screen shot of an iphone 5
The meta data are in the original files.

Kent Heckenlively is truly deluded.

Heckenlively has always been deluded. Why else would he think writing a book with Mikovits was a good idea?

But for all time conspiracy theory nutbaggery I give you John D Stone.

sadmar,

The change in carrier name is a good one, but I just love the gag with the battery indicator. Well done, sir!

I’m glad someone noticed! There’s a slightly more obscure gag with the time (4:20 is code for smoking marijuana), mainly because I have wondered at times just what some of the players in this melodrama have been smoking.

It wouldn’t surprise me if that were true. However, if that ultimately turns out to be the case (assuming that Thompson ever ‘fesses up, given that no one other than antivaccine loons trusts Wakefield, and even then not all of them), we can then marvel at how Farber and Wakefield screwed it up so bad that no one believed them.

Oh, and then write off Thompson as having drunk deeply of antivax Kool Aid.

And there we go. Hours and hours of overanalysis in an attempt to prove that the texts were fake (because Thompson couldn’t possibly be responsible because in his press release he was firmly on the side of the CDC) and when it seems clear that the texts were not fake, an immediate attack of “oh well, that’s because he’s a loony” . Imagine, just imagine for a second, , what if Thompson is not a loony and the CDC has been altering study outcomes to fit its “vaccines ar safe” stance? Why is that not a possibility that is even being contemplated?

Oh sorry, I was labouring under the misapprehension that an admission IS evidence. But that’s only in every court in every democracy in the world. My mistake.

Riigghhtt. Science. Fact. Black and white. Not open to interpretation. Not at all dependant on the subjectivity of the reporters or what they think is relevant, or the changes in knowledge or understanding over time.

Clearly all those scientists who for 75 years classified Pluto as a planet were drinking from the crazy conspiracy Kool Aid too.

if you’re a lawyer, Ms. Karen, you’re the kind that give the profession their bad reputation.

Thompson CANNOT make an “admission” that clinically significant findings were covered up. Why? Because he is not the arbiter of what is clinically significant and what is not.

The most he can do is ALLEGE that the findings which could have been presented AS IF they were meaningful were, in his eyes, meaningful – and in fact, he HAS made exactly that allegation (which means that treating the supposed text messages from him as an “admission” to anything is a laughable blunder on your part – I’d say it makes me doubt your claim to be a lawyer, but since the antivax movement has plenty of incompetent lawyers, that doesn’t prove much.)

Follow me for a little thought experiment, here. Let us suppose that Thompson was NOT part of the group that conducted the study in question – suppose it was another person entirely (let’s call him John Jones.) And let’s suppose that John Jones makes allegations similar to the allegations made by Thompson – that the finding of ONE statistically significant results in ONE very thinly sliced subgroup is NOT the sort of spurious looks-like-a-result-but-isn’t that you get very easily by slicing your data up too much, but instead a clinically significant finding.

Do you think the judge would accept William Thompson as an expert witness to testify on that issue? Remember, in this gedanken he’s not part of the original group, so he cannot be called as a witness of fact. Would the judge really say “Oh, well, he’s a psychologist, so he must be an expert in interpreting epidemiological findings”? “He’s a psychologist, so he must understand all the difficult statistical issues involved”?

I think the answer is a clear “no”. Thompson may sincerely believe that the anomalous finding which showed up ONLY in boys, and ONLY in African-American boys, and ONLY in boys in one very narrow age bracket, was signal and not statistical noise. But just because someone believes something doesn’t mean they’re right. I’d be surprised if you got all the way through law school without learning that.

I think it is fairly obvious that Karen has not been following the science bloggers and and the posters, who were able to review the original DeStefano, et al study (which is a case-control study) and Hooker’s “analysis” of the DeStefano et al study which is a cohort study.

Mr. Hooker is not a medical researcher and he does not have a graduate degree in epidemiology…and he most definitely is not a medical statistician. He sliced, diced and minced the data from the DeStefano et al study and came up with a statistically insignificant number of black males who supposedly had a reaction to the MMR vaccine…which, according to Mr Hooker might have caused their ASD diagnoses.

What a silly comparison you made about Pluto, to justify your allegations that something is amiss with the authors of the DeStefano, et al study.

Karen…need I remind you that the design and implementation of various types of studies are universal and that the mathematics/statistics are universal throughout the sciences…even if you live in Australia?

https://onlinecourses.science.psu.edu/stat507/book/export/html/2

Ah, but what is “right” is nothing more than collective subjectivity.

I was just thinking that what was needed here was some Postmodernism. Oh, wait, no, I wasn’t.

Karen, perhaps it would help if you used a bit of logic in your argument.

1. William Thompson made an allegation in his letter (it is just an allegation as he provided no evidence) that an analysis was left out of the paper.

2. The allegation was quite specific: viz. data pertaining to a sub-group of African-American boys receiving their first MMR vaccination between 24 and 36 months of age.

3. It is possible to go back to the original paper and determine this sub-group comprised a relatively small number of cases (somewhere around 14).

4. The small numbers would be a clear reason for not including the analysis in the paper, because the probability of a Type I or Type II error would be large.

5. The most likely explanation for what we are seeing is that Thompson has misunderstood how statistics works.

^ Which of course doesn’t even connect to the purportedly “covered up” signal, which was in 30% of the 3–10 age spread.

But his evidence IS evidence.

Is hearsay admissible in this imaginary court?

I was going to bow out after the personal attacks began, but a few interesting questions have been raised, so I’m happy to continue on.

I have no opinion about Wakefield. I know he has been almost universally discredited, but I have no personal opinion on his credibility. I have not red the Lancet journal, nor anything about him on the Internet. I am interested in the vaccination debate, but Wakefield has not been a factor. I have no opinion on whether MMR causes autism. I KNOW that the empirical evidence is that there is no link, but I am also aware that there are a lot of differing agendas out there. I have no opinion on any link.

What I have found interesting about Thompson is that, if what he said in the secret recordings is true, then that calls into question the independence of the CDC. I have no opinion on whether what he said is true or correct or not. I thought his press release was the best that could have been made of a bad situation. He had been caught out in secretly recorded conversations saying some things that the CDC would not have been happy with, so he could not deny that, and yet in that statement he clearly aligned himself with the CDC and also promoted vaccines. (As an aside, he is not a whistleblower, he was “outed” which means he had no option but to make a statement, almost certainly at the direction of the CDC).

Yet it only became really interesting when the text messages came out. Those texts are clearly inconsistent with the press release. His statement did not mention anything about falsifying information nor did he draw a link between vaccines and autism. And yet in the texts he says “the price you paid for my dishonesty” , suggesting that he believes his actions covered up a link between MMR and autism.

I initially thought the texts were fake because they just don’t make any sense. Why would you be communicating something so damning to a man who has just shafted you by making public, private conversations. And why would you accept responsibility for your “disloyalty” being responsible for ruining the credibility of an internationally discredited man? Especially when your employers have extricated you from a professionally embarrassing situation by funding a press release that saves your face??

But now, 4 days after the press release, there has been no further statement. Orac says he called the lawyer to specifically verify the texts, without response. As I have previously said, this can only be because Thompson can’t deny the texts (that is, that e sent them, not the truthfulness of the texts).

I can guarantee that this is what is going on at Morgan Verkamp. They are screaming at Thompson for not following their advice. The texts are irreconcilable with the press release, which means that either his press release was manufactured. There has been no denying of the texts, which would have been done immediately had they been faked. I’m betting that Morgan Verkamp have terminated acting for him due to a conflict.

My point on this blog is that it did not start off with “Thompson is a crackpot”. It started off with “the texts must be fake because Thompson is a good guy and works for the CDC” and only when it became obvious that the texts were not faked (although almost certainly edited), that the argument has now become one of Thompson being crazy.

I was just asking, what if he isn’t? What if the CDC is manipulating data? So far on this blog there are two theories, that Thompson has been set up and that he is crazy. There is a third option, that he is telling the truth. And when I asked the question, what if, there was a barrage of childish insults thrown my way.

Just to clarify, I don’t believe that accuses cause autism, I don’t believe there is a big government conspiracy to poison our children and I don’t believe that what Thompson did, if it is true, suppressed evidence of a link between MMR and autism. I just don’t know. But I find it fascinating that the messenger is always shot down, rather than stopping to consider whether they could possibly be telling the truth.

(As an aside, he is not a whistleblower, he was “outed” which means he had no option but to make a statement, almost certainly at the direction of the CDC).

“Whistleblower” is an operationally, statutorily defined term of art here.

Karen, I suggest you reread your own prior comments, to find why other posters here jumped on those comments. Your comments were quite provocative and indicated to us that you have not, read Orac’s multiple posts and the links he provided to other science bloggers.

You have to remember that Brian Hooker and Andrew Wakefield have, from the onset, been controlling the flow of information about Mr. Thompson’s personal involvement with Mr. Hooker (and possible personal involvement with Andrew Wakefield).

The first videotape released by Wakefield’s media company, had Thompson’s voice disguised; Hooker and Wakefield hung that “whistleblowe” label on Thompson.

The next move was orchestrated by Wakefield and Hooker where they named the “whistleblower”.

Within a short period of time, Mr. Thompson’s statement came from his attorney which stated that:

– He did not know, nor did he give consent, for Hooker to record the telephone conversations.

– He did not give consent for Hooker and Wakefield to identify him; they “outed” their informant.

Within a few days, a new character, Celia Farber provides screen shots of what are purported to be text messages between Wakefield and Thompson, where Thompson apologizes to Wakefield for lying about his being recorded by Hooker and being “outed” by Hooker and Wakefield.

– Who provided (Thompson, Wakefield, Hooker or someone else) those screen shots to Celia Farber?

– Are those screen shots real…or were they in some way doctored and calculated to deceive?

Just before Farber publishes those text screenshots, Hooker states publicly (admits) that he recorded private telephone conversations without Mr. Thompson’s consent.

You claim to know nothing about Wakefield’s history, Hooker’s history and the DeStefano et al study and Hooker’s study…yet there you go running off at the mouth with your opinion that there is a distinct possibility that DeStefano and the other researchers at the CDC, deliberately skewing the results. I hope you realize how ridiculous your prior posts are.

Karen, I do agree with some of your points (particularly about what might be going on with Thompson and his lawyers). However, in light of your concluding statement:

But I find it fascinating that the messenger is always shot down, rather than stopping to consider whether they could possibly be telling the truth.

I have to ask you a question: whom do you think is the messenger?

I’m guessing from all of your posts, you think the messenger is William Thompson. Yet, all the public information (with the exception of the Aug 27 press release) on this issue has come from persons other than William Thompson.

I see the messenger as Andrew J. Wakefield.

You claim

I have no opinion about Wakefield. . . I have not red the Lancet journal, nor anything about him on the Internet.

Perhaps you should. You continue:

I am interested in the vaccination debate, but Wakefield has not been a factor.

Really? Not a factor? Try starting your reading here: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/jan/28/mmr-doctor-timeline
Pay extra attention to the vaccine uptake numbers reported, and when measles returned to the UK. Now in 2014 the US may be following suit.
For further reading, full transcripts of Wakefield’s GMC hearings can be found here:
http://sheldon101blog.blogspot.com/
Maybe you’ll see why what you seem to be considering “evidence” some of the rest of us are taking with more than one grain of salt.

Pay extra attention to the vaccine uptake numbers reported, and when measles returned to the UK.

In handy graphical format, compare this with the notifications by age here.

I see Dan Olmsted has picked up on this (Here: http://www.ageofautism.com/2014/09/age-of-autism-twilight-of-the-apologists.html) and has posted a screenshot of his own text conversation with Wakefield.

It struck me that the language used by Wakefield in this exchange is completely different to the tone used in the supposed Thompson exchange – far more “texty”. Which makes me think that the Olmsted conversation is real, the Thompson one has been faked (not necessarily by Wakefield), but Wakefield is stringing everyone (including Olmsted) along claiming it’s real, knowing that Thompson’s legal advisers will be telling him to keep quiet and wait for the whole thing to blow over.

Now, where’s my tinfoil hat? 😉

Lawrence,

“CDC whistleblower” aside, here’s an example of a disconnect (i.e., misguided independence) when it comes to vaccine safety:

The CDC (NIOSH) website “How to Prevent Latex Allergies” states – If you are diagnosed with latex allergy, before receiving any shots (such as a flu shot), be sure the person giving it uses a latex-free vial stopper.

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/2012-119/pdfs/2012-119.pdf

In an FDA website “There’s No Guarantee of Latex Free” it states – To avoid giving a false sense of security to people who are allergic to natural rubber latex, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is recommending that manufacturers of FDA-regulated medical products stop using statements on labels such as ‘Latex-free’ or ‘does not contain latex’.

http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm342641.htm

So, the CDC says use a vaccine if it says “latex free” and the FDA recommends not labeling vaccines “Latex free”.

In my opinion, in a world of information overload and government disconnect, with respect to vaccines, we need medical science to step it up .

@Michael J. Dochniak

I’m allergic to latex. My earliest memories of balloons at parties was that I did not like them because my mouth and face would burn for hours. *latex allergy* was not asked about in hospitals until the late ~90’s early 2000’s or so, If I remember correctly, so that I and my mother would always have to inform them before hand. They would hang a big white caution sign on the door — But the room would still be full of latex.

I’m *assuming* the latex is somewhat in solution in the vile and not just the top?

Would that not be expected to increase inflammation beyond that expected?

What would be the percentage of boys(and their testosterone tendency to invite ethylmercury to sleep on the couch) with latex allergies?

And to think; I’d not have made that possible connection if Lawrence hadn’t pointed out you’re a troll. Good Lawrence! *grins*

Jeez, we went through this before….your evidence amounts to absolutely zero….please, just go away!

Dochniak’s evidence-free posts are annoying, sure, but I’ll be happy as long as he doesn’t post his Vogon-like poetry.

For the newbies, see
http://youtu.be/H2WPJQPo0kI
Skip to about 2:15

Perhaps Tim and Mr. Dochniak would like to argue over whether autism is due to ethylmercury or to latex allergy on Mr Dochniak’s Facebook page.

The last lab I worked in didn’t have any latex gloves, just those purple nitrile ones.

Tim might also be interested to see the paper that apparently convinced the Geiers that mercury binds testosterone here. If humans had benzene instead of blood and a normal temperature of 50C (122F), the Geiers might have been onto something regarding testosterone and mercury chloride (not ethylmercury). But they don’t and they weren’t.

Lordy, no Krebiozen! I don’t really ‘do’ papers…I’m a pothead.

However, I’d like to point out that many reactions which are not expected to occure do, in fact, occure in the presence of some catalyst (whether it modifies expected temp, pressure, concentrations,…, time) or other and that living systems are very very good at contributing to the total entropy of the universe by maintaining against certain otherwise thermodynamically unfavorable situations.

I’d certainly agree that the testosterone claim would need to be verified in vivo.

As for benzene?? I’ve got too much blood in my benzene-stream, at the moment to even know what that is. But I *thought* it was used in organic chemistry to simplify modeling certain criteria inside cytoplasm.

Respectful Insolence banter:

…evidence-free posts are annoying… (#232);
…completely one track mind…(#233);
…didn’t have any…(#234);
…it’s always…(#235); and
…I’m a pothead (#236).

If this is the typical respectful insolence on this Scienceblog it’s clear Prometheus is dearly missed.

But now, 4 days after the press release, there has been no further statement. Orac says he called the lawyer to specifically verify the texts, without response. As I have previously said, this can only be because Thompson can’t deny the texts (that is, that e sent them, not the truthfulness of the texts).
(emphasis added)

Except you can’t say that. You can tell us and all the world “Well, this is what I would do if I was in that situation, and every way I look at it, I think it’s the only smart thing to do” but frankly, that doesn’t even prove that it is a smart thing to do, let alone the only smart thing to do, let alone a thing to do so smart that anyone who doesn’t do it doesn’t have the option available to them.

You claim that we must be blinded because we’re not weighing the evidence correctly. I say that’s a beam that needs to come out of your own eye first. You say that you have not read “anything about [Wakefield] on the Internet” and therefore that prevents you from having any personal opinion about his credibility. Are you ignorant of one of the longest and most expensive proceedings in the history of the General Medical Council, which found Wakefield guilty of irresponsible and dishonest conduct and struck him off the medical register? Or do you have some private rationale why only opinions on the Internet are worthy of consideration – and then, only so marginal that if you don’t look at them then they aren’t relevant? (I can’t help noting that Wakefield called no witnesses in his defense during the GMC proceedings. By your own logic, that must prove that he was entirely dishonest and knew that no witness could possibly refute that, right?)

@Johnny,

That poem was pretty, um, … it’s just in the presentation, I’m sure it’s quite good, really. Besides, she’s probably somebody’s mother — Throw her into the vacuume of space, anyways.

It reminds me of the old Puff ‘n’ Stuff I’d watch at the doctor’s office while waiting for the brainswelling to go down every time I got an ‘allergy shot’.

And lastly. Who in their right mind apologizes in a txt?

If this is the typical respectful insolence on this Scienceblog it’s clear Prometheus is dearly missed.

Too true.

Again, for the newbies, Dochniak has been here in the past, spouting his assertions, but not the evidence. He said everything was in his book.

Prometheus, the keeper of A Photon In The Darkness, finally had enough, and procured a copy of the silly thing, so that we don’t have to. Prometheus wrote a rather uncomplimentary review.

Alas, A Photon In The Darkness is no more.

However, we have the Wayback Machine.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120104114416/http://photoninthedarkness.com/?p=243

Don’t forget to check out parts 2 and 3. The links on the left side of that page will take you there.

I promise the review is better than the poetry.

I wish I had gotten that level of support from the one that was nominally supervising me.

You need to stop letting others grade your fellatio writeups… first subpressions are often correct…

@Narad:

Our advice is to write different from and averse to.
– H.W. Fowler (1858–1933). The King’s English, 2nd ed. 1908.

@Ms Parker – perhaps you could shed some light on exactly what Thompson was apologizing for? Because it wasn’t as if the CDC was involved in the Wakefield affair….the whole flow of the text messages is just plain odd & doesn’t even make sense in context.

Perhaps you should call Wakefield (don’t you have his direct number?) and have him release all of the texts plus the audio recordings….wouldn’t that set the record straight & get the rest of us to shut up?

I wonder if Ms Parker can explain why I keep reading and hearing about Hooker-Thompson-Wakefield on AoA, PRN, TMR, NN but haven’t yet seen anything on standard sources ( CNN, CBC, BBC, Al Jezeera etc) ?

Citing the esteemed Orac’s analysis, I should add.

Our advice is to write different from and averse to.
– H.W. Fowler (1858–1933). The King’s English, 2nd ed. 1908.

“Before writing this dictionary, Henry Fowler and his younger brother, Francis George Fowler (1871–1918), wrote and revised The King’s English (1906), a grammar and usage guide later superseded by A Dictionary of Modern English Usage in the 1930s.”

I cited the first edition, 4th U.S. printing (1950).

@Narad

The man clearly couldn’t make up his own bloody mind. I’ll stick with “from”. 🙂

@Gusto – anti-vax bingo again…any chance that you might be able to think for yourself and not just parrot anti-vax lies from places like AoA….of course, the whole “Thompson was in charge” lie is new….the guy was just part of the team, certainly not the lead (hence why the study isn’t the “Thompson Study”).

As to the Bill Gates reference – seriously, don’t you have any brains at all?

Improved medical care, less disease & better standard of living = less births (and a lower birth rate) which means slower population growth – you know, since parents know that their kids aren’t going to die before age 5.

What an idiot.

That’s a weird statement if you don’t understand that there is an actual program to reduce human population. But for those of us who know, well it makes perfect sense. Shame I found out too late.

Is anyone really dumb enough to believe this? Why would Bill Gates want to reduce the world’s population anyway? Surely the more people who buy his products the better.

My kids’ brains have been destroyed.

Destroyed? Presumably they are dead if their brains have been “destroyed”. That’s awful, but why do you blame vaccines?

Gusto: “You guys know this stuff is poison and Thompson was the head of that panel that said it was safe. He’s come out admitting he lied…How could you not believe a man when he places himself in such a bad plight.”

You’re seriously asking why anyone wouldn’t believe a liar?

If the evidence that Pluto was a planet was unreliable, how can we trust anything scientists say about vaccines? Or something.

Dorit Reiss
….’citing the esteemed orac’…………Oh my.
How infinitely sad is such a description – of such a malignant narcissist.
The truthof this whole affair went skimming right over his head. Because he was never looking for it. This whole blog is his raison d’etre. It is an ego driven expression of his need for constant attention and applause.
You have shown your truest colors Dorit.

The best explanation I have ever seen of how improving education and health leads to reduced population growth is <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth"here

I just did a test on my IPhone. I looked at a text from a non-contact (when I had unread messages showing) where just the phone number showed up in the middle top of the screen. It said “back” I looked at a message from a contact.. it said “message”. I also had a text message from an email address (a rather long email address). It did not say either “back” or “message” just showed a back arrow. So it seems to me it changes based on number of characters it tries to display. I’m no scientist though just an engineer so my little scientific study probably needs to be looked at more just like the CDC’s. You should quit spouting off conspiracy theories when you are supposed to be a scientific type. I have only followed your blog since the break of this news because I wanted a scientific view of the information that has come to light. You shout insults and no tolerance at the other side like a grade schooler. I used to sit on the same side of the fence as you but I’m not naive enough to think the government is always on the up and up and will do what is necessary to keep itself intact. That includes omitting data on a subject that is as big as this. To me this is bigger than the Snowden whistleblowing. I never would doubt big brother spying on its citizens but covering data on disease issues by the CDC should anger anyone and at least be a wakeup call for investigation of any fraud that might be happening. Smallpox was found mishandled in a lab and within 3 weeks a congressional hearing. Why not in this case? Because it’s being intentionally covered with sand as fast as the media and government can shovel it. It’s a real crisis for them if this became mainstream news that the average person could see.

I have to ask this question. If you are so sure you are correctly basing your beliefs on vaccines are you calling every parent a liar that has seen their child regress the same day they take their child to “well visits” for their vaccine shots? Just curious. I wonder if you would be singing the same tune if you took your normal child to a “wellness visit” and came out with your child not being the same person. I bet you would be trying to scientifically prove what just happened to your kid. Also if enough people are saying this has happened don’t you think it should be studied or looked into even more? I mean an official at the CDC who was a co-author of the study has said its not on the up and up. Don’t you think we owe it to a generation of children and the public itself to do more independent studies on the subject? It only makes sense. I say quit burying your head in the sand and look for the truth and not what you are told is the truth. I trust the thousands of parents with a story to tell than I do a government scientist telling me I have to jab this syringe full of weird crap into my newborn child. Open your eyes and mind Orac and quit being so rude to parents that are obviously hurt and struggling to cope with why their children have to be injured. If this subject ever happened to become mainstream and lies were admitted by the government.. I would hope this blog becomes a great big apology to the folks you have tried to demonize by calling them cranks, whacks and whatever other terms you have used to classify these folks. It’s sickening listening your back peddling trying to explain away what has happened whether you agree with Wakefield or Hooker or you don’t.. Bottom line is William Thompson a co-author of the study says its BS. I guess he is lying about his part in a bad study? Why would he lie about that and jeopardize his career or worse put his life in jeopardy? I think you need to put yourself in someone else’s shoes for a moment.

Apologies for the blockquote fail.

LiamsDadTim,

You should quit spouting off conspiracy theories when you are supposed to be a scientific type.

The people releasing this information have recently produced a video comparing the CDC to Tuskegee, Pol Pot and Stalin that contains a scientist’s voice recorded without his knowledge or permission. One of the parties in the text exchange behaved so appallingly he was struck of the British medical register. These are people we should trust not to manipulate information for their own ends? Wouldn’t that be more than a little naive?

I have only followed your blog since the break of this news because I wanted a scientific view of the information that has come to light. You shout insults and no tolerance at the other side like a grade schooler.

That’s odd. I have found the explanations of the science here very useful. Where are the insults in the post above? The only ones I can see describe the Hooker/Wakefield video as “vile” and Hooker’s study as “execrable”, both of which insult objects, not people, and both of which are entirely justified, in my view.

I used to sit on the same side of the fence as you

Of course you did.

but I’m not naive enough to think the government is always on the up and up and will do what is necessary to keep itself intact.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting anything of the sort. Conversely, I think it is unwise to attribute anything to sinister machinations when incompetence or foolishness are equally viable explanations. Look at the evidence, always.

To me this is bigger than the Snowden whistleblowing.

To me this is a storm in a teacup. It seems obvious that there is no story here, unless Hooker and/or Thompson have more actually damning revelations to come.

I never would doubt big brother spying on its citizens but covering data on disease issues by the CDC should anger anyone and at least be a wakeup call for investigation of any fraud that might be happening.

That isn’t what has happened. I suggest you read Orac’s posts on the subject, and read some of the comments. Omitting data that is unreliable or correcting for known confounders is normal scientific practice.

Smallpox was found mishandled in a lab and within 3 weeks a congressional hearing. Why not in this case?

Because those that understand the science involved can see there has been no wrongdoing here? I would welcome a congressional hearing, as it might put a stop to some of this fuss about nothing, but I imagine they have more important things to worry about.

Because it’s being intentionally covered with sand as fast as the media and government can shovel it. It’s a real crisis for them if this became mainstream news that the average person could see.

I don’t think so. I hope that most people could understand the science if explained properly, those who aren’t already blinkered by their convictions that vaccines cause autism anyway.

I have to ask this question. If you are so sure you are correctly basing your beliefs on vaccines are you calling every parent a liar that has seen their child regress the same day they take their child to “well visits” for their vaccine shots? Just curious.

Not liars, mistaken, or assuming causation from a temporal association, the post hoc fallacy. Autism begins much earlier but is often first noticed at the same time vaccines are given. It is understandable that some parents might leap to the wrong conclusions.

In Madsen’s MMR study, out of over half a million children that included 738 cases of autism and other ASDs recorded in the study, only 11 were diagnosed within 6 months of being vaccinated with MMR.

There is also the study that Julian alluded to, this study done in North East London in 2003, five years after Wakefield’s fraudulent paper was published. In only 12 of the 118 cases of regressive autism did the parents blame vaccines. It was also clear that some parents had changed their view on what had caused their child’s autism only after Wakefield’s study was published:

Widespread public concern about the possible relation between autism and MMR began in August 1997, with the pre-publication release of information about the Wakefield study, which attracted considerable and ongoing media attention.[…] From August 1997 the reported presence or timing of regression changed in 13 cases. For six of these, regression was mentioned for the first time after August 1997, even though many health professionals had seen these children before this date. In seven cases the recorded timing of onset of regression changed in relation to MMR: six closer, one further away.

This is good evidence that some parents have edited their memories of the timing, and even the occurrence, of their child’s autistic regression after they became aware of the claim that MMR causes autism.

I wonder if you would be singing the same tune if you took your normal child to a “wellness visit” and came out with your child not being the same person. I bet you would be trying to scientifically prove what just happened to your kid.

As distressing as this experience might be, assuming that the vaccinations caused the apparent changes in the child is a mistake. Look at the omnibus autism proceedings, where Michelle Cedillo was claimed to be developmentally normal before she received the MMR vaccine. But, “… displayed early signs of autism clearly visibly on family video taken prior to her receiving the MMR vaccine.”

Also if enough people are saying this has happened don’t you think it should be studied or looked into even more?

Even more? Just how many more negative studies do we need?

I say quit burying your head in the sand and look for the truth and not what you are told is the truth.

Right back at you. Have you read the DeStefano study? Hooker’s hopelessly incompetent “reanalysis”? Do you understand the difference between a case control study and a cohort study? If not, you should learn some statistics and read the blog posts here on the subject. I think you will see that the truth is not what you have been told it is. It is those who refuse to accept the large and continually growing body of evidence that vaccines do not cause autism who have their heads in the sand.

I trust the thousands of parents with a story to tell than I do a government scientist telling me I have to jab this syringe full of weird crap into my newborn child.

I don’t think “weird crap” is a very scientific way of describing a medical intervention that has saved millions if not billions of lives. If you understood anything about vaccines you wouldn’t use such emotive terms.

Open your eyes and mind Orac and quit being so rude to parents that are obviously hurt and struggling to cope with why their children have to be injured.

Where has Orac ever been rude to the parents of a disabled child? Please link to it, as I have never witnessed such a thing.

If this subject ever happened to become mainstream and lies were admitted by the government..

That’s not going to happen. I think it will become clear that Thompson has grossly misunderstood the statistics involved in the studies he coauthored.

I would hope this blog becomes a great big apology to the folks you have tried to demonize by calling them cranks, whacks and whatever other terms you have used to classify these folks.

Where has Orac called the parents of disabled children “cranks” or “whacks”? Please be specific, or I will be forced to conclude you are lying.

It’s sickening listening your back peddling trying to explain away what has happened whether you agree with Wakefield or Hooker or you don’t..

I haven’t seen any explaining away, I have seen cogent analysis of the science involved that has convinced me that Thompson is mistaken.

Bottom line is William Thompson a co-author of the study says its BS. I guess he is lying about his part in a bad study? Why would he lie about that and jeopardize his career or worse put his life in jeopardy? I think you need to put yourself in someone else’s shoes for a moment.

Based on what I have read and heard (which may be incomplete or taken out of context) I think he has made a terrible mistake based on his misunderstanding of the statistics involved in the studies he has been involved in.

Oh, and if you seriously think his life is in danger, it seems to me that you are somewhat hypocritical complaining that Orac’s speculations about the authenticity of some texts is “spouting off conspiracy theories”!

@ ChrisP:

I don’t know about a ‘truckload’ but AoA says’ 100,000′ pages.
Recently, Hooker said that he had “tens of thousands of pages”** so who knows! These people aren’t exactly the best with numbers though. Possibly it involved 12, 000.

-btw- if you peruse AoA, you’ll notice that the references to the whistleblower story include Natural News, Breitbart, BenSwann etc.
OBVIOUSLY the mainstream media has blocked this earth-shattering news as it is but an enabling servant of Big Pharma and Big Government.

** on the Gary Null Show PRN a few weeks ago where he was a guest yesterday as well.

well, el Honcho Grande** de PRN claims to have “counselled” 70,000 people-
which REALLY means *throw 3 zeroes after any number to impress the marks*
similarly, he has 5000 studies about ginseng, 2 million listeners and has invented thousands of new products.

** right, I know it’s bad Spanish- what you think I pick up from *las Latinas* dance class?

100,000 pages is about 50 bankers boxes or so of documentation – which is actually very small when compared to the amount of paperwork normally generated.

Given the lack of scientific knowledge usually exhibited by the typical Congressman and staff, I don’t know if they’d even know what they were looking at….

Denice, wouldn’t it be el Queso Grande de PRN?

What a bunch of smug wankers . You’re seriously siding with CDC and drug companies . Are you all at work ?

@michael

So, got any evidence for your assertions?

Or are you a smug wanker, like you seem to be, posting without any evidence?

Dr. Gorski,

You and your readers have spent an inordinate amount of time and energy speculating about the veracity of the text message exchange I posted to my website The Truth Barrier, seen here:

http://truthbarrier.com/2014/09/02/breaking-news-cdc-whistleblower-text-messages-to-andy-wakefield-study-would-have-supported-his-scientific-opinion/

On your blog, people even Google mapped my building,published my address, and speculated about my son’s age and computer equipment.

But you never thought to contact me, and ask me.

It’s Nov 4, 2014, and this is a matter of public record:

I am inviting you to engage in a resolution of this, so that the questions raised can be answered. Typically, as a journalist. when you want to find something out, you start by contacting people close to the story. You ask questions. Unless, of course, you don’t really want to know the answer.

Journalists don’t rely on comments from readers of their blogs to find things out, nor merely consult their own thoughts and suspicions. They investigate.

So let’s find out of the texts are fake.

I challenge you to go to the source–to write to Dr. William Thompson at the CDC and ask him if he had these exchanges with Dr. Wakefield and his wife.

Then I’d like you to ask me anything you like, about the texts.

Present me with terms of proof that would satisfy you and your readers that they are real not fake.

You want to know that beneath the name “William” on Dr. Wakefield’s phone, there is a cell phone number belonging to Dr. Thompson, correct? We all understand that we are not at liberty to make this number public.

Let us agree that if the texts are proven real, you will publish the results, and apologize to me for the false and slanderous accusations that I published falsified materials.

My question to you is this: If they ARE proven real, what does that mean?

It means that Dr. William Thompson is a real, as opposed to “fake” CDC Whistleblower. It means that he was not at all “taken out of context” by Dr. Wakefield and Dr. Hooker. It means that he stands by what he said in his press release, namely that the CDC significantly altered (falsified) data, and deliberately sought to eliminate the link between MMR vaccines given at a certain time in neurological development, and autism.

If you do not think this is what Dr. Thompson means to convey, please say so here and now, and we will answer that question next. I am inviting you to pose, investigate, and weigh evidence to three questions, publicly:

1. Are the texts real?
2. Does Dr. Thompson confess to partaking in scientific fraud at the CDC?
3. Does Dr. Thompson feel Dr. Wakefield’s career was unjustly destroyed, and that his own study, done right, would have backed up the paper Dr. Wakefield lost his career over?

Your reputation is at stake. I await your reply.

Journalists don’t rely on comments from readers of their blogs to find things out, nor merely consult their own thoughts and suspicions. They investigate.

And what exactly is your basis for promoting Orac from a blogger, who can publish whatever the hell thoughts and suspicions he wants on his blog because it’s his blog, to a “journalist”? Oh, because it’s convenient to you? Sorry, not a good enough reason.

On your blog, people even Google mapped my building,published my address, and speculated about my son’s age and computer equipment.

I seem to have missed this, but that may have something to do with my not giving a flying fυck about dime-a-dozen media nonentities, much less their sons’ “equipment.”

Silly me… two months? No, six years.

Say France, Celia.

The text exchange was given to more than one journalist. I posted it first. Then it was out and that was that.

Please don’t change the subject. I only want to hear from Orac. I know you are no fans of mine but that shouldn’t interfere with our quest to examine whether the texts are real. We’re not reviewing my career here. I covered the HIV debate extensively, yes. That’s not relevant here.

You want ME to contact Dr. Thompson to prove that your accusations that the texts are false are baseless?

Blogs count as journalism.

But that’s fascinating. You’re arguing that this blog should not have to perform any fact finding because it’s a blog?

I doubt that will be Orac’s position.

The text exchange was given to more than one journalist.

ZOMG, please tell me that Attkisson was the one who had the sense to not stomp on a flaming bag clearly labeled “WARNING: Contains Dog Shіt” on the doorstep.

I remember this comment from I. Rony Meter @105 in response to Sadmar’s exegesis of the auxiliary information distributed via EXIF fields:

By the way, you are posting too much information about her. We don’t need to know that for this discussion. No reason to post such details.

^ I now see where the typo was. This one I’m going to do over:

I remember this comment from I. Rony Meter @105 in response to Sadmar’s exegesis of the auxiliary information distributed via EXIF fields:

By the way, you are posting too much information about her. We don’t need to know that for this discussion. No reason to post such details.

The payload of Celia Farber’s appearance (Fazzm) is Celia Farber.

I was unaware that Celia Farber had any credibility to be blasted.

Why should I send a private email after my credibility is blasted all over this site, publicly?

You’re an AIDS denialist. What credibility do you think you possibly have?

You want ME to contact Dr. Thompson to prove that your accusations that the texts are false are baseless?

Considering you were the one to publicise the texts to begin with, you should have done your due diligence and confirmed the veracity yourself.*

*This coming from someone who doesn’t give a flying fig whether the texts are real or not.

Funny that someone who made a career of denying science and spreading mis-information about hiv/aids refers to Orac’s ‘reputation’ being ‘at stake’.

@ Todd W.:

Well, obviously her work passes muster at PRN where she hosted an internet radio show ( Radio Free Science)** and appeared in support of that outlet’s host on a panel for his anti-vax film ‘premier’ amongst anti-vax experts somewhere on Long Island as well as on his broadcasts.

My mother always said be careful of what company you keep, it informs people about your qualities or lack thereof.

** amongst that network’s conglomeration of luminaries like David Lewis and David Crowe.

Ms. Farber: “Your reputation is at stake. I await your reply.”

And later: “Why should I send a private email after my credibility is blasted all over this site, publicly?”

One thing about being on the west coast is seeing this exchange just as I start my day. It was hilarious.

Since Ms. Farber tossed away her reputation and credibility years ago, perhaps she should stop pretending to be a “journalist” and go into comedy.

You make an assumption that I did not know the veracity of the texts before I published them. I did.

They are real, and you know it, and yes, I did note the third possibility, that the texts are real.

You’re the one who has a relationship with Dr. Thompson’s attorney. The challenge is that you take any steps of any kind to FIND OUT if YOUR OWN published suspicions are valid. You can’t publish wild suspicions and accusations and then expect the recipient of the accusations to jump around and attempt to extinguish all your concerns.

A journalist takes responsibility for trying to find answers to their own questions. The way you do that is by contacting the parties involved and asking for comment on or off the record.

So, we’ve established that you don’t do journalism. That you react with indignation upon being asked to lift a finger to find out whether any of your conspiracy theories are valid. That all your reader’s brain bubbles about the interfaces of iPhones were and are absurd. That the only journalist present here, Brian Deer, tried to set you straight, but even that had no sobering effect on your thought processes.

That you can’t even stick to the point enough NOT to throw Christine Maggiore’s corpse into this. (Her cause of death was renal failure. And she had pneumonia and bronchitis at death.)

I am not in a position to start demanding affidavits from William Thompson.

In two months, he has in no way denied either sending the texts, nor objected to their being published.

Does that tell you anything?

I urged you to contact him, as a means of showing you that I DO know they are real, and inviting you to ALSO learn that they are real.

If you care, if you want to know the truth, try to find out. All I can do is state publicly that were you to unearth a shred of real evidence, from Thompson or anybody else, that the texts are false, I would heartily participate in the process of correcting the record. But they are real, so that won’t happen.

You also have no evidence Thompson ever said his comments were taken out of context. Note the wording: “Taken out of context.”

Where does he say that?

The context is given BY Thompson IN his own press release on Aug 27, in which he states that he regrets partaking in the research fraud at the CDC.

You can hear his voice on those recordings, can’t you?

It doesn’t matter what you think. The matter is moving toward congressional hearings and there are criminal implications in this.

Dr. Thompson expressed clearly that his conscience had become unbearable.

In your mystification about what “motivates” Dr. Thompson, I don’t know how to translate to you what it means to have a conscience. That’s the story.

Read or listen to his own words, maybe, as a start?

Journalism is nothing if not this: Listening.

I urged you to contact him, as a means of showing you that I DO know they are real, and inviting you to ALSO learn that they are real.

Is there any reason why anyone would be interested in the contents of your head in the first place? Jesus Christ, that thing on top of your neck-stalk led you to pitch a fit over a two-month-old post in the first place.

Read or listen to his own words, maybe, as a start?
That would be nice.

Celia Farber–

let me start with this: don’t do to my community (autism) what you’ve done to HIV/AIDS. We don’t need more people causing us harm.

Your claim to fame in this whole story is, what, again? Andrew Wakefield sent you something purporting to be text messages and you posted them. Wow. And you are still on this topic months later? And still haven’t provided actual evidence that they are real? Don’t lecture people on journalism. Show your evidence. Stop blameshifting.

What if the text messages are real? What then? Then Bill Thompson should resign all work on autism at CDC. Because a researcher shouldn’t be engaged in fixing someone’s reputation. That’s a clear bias.

If he had stated that he wanted to bolster the reputation of someone pro-vaccine, there would be just criticism.

Let’s look at that one purported text message now:

“I do believe your husbands career was unjustly damaged and this study would have supported his scientific opinion. Hopefully I can help repair it.”

If you understand research, you understand why that would disqualify him from performing autism research at CDC.

“Does that tell you anything?”

Yep. He’s not talking about anything to do with this topic. Not confirming. Not denying. Not running up attorney bills.

Should we just assume that you have the evidence because you say so? Trust you? Why? You assert you have evidence. Maybe you do. You don’t share your evidence.

Trust Andrew Wakefield? Why? Andrew Wakefield has proven repeatedly that he lies.

I am aware of one person who attempted to contact Mr. Thompson. Thompson declined to speak. He declined to respond to emails. I believe Orac is aware of these attempts as well. Orac did contact Thompson’s attorney. Should he keep calling the attorney? Because, we all have the right to run up Thompson’s legal bills, even if we know that the information his attorney will give out is limited?

Again, I see a lot of blameshifting. And a huge focus by you on a very minor matter.

I’m a bit more interested in the fact that Andrew Wakefield has decided to ally with an HIV/AIDS denialist than the veracity of these texts. He’s gone on lecture tours with New World Order types and 9/11 truthers, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

http://blogs.plos.org/thepanicvirus/2011/06/07/its-official-wakefield-joins-the-ranks-of-truthers-new-world-order-conspiracists/

“The matter is moving toward congressional hearings and there are criminal implications in this.”

Because congressional hearings have helped he autism community in the past? (answer: no).

If there are criminal implications in this, it would be based on some evidence not yet made public. Andrew Wakefield and Brian Hooker’s complaint shows a lack of substance.

And I like the vague and leading “moving towards congressional hearings”. Really? By what measure? It’s nice that you have an out in that you never said there would be a hearing, much less plural hearings, while implying that this has the attention of congress.

By the way, You did notice where Wakefield and Hooker had to change the wording of a key phrase in the analysis plan in order to make their argument work, didn’t you? You did piece together the sequence of events and see that Wakefield and Hooker misrepresented them, didn’t you? As a journalist and all, you did check the facts, right? You read the complaint and checked what was stated?

You asked what evidence Orac would accept as proof. And when given a response you build straw man arguments:

“I am not in a position to start demanding affidavits from William Thompson.”

No one asked you to demand. You inserted that word. Orac stated that a public statement or an affidavit would demonstrate proof. Among other evidence.

And, let’s also move on to goal post shifting. On October 2nd you were fine with the idea of a statement by Mr. Thompson being used as proof:

@doritmi @oracknows @littlepowder @DrWakefield Can I take that as a formal agreement? Statement OR phone records?— Celia Farber (@CeliaFarber) October 3, 2014

Now when that is repeated, you retreat behind “I am not in a position to start demanding affidavits from William Thompson.”

You can go ahead and argue with Orac all you want. I don’t care. Just stop using my community as your hammer for this and whatever other purposes you have. You, Wakefield and others are a bunch of carpetbaggers causing harm to a community to which you don’t belong.

It’s sad how those who disagree with Celia Farber always come across as being so defensive. It reeks of weakness and fear.

“Is there any reason why anyone would be interested in the contents of your head in the first place? Jesus Christ, that thing on top of your neck-stalk led you to pitch a fit over a two-month-old post in the first place.”

If you’re willing to say they’re false, then why wouldn’t you? You must be very frightened.

Celia Farber:

They are real, and you know it, and yes, I did note the third possibility, that the texts are real.

There are serious doubts about that.

The context is given BY Thompson IN his own press release on Aug 27, in which he states that he regrets partaking in the research fraud at the CDC.

You are now lying through your teeth. He didn’t use the word “fraud”.
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2014/08/28/a-bad-day-for-antivaccinationists-a-retraction-and-the-cdc-whistleblower-issues-a-statement/

You can hear his voice on those recordings, can’t you?

Umm, you did read Orac’s comments about “taken out of context”, didn’t you? It’s very easy to slice up words so that what a person says can be made to sound like the opposite. As an old saying goes, “Even the devil can quote scripture to further his aims”.
We’re not denying that that’s Thompson’s voice, we’re saying that, given Wakefield’s record of deception, these texts should be taken with more than a pinch of salt.

Bennett, you are completely wrong. If someone has doubts about a claim, the only responsibility is to voice those doubts and the reasons why. It is up to the person making the claim to provide the evidence for the claim.

As for Xerocky, their comment is simply nonsense. I don’t care that much whether the texts are real or fake. Either way it provides a clear insight into the agenda of Andrew Wakefield and clearly demonstrates his narcissism and greed.

Wow, just wow. Did I just read Celia Farber’s comments about challenging Orac to prove the text messages are real, when she is the individual who posted them on her blog?

How did Farber get those screen shots? Did they arrive in snail mail in a plain brown envelope. Did someone hand deliver the text messages?

Hooker’s paper has been fully retracted and the “CDC Whistleblower” story is very old news.

Narad, you are a fucking cunt, and a miserable excuse for a human being. May you contract a fatal illness and die a miserable death you pathetic cretin.