autism
oracknows | December 2, 2008Well, it looks as though I've stepped into it yet one more time.
Believe it or not, I hadn't intended to stir up trouble among the ScienceBlogs collective, both English- and German-speaking. Really. Oh, I'll admit that there are occasionally times when I actually do mean to stir up trouble. One recent example is when it was rumored that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. might be chosen to be Secretary of the Interior or, even worse, Director of the EPA. Much to my surprise, I actually did manage to stir up a goodly amount of blogospheric reaction, too. Although I believed it to be a good cause, this…
oracknows | November 28, 2008You know what my answer to this question would be. But what about puppet Steve Colbert's answer? He disagrees. Or does he:
"Now sure, she's not the kind of expert who relies on facts and figures....She knows what she feels is true. She's that kind of expert."
Heh.
Oh, damn. PZ beat me to this. Damn it, making fun of Jenny McCarthy and antivaccinationists is my turf on ScienceBlogs!
oracknows | November 17, 2008Everyone knows that the quackery-friendly, antivaccine blog Age of Autism has a rather--shall we say?--hypocritical stance when it comes to free speech. For one thing, for all their complaints about censorship and not being heard by the government, its denizens frequently confuse freedom of speech with freedom from criticism. For another thing, they also ruthlessly censor comments that they do not like on their blog itself. Worst of all, they tacitly support the "outing" of pseudonymous commenters if such commenters annoy them enough.
Someone's finally gotten tired of it. Indeed, someone has…
mikethemadbiologist | November 13, 2008In light of all the executive branch changes people are hoping for, I wonder how much longer CDC Director Julie Gerberding has. I'm guessing she's there until late January....
I don't claim to speak for CDC employees, but, in some divisions, morale is incredibly low--people are considering leaving as soon as they can*. This doesn't sound like a well run organization to me.
As far as I can tell, Gerberding has never stood up to Congress, which means when everything becomes a priority, or at least the priority du jour, then nothing is a priority. I've also heard her prattle on about the need…
oracknows | November 10, 2008One whole year of antivaccinationist lunacy, that is.
Sorry, that's one birthday I won't be sending good wishes over. No other blog brings home the stupid when it comes to vaccines with such regularity. It's a veritable black hole of intellect there, from which no science and reason is ever seen to escape.
oracknows | November 8, 2008Seen on the discussion boards of that other repository of antivaccinationist wingnuttery (other than The Huffington Post), Mothering.com, a commenter by the 'nym of naupakamama exults over the possible appointment of antivaccine wingnut Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to run the Environmental Protection Agency:
We could have a strong anti-vaccine voice leading the EPA! I am so excited!
If anyone doubts that the antivaccine fringe views RFK, Jr. as one of their own, the rejoicing going on in antivaccine circles should put those doubts to rest. In more reality-based circles, including very liberal ones…
oracknows | November 6, 2008Yesterday, I wrote about a very disturbing development (disturbing, at least, to the science-based community) in the transition to an Obama Administration. That disturbing development is the multiple reports that antivaccine crank Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being seriously considered to head the Environmental Protection Agency or even the Department of the Interior. Given RFK, Jr.'s conspiracy-mongering over vaccines, his utter failure to change his belief that mercury in vaccines causes autism in the face of overwhelming evidence that it does not. My argument was that appointing someone who is…
oracknows | November 6, 2008I wrote about this study the other day, but clearly I didn't have the final word. As usual, The Onion nails it.
edyong | November 6, 2008Specific language impairment (SLI) is a language disorder that affects growing children, who find it inexplicably difficult to pick up the spoken language skills that their peers acquire so effortlessly. Autism is another (perhaps more familiar) developmental disorder and many autistic children also have problems in picking up normal speech and communication. These two conditions have a common theme of language difficulties running through them, but a new study reveals a deeper connection - both are linked to a gene called CNTNAP2.
The story of CNTNAP2 actually begins with another gene,…
oracknows | November 5, 2008One of the aspects of the Barack Obama candidacy that raised my hopes and those of so many of my fellow ScienceBloggers, as well as scientists tired of the crass politicization of science under the Bush administration, was the prospect of an Administration in which science and reason were valued and in which cranks were not allowed to impose their agenda on agencies whose policies should be driven by the science. That's one reason why I was very disturbed when I read a post on Election Day suggesting that antivaccinationist crank and activist extraordinaire, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was being…
oracknows | November 5, 2008...is Joseph at Autism Natural Variation.
It turns out that he can't find the correlation between precipitation levels and autism diagnoses that Waldman et al study; he too points out that urbanicity was not controlled for; and he even thinks a bit of cherry picking may have occurred.
Meanwhile, Steve Novella is a bit less harsh, but his analysis is pretty skeptical as well.
oracknows | November 5, 2008I guess Barack Obama's mad hypnotic powers worked.
One non-political thing that this election has reminded me of is that when you've been blogging as long as I have (nearly four years now--almost as long as a Presidential term!--assuming you're good and have found a niche in the blogosphere, you can become one of the "go-to" bloggers for certain subjects. Even though I've taken on the pseudonym (and, some might say, the persona) of a cranky talking computer with a bad attitude that looked like a cheap Plexiglas box of multicolored blinking lights and was featured in a 30 year old British…
oracknows | November 4, 2008OK, even though I have said time and time again that I rarely do any posts that are strictly political in nature, mainly because political bloggers are a dime a dozen, great political bloggers are rare, and I don't consider myself anything better than an at best passable political blogger. However, when politics intersects my areas of medical interest, I can't resist diving in, and unfortunately, Walter Olson gave me a reason to dive in today. In fact, to some extent he killed my election day buzz about the prospects for an Obama victory and a return to a government that respects science and…
oracknows | October 30, 2008I ask this question because I have seen something I have never seen before, something so earth-shattering that I wonder if the very axis of the earth has shifted, something so incredible that I have to pinch myself to make sure that I'm not living some unbelievably bizarre dream. I half expect the heavens to open and reveal the Second Coming. What could provoke such incredulity in me?
WorldNetDaily has published an article that is science-based and makes sense. A sample:
Much more disturbingly, McCarthy attacked Peet for daring to disagree with her. "She has a lot of [nerve] to come forward…
oracknows | October 29, 2008Longtime readers of this blog know that my original exposure to antivaccination conspiracy theories first occurred in the context of the now pseudoscientific and discredited hypothesis that somehow the mercury in the thimerosal preservative that used to be used in vaccines was the cause of autism. Despite the backpedaling among antivaccination zealots such as J. B. Handley in the face of overwhelming epidemiological evidence that mercury in vaccines is in fact not detectably correlated with an increased incidence or risk of autism, there still remains a die-hard contingent who insists against…
oracknows | October 24, 2008You remember Dr. Rashid Buttar, don't you? He's that blight on North Carolina's medical establishment, known for his "transdermal chelation therapy" that he's unable to demonstrate as being able to be absorbed through the skin, much less chelate anything (arguably a good thing, actually, because at least it probably doesn't hurt anyone, as a real transdermal chelation agent might). He's also known for some rather more--shall we say?--colorful "treatments" for autism (colorful as in "yellow"), not to mention IV ozone. He's also in trouble with the North Carolina Medical Board for using equally…
oracknows | October 21, 2008Oprah Winfrey supports quackery.
That has been richly demonstrated over the last few years, particularly with her gauzy, praise-filled segments featuring such pro-woo luminaries as Jenny McCarthy, her frequently having physicians boosters of "alternative medicine" like Mehmet Oz and Christiane Northrup on her show, and her tight embrace of New Age "spirituality."
Alarmed at the antivaccination nonsense being pushed on Oprah's show, Every Child By Two has been circulating an e-mail:
Please Take The Time To Contact The Oprah Winfrey Show
It has been quite some time since Every Child By Two (…
oracknows | October 21, 2008I've been very critical of The Huffington Post since shortly after its formation three years ago, when (I believe) I was the first blogger to notice a proliferation of antivaccination propaganda at the then brand new group blog. It is a situation that the HuffPo has maintained to the present day. Indeed, on that day three years ago, I noticed that, right in among posts written by such mercury militia antivaccine apologists such as David Kirby, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., there was also Dr. Jay Gordon, who is currently very unhappy at having had a taste of not-so-Respectful Insolence yesterday.…
sporte | October 18, 2008Sometimes I'm thankful for all extra restrictions on air travel that got imposed after 9/11. Not the ones involving personal searches, taking your shoes off, or putting all your liquids in plastic bags, but I do like having to arrive at the airport 2 hours ahead of any scheduled trip.
The reason is that I'm a sucker for airport book stores. Almost every time I go on a trip, I bring home more books than I packed. Sometimes surprisingly, as in the case of "Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's" by John Elder Robison, I even have to fight with my children to get the book back.
I don't…