Denialism

Lamar Smith: Nothing more than a hippie puncher

gregladen — Wed, 29 Mar 2017 10:25:51 +0000

Lamar Smith: Nothing more than a hippie puncher

Congressman Lamar Smith is a well known science denier, especially a climate science denier.

Recently, he admitted that the House committee he runs is a tool of the anti-science forces.

At a recent conference at the pro-Tobacco anti-Science Koch (and others) funded fake think tank Heartland, this happened:

Smith: Next week we’re going to have a hearing on our favorite subject of climate change and also on the scientific method, which has been repeatedly ignored by the so-called self-professed climate scientists.

Audience Member: I applaud you for saying you’ll be using the term climate studies, not climate science. But I also urge you to use the term politically correct science.

Smith: Good point. And I’ll start using those words if you’ll start using two words for me. The first is never, ever use the word progressive. Instead, use the word liberal. The second is never use the word 'mainstream' media, because they aren’t. Use 'liberal' media. Is that a deal? I’ll give you a bonus. When we talk about changing the Senate rules on ending filibusters, don’t use the word ‘nuclear’ option. That has a negative connotation. Use ‘democratic’ option.

Smith agreed with an audience member that the EPA should not be regulating air quality, and that there is no limit to how far he would go in dismantling the last 8 years of environmental regulation.

Smith (a Republican, but you already knew that) also noted that Trump (a Republican as well) would pretty much do whatever Smith and the Heartland Institute want him do to: Dismantle environmental regulations generally.

Smith's top contributor last year was an energy company, and the top industry that funds his campaign is the Oil and Gas industry.

Source of the dialog.

gregladen Wed, 03/29/2017 - 06:25

Tags

Climate Change

Global Warming

Denial

Denialism

Denier

Lemar Smith

Science Denial

This guy wants your children to die

Winged Monkey

This is beyond words...

This is beyond words…

Oh, I don't know. How about 'vermin'?

>Smith also noted that Trump would pretty much do whatever Smith and the Heartland Institute want him do to:

Where does he say that? That is something that Trump hating Republicans are hoping for, but I see nothing to support that. It appears to be Greg Laden's words, not even the source article's, which says

In fact, as Smith told one audience member who worried that Trump might renege on some to his campaign promises, the sky’s the limit when it comes to dismantling the past 8 years of environmental regulations.

“I think the president has ushered in a permanent change in the political climate,” Smith asserted. “And by that I mean I think he’ll keep his promises and that he’ll do exactly what he said. You’re seeing that in his appointments, like Scott Pruitt at EPA, for example. So … I don’t think you’ll have any disappointment on any of those issues.”

Nothing like 'Trump is our puppet and will do what we say.'

I remember Lamar Smith from when Stephen Colbert testified before Congress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFswnse0yGM

Democrats were embarrassed when Colbert showed up in character. Lamar Smith found the whole thing amusing and actually flummoxed Colbert a bit by asking him serious questions and he was forced to agree with Lamar since he was in character.

He was flummoxed that someone would take his piss-take seriously.

Poe's law struck at the "highest levels".

Lamar isn't the sharpest tool in the kiddie's arts and crafts folder....

Dr. Gavin Schmidt's Epic Response to Scott Adams

gregladen — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 11:07:36 +0000

Dr. Gavin Schmidt's Epic Response to Scott Adams

Scott Adams is the creator of Dilbert, the once funny but now highly repetitive cartoon about a nerd who has a job in an office.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt is high up in the top ten list of world class climate scientists. He is Director of the currently under siege GISS Unit of NASA, where much of the climate science done by that agency is carried out. If you read my blog, you've read his work, because you also read RealClimate, where GS writes about climate science in a manner designed to be understandable to the intelligent, honestly interested, thoughtful individual.

Adams has a history of going after core science concepts, often substituting scientific reality with his own. He has done so with climate science.

And, he's done it again. In a recent blog post (of yesterday) Adams tries to "convince skeptics that climate change is a problem"

This is a re-hash of earlier posts he's written, in which he does the old denial two step. Of course climate change is real, he says. I'm not a scientist, he says. I don't know jack about climate science in particular, he says. Then, he uses up piles of ink telling climate scientists how they've got all the science wrong.

His objective, I assume, is to spread and nurture doubt about climate science and science in general.

Dr Schmidt caught a tweet of Adams', pointing to his absurd blog post, and responded with a series of tweets addressing all the things.

I wanted to preserve this excellent, well documented and richly illustrated TweetTextBook, and it occurred to me that you might want to see it too. So, here are the tweets.

Feel free to add additional relevant tweets to the comments, if you like. I hope this doesn't break the Internet.

gregladen Thu, 03/09/2017 - 06:07

Tags

Climate and Weather

Climate Change

climate change graphics

climate change graphics

Not just that warming has followed predictions, but that warming has followed the predictions made by Exxon-Mobil and the predictions of BP-Shell (as well as the predictions of climate scientists).

Everyone is in agreement. What a consensus!

The more nuanced quote from Box is

The fact that the polynomial is an
approximation does not necessarily detract
from its usefulness because all models are
approximations. Essentially, all models are
wrong, but some are useful. However, the
approximate nature of the model must always
be borne in mind.”
From the book: Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces (1987, p 424), by Box
and Draper.

This doesn't take away from Schmidt's points or Adams' idiocy. It does address the fake objections from climate deniers (including the bozos who repeatedly post here) that the climate models are wrong because they are simply approximations. Everyone knows that; the people who understand things knows that every model is an approximation, and that they are often useful.

You remember how to get home because you have a model in your head that approximates the terrain between where you are and where you want to go..this model certainly doesn't contain all the variables and intricacies of the route but it gets you home.

The Schmidt, he rocks.

Gavin Shreds
(Good name for a band, btw.)

@ ~ 3
Indeed:
On mismatches between models and observations
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/on-mismatches-bet…

“our earth is a globe
whose surface we probe
no map can replace her
but just try to trace her”
– Steve Waterman, The World of Maps

System Of A TakeDown.

Pt. 7: the earth has warmed as predicted you pillock. 23/n

'Pillock' is a fine word, but IIRC, not really in the American English lexicon? I seem to recall getting the odd blank look.

Or is it?

** I know Gavin is a Brit.

Yeah I'm not familiar with that word in US English, and it comes from earlier British English (for "penis")

and it comes from earlier British English (for “penis”)

That fits with the usage. Generally speaking, women call men pillocks and men call men pillocks, but men don't call women pillocks.

Gavin:

The most important point he makes is implied in point 1:

ALL the models show an increase in temperature with increase in CO2 BECAUSE the models "Force" it to. None of the models INTRINSICALLY predict increase in temperature with increase in CO2 concentration; all ASSUME the behavior and Force it.

We can create a model of a chemical reaction say 2H2 + O2 --> 2H2O (including any transition reactions, etc.).

The model will intrinsically predict an increase in temperature of the mixture. No one needs to ASSUME the temperature will go up and add energy to the mixture to realize the ASSUMPTION. This is because we UNDERSTAND this reaction and the model turns out to be predictive and authoritative.

This is not true for climate models. They are very useful for "What if" scenarios, like "what if CO2 DID cause T to rise". And there may be some evidence that it does, but the model CANNOT verify that.

None of the models INTRINSICALLY predict increase in temperature with increase in CO2 concentration; all ASSUME the behavior and Force it.

No. They don't assume the temperature rise. "Force" means thermal force, i.e. increased CO2 increases the watts/square metre sent to the ground. The models try to determine how much the temperature rises from that heating in order to bring outgoing watts/square metre up to the new incoming watts/square metre. Like turning up the flame on a stove - you increase the stove's thermal force. The only issue is how much your pot on the stove will warm up from this increased thermal force.

There is absolutely no doubt that we have turned up the radiant heat coming down to the surface. The only issue is how much the temperature will increase in response.

" “Force” means thermal force, i.e. increased CO2 increases the watts/square metre sent to the ground."

Understood. But why can the model not intrinsically calculate that forcing? In theory if you add the CO2, then radiative (and convective and conductive) exchanges shift, and heat becomes trapped, and ultimately the temperature will rise in the lower atmosphere.

Instead a correlation is used which guarantees that outcome. That is my point. The model does not predict temperature rise, it enforces it. It may predict the amount of temperature rise in various places based on the initial assumed forcing.

None of the models INTRINSICALLY predict increase in temperature with increase in CO2 concentration; all ASSUME the behavior and Force it.

No, model sensitivity to dF (eg CO2 forcing increase) is not parameterised. It is an emergent property of the model physics. You have this entirely back to front.

" “Force” means thermal force, i.e. increased CO2 increases the watts/square metre sent to the ground." (Chris O'Neil)

JohnQPublic:

Understood. But why can the model not intrinsically calculate that forcing?

No you don't understand (and maybe never will). That forcing is calculated without using a climate model. The forcing is calculated from the measured radiation physics of CO2 and existing distribution of radiation in the atmosphere. It is defined as the instantaneous change in radiation leaving the atmosphere if the atmospheric CO2 was suddenly doubled.

In theory if you add the CO2, then radiative (and convective and conductive) exchanges shift

No you don't understand. The forcing is defined by the change in radiation that occurs before any feedback from changes in atmospheric movement or composition.

BBD- IF that is true, it increases my confidence in the models. My understanding is that there is a bypass in the fundamental physics for a number of reasons (complexity, computational power, etc.) and a relationship between CO2 concentration increase and some form of temperature/energy increase is enforced. I would then assume the model starts from that and calculates how the injected energy is redistributed.

From Wiki: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

"Radiative forcing can be used to estimate a subsequent change in equilibrium surface temperature (ΔTs) arising from that forcing via the equation: dT=lambda dF" (translated images to equations)

Then

"For instance, the simplified first-order approximation expression for carbon dioxide is: "

They are not modeling it. All they SHOULD need to do is allow the CO2 to increase, and the physics should take care of the rest, ultimately warming the surface.

Instead, the increase the CO2 then use the simplified equation to warm the surface. Why skip all the intervening thermal interchange steps? This indicates that the modelers (if Wikipedia is correct, and ...) presume a correlation and enforce it.

The Wikipedia link for comment #16 is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing#Forcing_due_to_atmosphe…

presume a correlation and enforce it.

The radiative physics is not presumed. You can get from this to the PETM hyperthermal event without a CGM in sight.

Indeed. The deniers have no idea what happens so presume what's going on and go from there. Finding out what is happening is beyond them, and changing their minds isn't their thing.

They have an ideology and they force it onto everyone else.

"Instead, the increase the CO2 then use the simplified equation to warm the surface. "

that's what svante arrhenius did with pen and paper. You can do it yourself with an SCM, and do it on your phone.

The GCMs used are far more complicated, but they don't presume a CO2 sensitivity, they just run the simulation of what the radiative balance would be for given CO2 production routes.

And they've all been pretty much on the money on the climatological trends.

The 1980s IPCC estimated about 3.4C per doubling, and we're probably actually there now, depending on how quickly the climate responds to forcings (if could be late 2.x, probably 2.8+ if there's almost no lag, it could be late 3.x, maybe over 3.6 if the lags are 50 years or more).

Thanks, BBD. This looks mechanistically accurate (looking at it briefly). But this is a simplified model (i.e., three isothermal layers, etc.), not a full GCM. Why not incorporate this into GCMs? I am sure there are valid reasons (computational power, complexity to incorporate on a continuum model, etc.).

Why not incorporate this into GCMs?

Not sure what you mean. The atmospheric physics in GCMs is not simplistic.

A reality check on model physics comes from palaeoclimate behaviour, which suggests that ECS to 2 x CO2 is about 3C. The emergent sensitivities of models converge on the same value.

BBD- Forget the simplistic comment. I was referring to teh fact that GCMs are continuum models and do not need to be broken into a small number of isothermal layers (rather the vertical discretization is probably hundreds or thousands of layers).

I am only asking why do what I described in comment #16 when they could do something more like what is described in this paper (except using the full vertical discretization)?

Wow- at least Wikipedia indicates (see comment #16) that they use a simple correlation between CO2 concentration and surface temperature.

BBD- sorry, no edit function here: "this paper" I referred to in comment #23 is the paper you linked "Infrared Radiation and Planetary Temperature".

It there is a problem with model physics, then why do they have emergent sensitivities which agree with palaeoclimate behaviour?

BBD- that is not an answer. The answers vary greatly from model to model, all tend to go up, but by hugely varying amounts.

Maybe the physics is incorporated as it should be. I do not know. I am trying to understand how the models are put together. The Wiki article seems to indicate they use very simplified expressions for forcing. Why not just set the radiation free and let the [pseudo] equilibrium condition dictate the final state?

Here is the paper the Wiki article references. I am not sure this is the current approach or not: http://88.167.97.19/albums/files/TMTisFree/Documents/Climate/New_estima…

BBD- that is not an answer.

Well spotted. It is a question.

An answer would be good...

"I was referring to teh fact that GCMs are continuum models"

What on earth are you talking about here? They're still finite methods models, not analytical solutions. So clearly you can't mean what you appear to mean.

"I am only asking why do what I described in comment #16"

They don't. They say you CAN do it. But that doesn't mean any GCM does.

"Wow- at least Wikipedia indicates"

No they don't. The WP article says you can, you personally, if you want to, do it that way, but it isn't describing how anyone actually does it.

You can go for a walk by hopping on one leg and work out your balance as well as burn more calories.

But that doesn't mean you HAVE gone walking out today hopping on one leg, even though you have just read someone saying you can do it.

You can go and get your own GCM from GISS:

https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/

And stop reading WP articles and deliberately getting yourself confused so you can pretend that GCMs are all badly done so you don't have to do anything.

"BBD- that is not an answer. "

That was not an answer.

"Maybe the physics is incorporated as it should be. I do not know. "

Then you should read the words of the WP as they were written, not as you'd like to interpret them.

Or you could go and actually TRY looking at the models, any of them, to see what they do do, rather than what you'd like to read them having done.

You know, actually take on board and act as if your claim "I do not know" were actually a valid claim as opposed to a dodge for being wrong.

WOW- "You can go and get your own GCM from GISS:

https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/"

Thanks, this is the best reference I have found so far.

BBD, "It there is a problem with model physics, then why do they have emergent sensitivities which agree with palaeoclimate behaviour?"

You mean why does temperature go up (within the range of rates predicted)? That is what I am investigating.

You mean why does temperature go up (within the range of rates predicted)? That is what I am investigating.

If there is a problem with model physics, then why do they have emergent sensitivities which agree with palaeoclimate behaviour?

Who said there was a problem with modern physics? I am looking at numerical schemes and the nature of specific forcing functions.

You're using words that clearly are meant to mean something to us, but they don't.

Go look at the code. Function names will indicate what they're meant to do and most of the code will reference the papers that described the physics going on.

Once you've learned some of what the words are meant to mean, use the correct ones or explain your personal lexicon when you introduce them.

Numerical schemes journal refer to things like finite differences, finite volume, or spectral message. This is what I'm finding for some of these models.

As to forcing function this is what I was alluding to in common number 16.

Who knows what you're alluding to, John. Until you know what you "allude" to and know what words you're supposed to use to "allude" to it, then stop "alluding" and start "saying", you're just blowing air.

Throwing around "spectral message" is just adding more smoke you're trying to blow up people's asses.

FWIW, stepping back, see basics at RealClimate:

- Do models have global warming built in? (Short answer: No.)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-mo…

- What is a forcing then?
- What do you mean when you say a model has “skill”?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/faq-on-climate-mo…

3. Model Spead
CMIP5
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/05/comparing-models-…

Wow, he probably meant to say "spectral methods", as finite differences and finite volumes are two other classes of numerical methods, along with spectral methods.

Quit giving the guy so much flack; numerical methods are a completely fundamental part to any computational method. They're the engine that you use to solve the time-evolution of a simulation.

"Finally, climate change impacts are happening now: Greenland's losing mass, heat waves are worse, rainfall more intense, Arctic ice is…"
If "[Doomsday Global Warming] impacts are happening now", and "Greenland's losing mass", when will we be able to grow barley in Greenland again?
"A sensational find at the bottom of an ancient rubbish heap in Greenland suggests that Vikings grew barley on the island 1,000 years ago.
The Greenland climate was a bit warmer than it is today, and the southernmost tip of the great island was luscious and green and no doubt tempted Eric the Red and his followers."
http://sciencenordic.com/vikings-grew-barley-greenland

Thanks, Windchaser, I meant spectral methods, but was on a smartphone using dictation.

It is appearing that the models are not explicitly predisposed to warm. This is good news. I will continue reading. I found this from a climate skeptic (Dr. Robert G Brown), and even he confirms this (though critically on other points); though he feels they are architechted in in such a way that they will warm with CO2 increase, and possibly incorrectly:

"Fine, so now we’re down to a single attractor, and it has to both be stable when nothing changes and change, linearly, when underlying driving parameters change. This requires linearizing all of the forcings and trivially coupling all of the feedbacks and then searching hard — as pointed out in the talk, very hard indeed! — for some forlorn and non-robust combination of the forcing parameters, some balance of CO2 forcing, aerosol anti-forcing, water vapor feedback, and luck that balances this teetering pen of a system on a metaphorical point and tracks a training set climate for at least some small but carefully selected reference period, naturally, the single period where the balance they discover actually works and one where the climate is actively warming. Since they know that CO2 is the cause, the parameter sets they search around are all centered on “CO2 is the cause” (fixed) plus tweaking the feedbacks until this sort of works.

Now they crank up CO2, and because CO2 is the cause of more warming, they have successfully built a linearized, single attractor system that does not easily admit nonlinear jumps or appearances and disappearances of attractors so that the attractor itself must move monotonically to warmer when CO2 is increasing. They run the model and — gasp! — increasing CO2 makes the whole system warmer!"

link:

[Link to science denier site removed as per blog policy]

Thanks, Obstreperous Applesauce, your links were helpful.

JohnQPublic just posted a link to Anthony Watt's website.
Oh dear. And you were doing so well.

JQP #36:

Who said there was a problem with modern physics? I am looking at numerical schemes and the nature of specific forcing functions.

I wrote:

If there is a problem with model physics, then why do they have emergent sensitivities which agree with palaeoclimate behaviour?

You need to think more carefully about this validation of GCMs. You keep skipping over it, which suggests that it is an inconvenient truth.

* * *

No more links to denier sites, please. If you want to discuss science, use scientific sources as references.

"Wow, he probably meant to say “spectral methods”"

Maybe, but you have to work it out for him, don't you.

"Quit giving the guy so much flack"

No. Remember he said he'd studied this for 50 years. He should know what the hell he's talking about and not confuse words. Because if he doesn't like what you interpret what he says into something from a hominid with the claimed experience, he'll whine and whinge and moan about how you're dissing him.

So, no. He's a grown up now, claims to be in his 70s, so he can damn well learn the words and act like an adult who is responsible for their own actions and can take criticism.

"It is appearing that the models are not explicitly predisposed to warm."

It is appearing that you are a denier, as suspected and explicitly predisposed to believe any crap from denier blogrolls and ignore any actual reality handed to you.

Care to tell us which module in the GISS model code predisposes it to warming? You've been given it and "said" it was informative.

Surely you didn't come to this conclusion DESPITE that evidence of an ACTUAL model whilst never having looked at it?

"so that the attractor itself must move monotonically to warmer when CO2 is increasing"

Bullshit bafflegab.

JQP

(Quoting Brown:)

They run the model and — gasp! — increasing CO2 makes the whole system warmer!”

Remember that this arises not from models but from basic physics. Brown - who is not a climate modeller and is confused - is simply ignoring the basics. You really should read the Pierrehumbert essay I linked upthread properly.

We *know* CO2 is an efficacious climate forcing. If it wasn't, then events like the PETM could never have happened.

Watts... I suspected as much. JPQ, he has his fingerprints all over you. You have been led astray.

Let's step back a little further from even the basics and begin to ponder the world in terms of practical metaliteracy. It is admirable that you want to suss this out for yourself. But the people who are out there telling you that anybody can figure this all out from the comfort of their armchair with a little "common sense" are full of baloney.

What we know about the climate comes from the combined efforts of thousands of bright, hardcore, rigorously educated, serious scientists in specialty fields working very hard for over a century. Climate science is like rocket science or brain surgery and arguably more difficult. Even if you are already a trained scientist in another field, trying to take a short cut by burrowing in from the top down will almost certainly leave you lost and confused.

There is a consensus. Consensus matters:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/03/24/hostility-towards-a-scient…

And please, let's not call deniers 'skeptics'.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnotology

My suggestion would be to reconsider your approach.

Mark M, growing barley on Greenland has already been done in recent years, but it is of very little use for the local economy. Too expensive and a largely uninterested product for the local community. That's the main problem for much of the local agriculture. That Vikings did it is related to their usual diet and inability to get any produce from elsewhere.

Not that these facts will change your beliefs, but maybe a few others here will do some research and see that your reference to growing barley is a good example of a talking point based on ignorance. Stated with much confidence, just like Trump spwes his nonsense with confidence.

Wow:

Maybe, but you have to work it out for him, don’t you.

Well, given that he said finite differences and finite volumes, I figured it was pretty straightforward: "spectral message" was mispelled or dictated improperly. This is just a thing that happens, and it doesn't signify that a person doesn't know the concepts. It's usually just their phone being weird.

It's just like "hey, what fits with finite differences and finite volumes, starts with 'spectral' and sounds like 'message'? Oh, right, spectral methods".

I'm just saying, let's maybe tone down the combativeness, eh? Pretty please?

JohnQ:

"Since they know that CO2 is the cause, the parameter sets they search around are all centered on “CO2 is the cause” (fixed) plus tweaking the feedbacks until this sort of works."

Sounds like he thinks these parameters are just tuned to fit the output, like this is more of a statistics-based model than a physics-based one.

A lot of folks on 'skeptical' sites confuse these. E.g., comparing financial models with climate models. But the physics underlying radiative models aren't really tunable. The physics is what the physics is. And the results, showing warming, follows primarily from that physics.

And like I said, you had to interpret it for you.

For someone who'd claimed to be interested in this for years, this is not a tenable mistake to make.

And it's later turned out that he doesn't know or care what he;s talking about, he's another faker trying to get JAQing off and making asinine denier claims out on the internet under the pretense of being an interested party with no dog in the show. Which was a lie.

You know what's dumb about the "Oh, you tuned the values to get the sensitivity to the desired value"? Mad Christ Monckton has a "model" which "proves" climate ECS is about 1C per doubling CO2e. He does this by putting a maximum on feedback parameters, and the value he put in to his model was such as to make sure it had that value for climate sensitivity. It was an input to his model.

Yet deniers think that's what the real climate scientists are doing. When its just what they have to resort to doing in their cluelessness.

And project onto the professionals.

Windchasers

Sounds like he thinks these parameters are just tuned to fit the output, like this is more of a statistics-based model than a physics-based one.

A lot of folks on ‘skeptical’ sites confuse these. E.g., comparing financial models with climate models. But the physics underlying radiative models aren’t really tunable. The physics is what the physics is. And the results, showing warming, follows primarily from that physics.

That was my impression too, but also that JQP is greatly over-stating the importance of models to the scientific understanding of CC. It is, after all, a standard contrarian rhetoric.

If he comes back, I will talk to him a bit more about this.

@ Wow

Where have you come across JQP before? The handle does ring a bell, but I can't place him.

There's one as a denier on slashdot and appears in Graun comments sections BSing denier rubbish, but it's not like Joe Random User here had to be the same denier moron.

@Marco, March 11, 2017.
Do you have a link to support your 'fact'?
Remember, Vikings grew it for centuries, not one season.
Thanks in advance.
As for my 'beliefs', what a bizarre comment.
I gave you a scientific link, It is not about 'belief'.

As for my ‘beliefs’, what a bizarre comment.
I gave you a scientific link, It is not about ‘belief’.

Oh yes it is. Stop pretending you aren't a contrarian. Nobody's fooled :-)

As for Viking agricultural myths:

Over the last decade, however, new excavations across the North Atlantic have forced archaeologists to revise some of these long-held views. An international research collective called the North Atlantic Biocultural Organisation (NABO) has accumulated precise new data on ancient settlement patterns, diet, and landscape. The findings suggest that the Greenland Norse focused less on livestock and more on trade, especially in walrus ivory, and that for food they relied more on the sea than on their pastures. There's no doubt that climate stressed the colony, but the emerging narrative is not of an agricultural society short on food, but a hunting society short on labor and susceptible to catastrophes at sea and social unrest.

Source

Perhaps the role of marginal cereal cultivation is being over-stated.

Do you have any support for your fact? Because every link I have says that Greenland wasn't lush, it was a hellhole and lasted only a few years, needing support all the time because it couldn't support itself.

You gave a blog link, not a scientific one. They're just geeks who like nordic culture, being northerners themselves.

Your claim is similar to the whinge about how Romans used to grow grapes in the UK in the past, but

a) it was a religious requirement
b) there was no other way to clean the water for drinking
c) there were no threshers wine stores in those days
d) it was REALLY shitty wine, but because of a, b and c, there was no competition
e) it's being made COMMERCIALLY further north than it ever was in the roman times

So, yeah, I'd like to see the papers sourced (if indeed any were) for their claim it was warmer in Greenland (note, they don't call it lush, YOU added that non-fact opinion in there).

Mark M, the link does not show they grew barley for centuries, nor does the actual scientific paper (challenge to you: find the paper). You literally made that up. There is some evidence barley was grown most likely solely for personal use. Some Greenland farmers have done the same in the last 10+ years (only some media reprts on that). But what's the use? Barley simply isn't an important produce anymore. Potatoes is much more important.

There is some evidence barley was grown most likely solely for personal use.

To make beer :-)

Ok. Looks like I stirred the sh*t a bit. Thanks Windchaser for maintaining a level head.

I linked Dr. Brown, because I came across it in a Google search, and it verified (as I said even from a skeptic) that the model are NOT preloaded to warm. I am not necessarily taking his argument about weather being chaotic and and thus not being amenable to over-simplification and linearization as gospel, but it is an interesting point. And climate science is based on physics, by the way.

For the second time, I dictated spectral methods and missed that it interpreted it as "spectral messages" when I did a quick review as I was stepping out of the car and sending.

I will be frank and disclose that I am coming from the skeptic side (and I was not hiding that previsously and do not find it an untenable position), but actually am very open minded. I certainly hope that ANY of you that claim to be climate scientists are also skeptics. I understand radiation physics from the perspective of thermal modeling, experiment, and being involved in scientific thermal imaging (and understand the role of gases such as water and CO2 in the atmosphere in radiative absorption). I have knowledge of chemistry and physics, and have worked as an engineer for many years, and spent many of those years involved in structural and thermal modeling as well as CFD plus some hybrids (i.e., multi-physics). For the record this includes finite difference methods, finite volume methods, and finite element methods.

I am interested in the CGMs because I find them fascinating; I am curious if they stand up to the task of deciding world policy on (even coupled with paleo-climatological observations)- this might be my skeptics position; I am generally curious about the numerical techniques and physics in them. As computer power increases, and it still is increasing, we might be able one day to run an unsteady fully-3D atmospheric model (maybe a while before we can do that for 100 years, but maybe long enough to gain some insight), but I suspect we are far from that computer power yet. I do not feel the modelers are intending to commit fraud, and probably have put together some very interesting and powerful models that are at least very capable of performing useful and interesting studies (there may be some exceptions such as climategate, but I have not studied that in any depth).

This is not a religion. I already have one of those, and do not need another. Science should be less heated; though politics can get pretty heated (as can religion).

I understand that many of you truly believe that world is on a collision course, and I do not doubt there is a general sincerity to it. I actually see Donald trump's presidency as an opportunity for real dialog. The "Believe what we say or else" attitude has no choice but to back down, and everyone will perhaps have a chance to discuss more frankly and calmly. If the current AGW proponents are correct, it could be a big problem, but it is as it is.

Some of The questions are:
1. Is the earth/atmosphere ocean heating? I think there is evidence for this.
2. Is man responsible for it, and by how much? I think you feel you have the answer for that. (yes and 100%).
3. If 2 is true, what would the consequences be for mankind? I think this is even more open than 2.
4. If 2 is true, what can we and/or should we do about it? This is political question. This also depends on the certainty of 2 and even 1.
5. If 2 is true is it good, bad, or something else? This depends on 3 and the certainty of 3,2,1.

I do not expect that I alone will be able to answer all those questions for myself. That is why for now I am mainly looking into the models. This is an area I have some comfort and interest. I am willing to read about the other areas. Unfortunately I have a day job and a family, so like some of you I can only spend so much time doing any of this.

I intend to maintain an open mind going forward. Peace.

That is why for now I am mainly looking into the models. This is an area I have some comfort and interest.

A standard not-really-sceptic meme is that climate models are the source of scientific understanding of climate change. This is not true.

You will be familiar with James Hansen, who, unlike Dr Brown, does have relevant domain expertise. What does Hansen think about models?

Here's an excerpt from an interview in which Hansen says treat the models with scepticism:

TH: A lot of these metrics that we develop come from computer models. How should people treat the kind of info that comes from computer climate models?

Hansen: I think you would have to treat it with a great deal of skepticism. Because if computer models were in fact the principal basis for our concern, then you have to admit that there are still substantial uncertainties as to whether we have all the physics in there, and how accurate we have it. But, in fact, that's not the principal basis for our concern. It's the Earth's history-how the Earth responded in the past to changes in boundary conditions, such as atmospheric composition. Climate models are helpful in interpreting that data, but they're not the primary source of our understanding.

TH: Do you think that gets misinterpreted in the media?

Hansen: Oh, yeah, that's intentional. The contrarians, the deniers who prefer to continue business as usual, easily recognize that the computer models are our weak point. So they jump all over them and they try to make the people, the public, believe that that's the source of our knowledge. But, in fact, it's supplementary. It's not the basic source of knowledge. We know, for example, from looking at the Earth's history, that the last time the planet was two degrees Celsius warmer, sea level was 25 meters higher.

And we have a lot of different examples in the Earth's history of how climate has changed as the atmospheric composition has changed. So it's misleading to claim that the climate models are the primary basis of understanding.

It's very important to recognise the difference between the distorted views espoused by contrarians and the actual state of scientific knowledge about climate.

Fair enough, but how do you project out 100 years for policy decisions without models? I get the impression that the models are very critical to organizations such as the IPCC.

Yeah, right. Cool story bro. Who did you think would buy that?

At the very best for you, you've got a problem that you've made up yourself. Most likely you're just BSing.

Wow- clearly a skeptic!

Yes, as are just about all scientists. We're skeptics. Deniers, however, aren't, they believe any old crap as long as it's Anything But Carbon. And they'll pretend "honest queries" so as to resurrect the old zombie denier arguments before, when it fails to get anyone unable to answer them, turning into full denier mode.

Fair enough, but how do you project out 100 years for policy decisions without models? I get the impression that the models are very critical to organizations such as the IPCC.

Because model sensitivity is close to palaeo-derived sensitivity there is fairly high confidence that the models will have predictive skill on the global scale and the centennial scale.

The uncertainty is more about regional effects on shorter timescales and it is not a comforting kind of uncertainty.

So to answer your question, the IPCC (and others) are right to place fairly high confidence in 100-year projections of GAT response to various emissions pathways.

The basis for a policy response to scientific projections of warming is sound and indeed only fake sceptics actively seek to cast doubt on it.

"Fair enough, but how do you project out 100 years for policy decisions without models? "

By using reality to guide the expected outcomes of your actions. You know, like every single thing you ever plan doing. "I need to eat later this week, so I shall go shopping and get some food". You plan for the future using what you know of reality, not by running a computer model of your biochemistry.

Or do you?

I actually see Donald trump’s presidency as an opportunity for real dialog.

Seriously? Are you always this delusional?

It gets better...

I actually see Donald trump’s presidency as an opportunity for real dialog. The “Believe what we say or else” attitude has no choice but to back down, and everyone will perhaps have a chance to discuss more frankly and calmly.

Somehow JQP has mistaken the authoritarian, vindictive bellowing from the White House for something other than "believe what we say or else". Quite a feat of misapprehension, that.

Amazingly, he goes even further and ascribes the authoritarian, threatening rhetoric to scientists who are simply explaining the scientific evidence to decision makers. This is alt-reality, monkeys-out-of-unicorns'-bottoms stuff indeed.

JQP @~ 68 (Engineer... Quell surprise, just enough knowledge to be dangerous and puffed.)

I understand that many of you truly believe that world is on a collision course, and I do not doubt there is a general sincerity to it. I actually see Donald trump’s presidency as an opportunity for real dialog. The “Believe what we say or else” attitude has no choice but to back down, and everyone will perhaps have a chance to discuss more frankly and calmly. If the current AGW proponents are correct, it could be a big problem, but it is as it is.

Donald Trump is a dangerous mess with no fix in sight. If you can't see that... Yikes!

"The 'Believe what we say or else' attitude..."

This is a childish mischaracterization. If you've ever heard scientists try to debate creationists, you get pretty quickly how and why they get irked. It's the same situation with denialists of just about any stripe.

Furthermore it's just blind petulance from people who can't accept a basic principle of learning. Until you are at the point where you yourself have actual expertice in a complex subject like this, you necessarily have to rely on the expertice of your professional peer reviewed, well published teacher in the relevant field. Get that? You have to trust that they know what they're talking about. It's amazing how many deniers think that they are instant Galileos because they read a blog that tells them so.

Being an overweening amateur with Dunning-Kruger syndrome, will simply not help you to advance. Nor will it earn you much respect among the professionals. Exactly how much this applies to you would be hard for me to say, but it certainly applies to the base of the community you embrace.

I do not expect that I alone will be able to answer all those questions for myself. That is why for now I am mainly looking into the models.

Good. But I suggest that you start at the beginning with introductory climate science textbooks and move on from there. If you're as smart as you think you are, you'll be into the good stuff in a relatively short time. Or is it that you think you're just too cool for school?

@~78 above.

Damn. Oh, for a preview.

Forgot the quotes in the penultimate paragraph.

Didn't close the bold for climate science

>No, model sensitivity to dF (eg CO2 forcing increase) is not parameterised. It is an emergent property of the model physics.

Then how is RealClimate able to use a climate model tuned to yield a 3C response? See their post about Keystone XL.

My suspicion is that if Scott Adams said he believed the scientists on global warming(which he actually does but you know what I mean), then you would be calling his work funny.

"Then how is RealClimate able to use a climate model tuned to yield a 3C response?"

They don't.

"My suspicion is that if Scott Adams said he believed the scientists on global warming"

He doesn't, so you have no data to make any claim on.

You do have data indicating you are incorrect, since Greg's opinion appears to be it was good and funny but has rode it out too long and has to retread the same old stuff. Much like the Simpsons from about S9/S10.

My suspicion is that if you were able to find out this alternative reality showed you were wrong you'd merely go on and bitch about something else, never once changing your opinion, merely finding the next morsel of bullshit to make you feel like you were vindicated.

On models and related questions vis-a-vis CO2 and other greenhouse gas effects on the environment:

The point of much of this research is to find out how a change in CO2 concentration changes the heat balance of the planet. It is not the case that the relationship between CO2 and, say, surface warming is a presumed correlation. The "correlation" (relationship) between the two is the question being asked, not a presumption in the model, most of the time.

The baseline is simple physics. A simple nitrogen atmosphere (zero other gasses of any kind) on a planet with no ocean (which you would need to have no gasses!) would involve a very rapid and very knowable, easily calculated, relationship with the sun, and adding a fixed amount of CO2 to that atmosphere would produce an easily calculated number. On such a planet, for example, it would be very cold at "pre-industrial" levels, and doubling the amount of CO2 would probably raise the average temp at two meters by about 1.2C. However, if you add water vapor, some other gasses, and thus clouds, and oceans, etc. and run a pile of highly advanced models using everything we know, you get two interesting results.

1) The models run up to, say, 1980, predicting the future, give a range of future temperatures that the actual temperatures that happened subsequently fall nicely within. A few years ago, the actual temperature for the coldest running interpreted data sets neared the allowable lower margin (but did not pass it) and now we are nearing the higher end of the allowable range (having the effect of STFU the deniers who were so titilated by the earlier trend). In other words, the first result is that the models, not using a presumed correlation came up with a result that predicted 40 years of time pretty accurately; and

2) Looking over the longer term, where C02 makes it all the way to 500ppm, and then we look even farther ahead to see all the effects, these models give estimates for future warming that range from about 2 to perhaps 7 degrees C. The lower end (around 2) are impossible because the empirical observations have already obviated them. The higher numbers are low probability but most models allow it. The best guess is close to 3.5.

A great resource allowing both a good explanation of various models as well as a comparison of the "these models don't work" denial machine results vs. actual scientists results is found in the book I review here:

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2015/03/11/climatology-versus-pseudos…

MikeN

Then how is RealClimate able to use a climate model tuned to yield a 3C response? See their post about Keystone XL.

Link please.

"See their post about Keystone XL."

Lame, even for you. If you actually have one in mind, that you've read, state which it is. They have numerous posts with discussions and comments about Keystone XL.

To which are you referring?

@BBD, #64: I dont pretend.
I prefer 'deplorable', as 'contrarian' can be included, with bonus name calling for those inclined to use them.
Nice link you provided.
I like this:
"Temperature
Winter temperatures dropped below the long-term average by more than a degree halfway through the 5-century occupation, according to oxygen isotope data in cores taken from the Greenland Ice Sheet."
Is there nothing rising carbon (sic) can't do?
PS. Check my link in response to Wow #65 for an update from your 2016 link, dated March 2017.

@Wow, #65: Despite "every link" you have, you fail to provide one.
RE: "blog link ... to geeks ..." ...
"Henriksen, an archaeobotanist at the National Museum's Environmental Archaeology and Archaeometry section (NNU) in Copenhagen ..."
Not sure Henriksen would thank you for so easily dismissing his hard work.
News flash: Geeks ahoy in science!
And, like potatoes, pointing at unicorns amongst the grapes: fail.
So here is another link, and, fwiw, the article treats the Medieval Warm Period as the fact that it is:
"Accordingly, the Vikings were not just dumb, they also had dumb luck: They discovered Greenland during a time known as the Medieval Warm Period, which lasted from about 900 to 1300.
Sea ice decreased during those centuries, so sailing from Scandinavia to Greenland became less hazardous.
Longer growing seasons made it feasible to graze cattle, sheep and goats in the meadows along sheltered fjords on Greenland’s southwest coast."
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-18…
Who wants to be the first to call the Smithsonian a name?

@Marco, #66:
The link says vikings settled 1000 ya and abandoned 140 (approx).
Perhaps they only grew it for 1 year.
"(challenge to you: find the paper)."
As you failed to provide a link to the paper to prove me wrong, I would be 97% confident you haven't read it.
But, Marco, you have failed to provide a link showing that the experiment has been reproduced as you claimed.
Perhaps you made that up.
Look over here, a unicorn hiding amongst the potatoes.

Unexpectedly, you are wrong. I did read the paper and therefore know you made stuff up. I cannot show you any scientific papers on current-day barley growing, because people usually don't write scientific papers about a few Greenland farmers trying out stuff.

Anyway, one example (but in a bad piece of historical journalism) is here
http://www.economist.com/node/7852916

I know of field trials of barley in Greenland going on, but they focus on commercial production, so are much more likely to fail.

Someone should come up with a parody version of Dilbert, called Dilbit.

"@BBD, #64: I dont pretend."

Oh, so you're a moron in real life, then.

"“(challenge to you: find the paper).”
As you failed to provide a link to the paper to prove me wrong"

As you failed to do so, you have not met your burden of proof and your claims are contrary to what we know, there's no need for us to prove you wrong, you have failed to prove you right.

"@Wow, #65: Despite “every link” you have, you fail to provide one."

And you have given a link that doesn't say what you claim, and what you claim is wrong.

Give a link proving you aren't wrong, retardo.

Andy, it should be called "Dickbit".

Summary: m55 has made several claims, mistaken climate and weather , and failed to supply any evidence at all for what he says, but mocks people for not reading support that doesn't exist.

Just another ignorant asshat in the vein of rickA and the mikes

"Who wants to be the first to call the Smithsonian a name?"

What sort of name? I call them wrong on this. But that may be more due to simplifying it for children and the uneducated, without worrying about malicious retards deliberately misreading what they say and quote mining the shit out of it.

"the Medieval Warm Period as the fact that it is"

What wasn't a fact, and one your retarded denier mates made up, was that there was a global MWP and that it was warmer then than it is now.

Care to show where in that link it says the MWP was globally warmer than it is today?

Moreover, the impression you want to give is that the MWP is being pretended as never to have existed. Got any evidence of this, or was what you said there more industrial-grade stupidity from you that means nothing, because nobody is saying there never was an MWP?

Maro, according to the Smithsonian link, Greenlanders were dependent on imports from mainland to survive and paid for it by ivory hunting:

For all their intrepidness, though, the Norse were far from self-sufficient, and imported grains, iron, wine and other essentials. Ivory was their currency. “Norse society in Greenland couldn’t survive without trade with Europe,” says Arneborg, “and that’s from day one.”

Are you going to be calling the smithsonian names now? Especially since they're claiming this quote from you is incorrect:

The Greenland climate was a bit warmer than it is today, and the southernmost tip of the great island was luscious and green and no doubt tempted Eric the Red and his followers.”
http://sciencenordic.com/vikings-grew-barley-greenland

So you gave a link and called it a done deal, gave another link and showed the earlier one was either misrepresented by you or wrong.

Who are you going to call names now, dumbo?

Mark M

“Temperature
Winter temperatures dropped below the long-term average by more than a degree halfway through the 5-century occupation, according to oxygen isotope data in cores taken from the Greenland Ice Sheet.”
Is there nothing rising carbon (sic) can’t do?

So it got colder from about 1ky BCE. Exactly as expected based on reduced NH summer insolation - it's been falling since orbital dynamics ended the last glacial 11.5ky ago at *peak* NH summer insolation.

Then, post-1850, comes the Industrial Revolution and aCO2 starts to increase, triggering a slow background warming that really took off post-1970 when emissions did.

Next, the 'MWP' that wasn't. You - like so many contrarians - have an imaginary global, synchronous warming event as warm as or warmer than the present. It never happened. There were discontinous, regional warming events spread over several centuries, but global average temperature did not match, let alone exceede late C20th values.

Since you bring it up, there's an important point that contrarians never seem to get about the fantasy 'MWP'. There is no evidence for any major forcing change ~950CE - 1350CE. So the various regional climate shifts of the MCA (correct term) were responses to only very slight changes in net radiative forcing.

Now, *if* there actually had been a 'hot MWP' (global and synchronous; as warm as or warmer than the present) it would be very strong evidence that the climate system is really quite sensitive to radiative perturbation. This means that the danger of climate impacts from increasing CO2 forcing is increased.

One should always think things through, don't you agree?

As for the silliness about Vikings, the link I provided at #64 says exactly the same as the Smithsonian article:

The findings suggest that the Greenland Norse focused less on livestock and more on trade, especially in walrus ivory, and that for food they relied more on the sea than on their pastures. There’s no doubt that climate stressed the colony, but the emerging narrative is not of an agricultural society short on food, but a hunting society short on labor and susceptible to catastrophes at sea and social unrest.

Presumably this cockwomblery on you part is intended to peddle the 'hot MWP' meme, but if you do that, you are arguing for high climate sensitivity, which I assure you is not what you want to be doing.

So please sort out the mess of half-truths, fully wrong stuff, and confusion over the basics or you are going to come badly unstuck.

God but this shit gets old.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/11/keystone-xl-game-…

Greg Laden, you say low end 2C is impossible, then why did IPCC in its latest report use 1.5C-4.5C, for a slightly higher CO2 concentration than 500?

"you say low end 2C is impossible"

It is. Based on current trends, it's already oever 2C and it's not equilibrium yet.

" then why did IPCC in its latest report use 1.5C-4.5C"

Why is that a problem? Unable to read?

MikeN, how does that realClimate article (from 2011) support your assertion?

Greg Laden, you say low end 2C is impossible, then why did IPCC in its latest report use 1.5C-4.5C, for a slightly higher CO2 concentration than 500?

Because of a couple of papers using EBMs that produced what are now understood to be under-estimates of S. The IPCC had to include the low-ball end of the range because there was *at the time* no reason not to. Nobody would do this now, and I am willing to bet that the lower bound will go back up to 2C again in AR6.

Frankly, even that is too low. The range that is compatible with palaeoclimate is 2.5 - 3.5C centered on a most likely value close to 3C.

This lukewarmer crap never did fit with palaeoclimate so it was always obvious to the non-partisan that it was wrong.

And what dean said at #99. Why are you repeatedly waving that RC article around?

Dean they are unrelated. I was asked to provide a link.

Ah, so you provided a link to something else. But you were asked to provide a link, but no such link was found. You showed a HYPERTEXT LINK.

Try again, moron.

So the claim in #80 about models tuned to 3C is unrelated to the realclimate post? The juxtaposition of the two in #80 is confusing

Sorry, thought you meant the link and the rest of #97. In the post, "and is based on simulations with the U. of Victoria climate/carbon model tuned to yield the mid-range IPCC climate sensitivity. "

Ah, "mike", that is what we call "a big fucking lie" there. You were asked for a link here:

Then how is RealClimate able to use a climate model tuned to yield a 3C response? See their post about Keystone XL.

Link please.

So there's no possible way you can be telling the truth in 105.

Whatever, everyone else understands what was said, so if you want to play pretend word games, have fun.

I think people are misunderstanding what Scott Adams is saying. Gavin can be 100% right, and Scott Adams can 100% agree with what Gavin is saying, but it still keeps Scott's main argument intact- that climate scientists are not very persuasive and arguing weakly.

"Whatever, everyone else understands what was said"

No: if I had known you meant something else I wouldn't have asked. You hadn't posted 105 at the time you made that comment.

“Whatever, everyone else understands what was said”

Clearly wrong.

"main argument intact- that climate scientists are not very persuasive and arguing weakly'"

But this is no way mentioned as his "main argument".

And it is also clearly wrong.

Notice how MikeN is studiously unresponsive to the answer at #100 to his question at #97, opting for a flurry of misdirection instead.

MikeN, if one's ideology depends on rejecting something, no 'proponent' will be able to be persuasive enough to convince that person. To come with an analogous situation, I once spent hours on explaining someone some basic math to show he used the wrong equation in his paper. It did not register, because he would have had to admit the main result in his paper was wrong. He used a similar excuse that my arguments were not persuasive enough, ultimately using the argument from popularity: others were still using the equation, so my arguments had apparently not convinced these people...

BBD. I have no followup. Thanks for the answer.

Dean, Wow had 105 when he responded. I assume you understood what I was saying after #105. Seems like a reasonable misunderstanding all around, but Wow decides to go to calling 105 a lie.

"Dean, Wow had 105 when he responded."

But I never demanded a link, you lying arsehole.

I assume you know you're lying, but just don't like it being pointed out.

I didn't know that all statements at this blog are assumed to be about you. I never said you demanded a link.

#90 Great idea. But i like the name Didcot.

‘Pillock’ is a fine word, but IIRC, not really in the American English lexicon?

Common parlance in the RN.

Great points on climate models and sensitivity, as well as pointing at palaeoclimatology from BBD, Greg etc. I do grasp all this but useful for debating elsewhere so bookmarked.

And yes Gavin rocks on this stuff. Love his comment replies at Real Climate - so instructional.

Well, Scott is angry at Gavin for not accepting the calls of an ignoramus (and when you don't know something, KNOW you don't know something, but pontificate on it anyway, that is the definition of ignoramus, no matter how smart you are elsewhere) and made another dumbass cartoon to hit back.

Because reality doesn't really let him win.

Sure, "he's a comic writer", but he's personally invested in this so it really doesn't work like that. You can't "go comedian" when you're evidently deadly serious about something.

Ben Santer on Seth Myers

gregladen — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 10:11:56 +0000

Ben Santer on Seth Myers

Via Media Matters of America. Very interesting segment.

Santer talks about what is is like to be a rogue scientist in a Donald Trump administration.

The words referred to here the twelve words, were part of the 1995 Second Assessment report of the IPCC. That report is regularly updated, and forms the scientific and policy basis for our thinking about climate change at the national and international level. I highly recommend that you have handy at all times what I like to think of as the human-readable version of the most current IPCC report: Dire Predictions, 2nd Edition: Understanding Climate Change

An excellent resource for debunking and learning about the sort of junk Ted Cruz is seen to be spilling on this segment is Dana Nuccitelli's book Climatology versus Pseudoscience: Exposing the Failed Predictions of Global Warming Skeptics.

Here's a little more on Ted Cruz:

gregladen Thu, 02/23/2017 - 05:11

Tags

Did Dr. Santer get fired?

How "rogue" can you be if you can appear on national tv and talk about climate science (as an individual)?

I hope he backed up all his data - I hear Trump is personally deleting all climate data!

Conspiracy ideation is alive and well.

Yup, just like the anti-climate science conspiracy ideations spouted by the science deniers. Controversy where there is none...

What this witness reports about Trump, fits in the brandnew lemma 'trump´:

trump, a new word in American-English and international vocabulary:

a trump, a person who willfully sees him- of herself as the most important and know-it-all on earth, and who downgrades all supposed opponents and opposition to the level of fake and overestimated, and who uses bigotry and/or various techniques that are arrogant, autocratic, bossy, dictatorial, domineering, imperious, peremptory, bear no contradiction, feature ad hoc reasoning, wilful denial of data, the uttering of wild accusations, and/or character assassination of suspected opponents or opposition. This without respect for the
other one and regardless of any consequences for safety and togetherness of society.

Other lemma’s related to the lemma ‘trump’:

to trump, verb, to despise, having no respect for, denying a person of his or hers human rights and fundamental freedoms as laid down in several international treaties, like inter alia, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 10 December 1948, United Nations, Paris (General Assembly resolution 217 A);

trumpish, adjective, example: this is a trumpish truth of Trump or whoever;

trumply, adverb, example: Trump or whoever said that very trumply.

Laren NH, Thursday 23 February 2017, 18:52 PM DT.

RickA, it's curious that you have spent hundreds of hours here defending Mark Steyen's right to "freedom of speech" to lie about climate science, but you immediately take a jab at Santer who deigns to speak publicly about the truth of climate science.

I can find no way to put your name and "class act" into the same sentence, except perhaps in this one, by implication.

Conspiracy ideation is alive and well.

The Trump administration *is* engaged in a war on climate science. It's not conspiracist ideation, it's a matter of fact.

Yet you seem to deny it. How odd.

Troll wanted.

We're looking for oh-so-precious trolls with a toxic sense of entitlement and a glib, superficial charm to sell our ubersuperior, pain-relieving, brain-numbing, Oil Oil.

Patented by little banshees toiling away in a top secret effluent pipe in the Barren Fields of Mu, this substance is guaranteed to bring people to their knees where the damn well belong.

Are you one of those exceptional people who can fill our pants with gold?

You must:
- Have no sense of proportion.
- Have no facility with natural categorical thinking.
- Be socially dogmatic about who should know their place.
- Be biased in favor the status quo as it appears
in our dreams of our glorious past.
- Be certifiably lacking in self and social awareness.
- Have absolutely NO functioning sense of irony.

If you think you're up to the job, contact us at:
www.trollsrus.fu

I once did a little freelancing as a gremlin for a noted (he repeatedly emphasized) econometricist. Never got paid; he said that none of my changes affected the outcome!

OK. So it doesn't go anywhere, but that link in my comment above (~#6) wasn't supposed to be clickable. Just out of curiosity, can it be rendered inactive or made to refer to Republican campaign HQ or something?

Or maybe it should just be deleted.

Or link to the Kock Cretins website.

Do you really think that you are able debunking Trump and his trumps by false methods like trolls and trolling? That would be the same as cleaning a toilet with cattlemanure. Use the classic balanced virtues: reason and reasonabilty, justice, prudence, honesty, bravery, and the christian virtues belief, hope and love.

Don't mix this with trolling and maskerades. It ruins trustworthyness.

Trump Against the World

milhayser — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 14:14:37 +0000

Trump Against the World

Donald Trump continues his blitz to fulfill all his campaign promises at once, leaving snowflakes aghast and deplorables cheering for the proto-fascism on parade at The White House. On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Trump issued a statement "in the name of the perished" without any reference to Jews or anti-semitism, and while his Chief of Staff spun this omission a sign of inclusivity, Mark Hoofnagle writes on Denialism Blog that "this is part of a long history of Holocaust denial, in which the experience, memory, and truth of Jewish survivors and victims is diminished and denied." As Orac writes on Respectful Insolence, "whatever the source of Hitler’s antisemitism, it was one of the animating forces of Nazi-ism, arguably the animating force."

Meanwhile, Greg Laden writes that the U.S. finds itself in a very dangerous situation, wherein income inequality has reached a breaking point and our elected officials no longer play by the rules. Greg says "we now have a man who by all indications intends to dictate, not lead, dictate not rule, dictate not represent." Since his inauguration Trump has not only closed U.S. borders to many foreigners, he has also hobbled public health programs around the world by prohibiting foreign organizations that receive U.S. aid from performing or providing information about abortions. Ironically, as Liz Borkowski writes on The Pump Handle, this rule only serves to increase the rate of abortions worldwide, and also increases the risk posed by global threats such as Ebola. Trump's actions reveal one promise he has failed to keep: that he would be a president for all Americans.

milhayser Mon, 02/06/2017 - 09:14

Tags

Science Communication FTW

milhayser — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 13:14:04 +0000

Science Communication FTW

Despite a greater percentage of people knowing about (and agreeing with) scientific issues, denialism remains a powerful political and psychological force that threatens to have its heyday under President Trump. As Peter Gleick writes on Significant Figures, "good policy without good science is difficult; good policy with bad science is impossible." Peter asks: what is the best way for scientists to engage the republic? Through testimony? Social media? Pop star status like Sagan, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or is the open letter an effective form of public outreach? Meanwhile, on Starts With a Bang, Ethan Siegel says "Scientific truths may not necessarily have a one-to-one correspondence with policy," but until we can agree on some facts, "we're going to have a very hard time moving forward together in this world." Orac offers additional advice for battling conspiracy theories and denialism on Respectful Insolence: "It’s not enough to know the science (or history). You have to know the pseudoscience (or pseudohistory) inside and out." Orac also considers a study on the best way to argue with conspiracy theorists, which suggests that showing empathy is not an effective approach. Instead, "a combination of rational argument and targeted ridicule can be effective."

See also:

2016: The year bullshit was weaponized on Respectful Insolence

5 scientific myths you probably believe about the Universe on Starts With a Bang!

milhayser Fri, 01/13/2017 - 08:14

Tags

science communication

Science Denial

Science Policy

Congratulations, America! You've just elected a conspiracy-mongering scientific ignoramus as President!

oracknows — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 09:45:54 +0000

Congratulations, America! You've just elected a conspiracy-mongering scientific ignoramus as President!

Well, I’m back.

Yes, late last night, I re-entered returned home from vacation in Mexico before our new President-Elect has a chance to build his wall. I was so exhausted that I had no time to write anything and remain so. At least I wasn’t stupid enough to go back to work today and instead took the whole week off. Like most of you, I’m still processing he cluster—oh, wait, no major profanity here—that was the US election, whose results definitely put a damper on the trip home.

In particular, I fear for what the new administration will do to science in this country, and might write about that in the near future. In the meantime, I’m recycling and partially updating a post I wrote six months ago, when Donald Trump first cinched the Republican nomination. I'm doing this to remind you that this is our new President-Elect, people. I hope those of you who voted for Trump are proud of yourselves.

I haven’t written anything about Donald Trump and vaccines in a while, although I did express amusement when Donald Trump appeared on The Dr. Oz Show to tout how healthy he supposedly is and when Deepak Chopra, of all people, castigated Trump for not being evidence-based. More importantly, I expressed dismay that disgraced antivaccine quack Andrew Wakefield reportedly met with Donald Trump and found a receptive ear.

Trump, it turns out, has a history of making wildly ridiculous antivaccine statements dating back at least to 2007. That was when I first discovered him and referred to him as the latest celebrity antivaccinationist drinking the Kool Aid of vaccine pseudoscience. A few years later, I noted his risibly nonsensical claim that a “monster shot” causes autism. Truly, Donald Trump’s history of making idiotic antivaccine statements is long and sordid. Of course, Donald Trump’s history of making idiotic statements about a great many subjects is long and sordid, but antivaccine pseudoscience is what I know better than domestic or foreign policy.

Of course, I don’t recall having heard anything from Trump in a while on the vaccine-autism front, at least not since September last year. But his antivaccine lunacy is definitely part of his persona, so much so that when I started to type “Donald Trump vaccines autism” the first entry on the search was a Natural News link from 2012. In any case, I get the feeling that Trump’s antivaccine views were too crazy even for most of Trump’s supporters, hence his relative silence these last eight months. Sure, he can spout off about how he wants to build a wall on the Mexican border and have Mexico pay for it and numerous other proposals even more ludicrous than that, but in the last few months leading up to the election he’d apparently toned down the antivaccine nonsense, with rare exceptions.

Still, now that Trump is President-Elect, after his inauguration he can do great damage to public health. Sure, school vaccine mandates are a state issue, but the guidelines upon which they are based are developed by the CDC. Over the last couple of decades, there have been various antivaccine legislators who have brought CDC officials before Congressional committees to demand “answers” about the link between vaccines and autism. Just imagine how much trouble President Trump can cause, with his power to appoint a Secretary of HHS. Consider this. Politico is reporting that one of Trump’s top candidates for HHS Secretary is Ben Carson, who has a dodgy history of making antivaccine statements himself. (He’s also apparently being considered for Secretary of Education, which is just as scary, but a topic for another day.)

I was reminded of this again by a video in a story a few months ago featuring Elizabeth Emken.

The reason this is relevant is that Emken used to be the Executive Director of Autism Speaks, an “autism advocacy” group that used to be very much into antivaccine pseudoscience. Indeed, after much foot dragging, it wasn’t until 2015 that Autism Speaks finally grudgingly admitted that there is no good evidence linking vaccines to autism after a large study was published showing no evidence of a link between vaccines and autism and a meta-analysis involving over a million children similarly failed to find a link. It’s not for nothing that Autism Speaks has been quite appropriately accused of speaking up too late on vaccines.

That tension, and the weasel words that characterized it among many autism advocacy groups, fairly drips from Emken’s response to a question about Donald Trump’s beliefs about vaccines, complete with an example of a quote by Donald Trump about having heard of children getting sick and becoming autistic after vaccination. Here’s the video:

Donald Trump campaign spokeswoman + ex-@AutismSpeaks exec @ElizabethEmken on Trump linking vaccines to autism: https://t.co/EwZKC488Q8

— CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) May 2, 2016

And here’s what Emken said:

Donald Trump spokeswoman Elizabeth Emken, a former executive with the leading advocacy group Autism Speaks, was put in a difficult position Monday when asked about the frontrunner’s earlier statements linking vaccines and autism.

Asked on CNN about Trump suggesting a scientific link exists between childhood vaccines and autism during a fall 2015 presidential debate, Emken sidestepped a direct rebuke of Trump’s claims.

“The position of Autism Speaks has been for quite awhile that we need to find out what's happening,” she replied. “We know there's a genetic component and there's an environmental trigger and until we get to the bottom of what's happening, no one knows what causes autism. Anyone that tells you what does or what doesn't cause autism is simply not basing that on facts."

I see now why Emkin was chosen to be Trump’s spokeswoman. The above is basically one massive appeal to ignorance, the implication that, because we don’t know what causes autism that some environmental factor—cough, cough, vaccines—must be causing autism. Don’t believe me? Check out what she says next:

“We don’t know, we need to keep looking,” Emken continued, saying she hadn’t discussed the issue with the GOP frontrunner. “But the bottom line is, look, vaccines are the most successful health program in the history of the world, so I don’t believe that’s at all what he was saying.”

This is, of course, a bald-faced lie; that is, unless Emken is not . Let’s take a look at the sort of things Donald Trump has said about vaccines over the years just on Twitter. Truly, the burning stupid flowing from that one Twitter account is not unlike a flow of ash from Mount Vesuvius engulfing Pompeii. Here is but a sampling:

Massive combined inoculations to small children is the cause for big increase in autism....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2012

If I were President I would push for proper vaccinations but would not allow one time massive shots that a small child cannot take - AUTISM.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 27, 2014

Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn't feel good and changes - AUTISM. Many such cases!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2014

No more massive injections. Tiny children are not horses—one vaccine at a time, over time.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2014

I am being proven right about massive vaccinations—the doctors lied. Save our children & their future.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2014

"@OnlineOnTheAir: My friend's son, immediate #autism after #vaccines 10 yrs ago. So sad. Keep up good work Nay-sayers will understand soon."

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2014

I'm not against vaccinations for your children, I'm against them in 1 massive dose.Spread them out over a period of time & autism will drop!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2014

So many people who have children with autism have thanked me—amazing response. They know far better than fudged up reports!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 4, 2014

"@P01YN0NYM0U55: @jamandatrtl #vaccines #Shills insist #Autism starts in utero or genetic, but parents insist sudden onset after #vaccine"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2014

You get the idea. That’s some hard core antivaccine quackery. Trump’s meaning is very, very clear, Emken’s attempts to deny it notwithstanding.

But, hey, if that’s not enough for you, let’s review a bit more of what Trump has said on the topic over the years. I apologize to long time readers, who have probably seen many of these quotes before in various posts I’ve written over the years, but, now, with Trump on the verge of becoming the Republican nominee and Ted Cruz’s chances to stop him are fading, I feel the need to revisit these. Not that Cruz is any less scary than Trump, but he isn’t, as far as I’ve been able to ascertain, antivaccine.

The first time I learned of Donald Trump's antivaccine proclivities was way back in 2007. What was he saying back then? This:

"When I was growing up, autism wasn't really a factor," Trump said. "And now all of a sudden, it's an epidemic. Everybody has their theory. My theory, and I study it because I have young children, my theory is the shots. We've giving these massive injections at one time, and I really think it does something to the children."

He made the comments following a press conference at his Mar-A-Lago estate announcing a fundraising and lobbying push by Autism Speaks to get the brain disorder covered under private insurance policies.

And:

"When a little baby that weighs 20 pounds and 30 pounds gets pumped with 10 and 20 shots at one time, with one injection that's a giant injection, I personally think that has something to do with it. Now there's a group that agrees with that and there's a group that doesn't agree with that."

Referring to his and his wife Melania's 22-month-old son Baron, Trump continued: "What we've done with Baron, we've taken him on a very slow process. He gets one shot at a time then we wait a few months and give him another shot, the old-fashioned way. But today they pump the children with so much at a very young age. We do it on a very, very conservative level."

So, yes, back in 2007, Trump was already parroting the antivaccine pseudoscience that at that time I had been deconstructing for seven years and blogging about for nearly three. It was a performance—and, let's face it, everything Trump does in public is performance art, if you can call it that—that was brilliantly parodied at Autism News Beat as The art of the schlemiel. In any case, I'm hard pressed to come up with any time when a baby gets 10 or 20 shots at a time, and that's even assuming that Trump was ignorantly conflating the number of diseases vaccinated against in combination vaccines with "shots."

Four years later, Trump was still at it. On Fox and Friends, he repeated once again that he had a "theory" about vaccines, and that was:

Business mogul Donald Trump chose the fifth annual World Autism Awareness Day to reveal that he “strongly” believes that autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are linked to exposure to vaccines.

In a Monday interview on Fox News, the reality star explained that a series of casual observations had led him to the conclusion that “monster” vaccinations cause autism.

“I’ve gotten to be pretty familiar with the subject,” Trump said. “You know, I have a theory — and it’s a theory that some people believe in — and that’s the vaccinations. We never had anything like this. This is now an epidemic. It’s way, way up over the past 10 years. It’s way up over the past two years. And, you know, when you take a little baby that weighs like 12 pounds into a doctor’s office and they pump them with many, many simultaneous vaccinations — I’m all for vaccinations, but I think when you add all of these vaccinations together and then two months later the baby is so different then lots of different things have happened. I really — I’ve known cases.”

The video can still be viewed here. Tellingly, when he was challenged on this by Gretchen Carlson, who noted that "the studies have said that there is no link" and that there hadn't been any mercury in vaccines for years, Trump would have none of it:

“It’s also very controversial to even say,” Trump acknowledged. “But I couldn’t care less. I’ve seen people where they have a perfectly healthy child, and they go for the vaccinations and a month later the child is no longer healthy.”

Don't trust those pointy-headed expert scientists. They've only been spending their entire lives studying the issue! Trump knows better then they do! Why? He's got anecdotes, man:

“It happened to somebody that worked for me recently,” he added. “I mean, they had this beautiful child, not a problem in the world, and all of the sudden they go in and they get this monster shot. You ever see the size of it? It’s like they’re pumping in — you know, it’s terrible, the amount. And they pump this in to this little body and then all of the sudden the child is different a month later. I strongly believe that’s it.”

All because of what Donald Trump calls a "monster shot." I note that this appears to be the example that was presented to Emken. It couldn’t be more clear what Trump meant, either: He attributed his employee’s son’s autism to vaccines, which he called a “monster shot.” As I pointed out at the time, even if the child were truly "different" after vaccination a month later, that would not be "all of a sudden." In any case, this is what those of us who pay attention to these things the "too many too soon" gambit. All spreading out vaccines accomplishes is to increase the period of time that a child is vulnerable to infectious diseases for no real benefit of reducing the chance of autism because there is no link between vaccines and autism.

If that’s not enough for you, in 2015, when interviewed by conservative talk radio show host Hugh Hewitt, the question of vaccines and autism came up. Here’s how the conversation went down:

HH: So you believe there’s a causal connection between vaccines and autism?

DT: Well, a lot of people do. I mean, there are many people that do. And I know at least two people, one of them who works in the building that I’m in right now, a beautiful woman, has a child. The child is 100% healthy, takes the child, who was I think around a year and a half or two years old to get the shot, gets this massive shot of fluid pumped into the baby’s body, and a few days later, catches a fever, and all of a sudden, is severely autistic. And many people, many people have had that experience, Hugh. And I will tell you, on Twitter and on Facebook, where you know, so many people, I feel, it’s sort of interesting, because I get so much response, people are praying for me that I at least say that. So I totally believe in the shot. I totally believe that you should be vaccinated. But let them spread it out over a little period of time. You can’t pump that, because have you ever seen the size of these inoculations? You can’t pump that much fluid into a little baby’s body. And I think it’s having an effect. And I know of at least two cases in my, but many people say the same thing happened to me where their child is totally healthy. They get pumped up with this huge pile of liquid, with many, many different vaccines, and their child turns out to be autistic after it. And all I’m saying is spread it out in smaller doses over a longer period of time.

HH: If a group of scientists came to you and said look, The Donald, that’s just, that’s not right, you’re giving out misinformation, would you change your mind if presented with facts on that?

DT: Well, I’ve seen babies that were totally healthy that weren’t healthy, and I’m not asking for anything. All I’m doing is saying spread it out over a period of time. I’m not saying don’t get inoculated, don’t get the shots, don’t get the vaccines. I’m saying spread it out over a period of time. It doesn’t hurt anybody other than probably the pharmaceutical companies, because they probably make more money putting it into one shot. Maybe it hurts the doctors. I don’t know. But I can say this. Everybody would get the vaccines. They just, they wouldn’t be pumping these massive amounts of liquid into a child.

Again, contrary to Emken’s twisting around the issue, Trump’s meaning couldn’t have been more plain. He believes vaccines cause autism. He doesn’t believe any of those elitist pointy-headed scientists who say otherwise, and nothing will make him change his mind. Nor does Trump sound as though he believes that vaccines are the “most successful health program in the history of the world,” as Emken put it.

I referred to the tension at the heart of Autism Speaks regarding vaccine-autism pseudoscience. The organization was founded by Bob and Suzanne Wright, who were always fence sitters on the question of whether he believed vaccines cause autism. His daughter Katie, however, was a true believer that vaccines cause autism, a belief that caused a great deal of friction with her parents and the organization. For years, the organization was riven with strife, as the Wrights tried to appease the vaccine/autism pseudoscience contingent, which provided much of the money and ultimately led to a schism in the group. As recently as last September, Bob Wright was using the same sort of weasel words that Emken used. It’s useful to note that the scientific advisor’s statement was:

Over the last two decades, extensive research has asked whether there is any link between childhood vaccinations and autism. The results of this research are clear: Vaccines do not cause autism. We urge that all children be fully vaccinated.

To which Bob Wright added:

Over the last two decades extensive research has asked whether there is any link between childhood vaccines and autism. Scientific research has not directly connected autism to vaccines. Vaccines are very important. Parents must make the decision whether to vaccinate their children. Efforts must be continually made to educate parents about vaccine safety. If parents decide not to vaccinate they must be aware of the consequences in their community and their local schools.

Note the weasel words: Scientific research has not “directly connected autism to vaccines” and “efforts must be continually made to educate parents about vaccine safety.” Not only that, but the science officer’s statement was expunged from the website. If you go to the Autism Speaks website, all you will find is Bob Wright’s statement.

One wonders what sort of position Emken might find in the Trump administration.

This isn’t all Trump is known for. As Jann Bellamy reminds us:

Trump started The Trump Network in 2009, a multi-level marketing scheme to sell nutritional supplements and weight-loss products. He promoted the scheme to those affected by the economic meltdown as “an opportunity for you to make as much money as you want.” Key to success, however, was not so much in selling his dubious products, but in recruiting other sellers and earning commissions. Trump’s “health” products included a multi-vitamin supposedly customized to the consumer’s needs based on an unvalidated mail-in urine test. There was also a weight-loss program developed by a naturopath but exposed by a real registered dietician as expensive and unhealthy. Trump sold The Trump Network in 2012.

Oh, and our new Vice President, Mike Pence, famously denied that smoking causes lung cancer.

Meanwhile, antivaccine loons are rejoicing. For example, on a VAXXED page, proposing a slate of antivaccinationists for a Trump administration:

Meanwhile, remember that Donald Trump apparently met with Andrew Wakefield in August. If Wakefield can manage to get in touch with President Trump, he will likely have a receptive ear to his antivaccine idiocy.

Congratulations, America. We’ve elected a conspiracy-mongering, antivaccine, scientific ignoramus as President of the United States, and I haven’t even gone into his anthropogenic climate change denial. The damage that can and likely will be done to America’s health and science programs over the next four years is incalculable. I’m reminded of H.L. Mencken’s famous quote:

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

In 2016, our democracy was perfected.

oracknows Thu, 11/10/2016 - 04:45

Germ theory denialism and the magical mystical microbiome

oracknows — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 02:00:05 +0000

Germ theory denialism and the magical mystical microbiome

Whenever I point out that a very common thread of "thought"—if you can call it "thought"—in alternative medicine is nothing more than germ theory denialism, the usual reaction is incredulity. Newbies who haven't encountered quacks before invariably do a double take when I inform them that germ theory denialism is a thing, particularly among antivaccine activists. (After all, vaccines don't make sense if microorganisms don't cause disease.) Yet, time and time again I find examples of quacks who deny that disease is a consequence of infection. In fact, some go so far as to try to argue in the other direction, that microorganisms are good for us. Of course, there is a grain of truth in this. We've known for a long time that one of the pernicious effects of antibiotics is that they kill the beneficial bacteria along with the pathogenic bacteria, leading to syndromes like antibiotic-associated diarrhea and C. difficile colitis, just to name an example. The problem is not so much that quacks claim that our microbiome can be beneficial, it's that they basically deny that there are pathogenic bacteria, their usual spin on this claim being that these viruses and bacteria can't cause disease if you're truly healthy and your immune system is intact. Guess how you get that way? Of course. You have to do what they tell you to do to "strengthen your immune system" and make yourself resistant to them, of course!

Of course, many of these same quacks will blame chronic diseases on chronic candida infection. Oh, well, no one said they're consistent.

Be that as it may, I came across a very silly bit of germ theory denialism that reminds me of a famous book by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton entitled Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, except in this case it's Measles and Mumps Are Good For You. Who, you might ask, could write something so off base, so full of cherry picked studies to back up utter nonsense? Who else? I'm talking Sayer Ji of GreenMedInfo, whom we've met many times before. This time around, he's proclaiming The Healing Power of Germs. Not surprisingly, he starts out with a contemptuous attack on germ theory. After claiming that our fear of microorganisms is unfounded and stoked by the CDC through fears of antibiotic resistance, leading to the requirement for vaccines (which Ji clearly considers unnecessary), Ji launches into a familiar diatribe:

What makes this situation all the more surreal is the relatively recent discovery of the microbiome, namely, the 100 trillion viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites, which outnumber our own cells 10-1, and which proves that we are more "germ" than "human," and in many respects, would not be alive without them: e.g. about 8% of our genome is retroviral in origin, 90% of our immune system depends on bacteria in our gut. How, then, can these microorganisms be as deadly as we are told, while at the same time be responsible for making possible our life itself?

The cognitive dissonance generated by these diverging, if not diametrically opposed paradigms -- "microbes as deadly" versus "microbes as essential to life" -- is enough to drive the non-fluoridated mind a bit crazy. But so much is riding on belief in one narrative over another. If germs are not as deadly as we are told, how would we justify the 60+ vaccines in the childhood vaccination schedule, and the 250+ in the developmental pipeline? Clearly, there are biopolitical and economic motivations pushing the germ-centric ideology forward, even in the face of an accumulating body of contrary evidence.

Do you want to tell Ji, or should I? OK, it's my blog; so I'll tell him. Just because science is increasingly understanding the importance of the microbiome does not mean that bacteria and viruses are harmless. What it means is that many bacteria and viruses are harmless, able to live in various ecological niches on and in our bodies. Indeed, much about this microbiome is beneficial, assisting us with digesting food, modulating our immune systems, and carrying out functions important for health. However, one more time, that does not mean that pathogenic microbes are not harmful, that microbes are not a major cause of disease in the world. Indeed, one of the reasons why widespread antibiotic resistance is so terrifying is the possibility of a "post-antibiotic era," where there are strains of bacteria that antibiotics can no longer treat. I worry about this myself, given my advancing age and impending increased susceptibility to infection.

Naturally, as is his wont, Ji cherry picks papers to support his viewpoint:

One such recent academic challenge to the germ theory can be found in a study published this year in Atherosclerosis titled, "Association of measles and mumps with cardiovascular disease: The Japan Collaborative Cohort (JACC) study," which found that exposure to common infections during childhood could decrease risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD).

Basically, this was a prospective observational study of 103,836 subjects (43,689 men and 60,147 women) aged 40–79 years in Japan, none of whom were vaccinated against the mumps or measles, because the MMR vaccine was not introduced to Japan until 1989. They were asked about their medical history, specifically whether they had ever had the measles or mumps and were were classified into the following four groups for comparison: those without a history of measles or mumps (reference group), those with a history of measles only, those with mumps only, and those with a history of both measles and mumps. The results are described in the charts below:

As you can see, it's an interesting finding, a provocative finding even. The authors speculate that this effect might be due to the induction of regulatory T cells after an infection, leading to suppression of inflammation in the arterial wall, preventing the progression of atherosclerosis. One thing I noticed right away about this study is that the number of actual events was surprisingly small. For example, diving into the actual weeds of the numbers in Table 2, I find that there were only 1,212 deaths from myocardial infarction in the whole population over 20 years. Some of the categories have single digit numbers of subjects, such as only 8 men with mumps only who died of ischemic stroke, two of hemorrhagic stroke, five of myocardial infarction. In other words, as interesting as this study is, it's by no means conclusive. It's also hard not to point out (as the authors of this study do) that measles does indeed result in immunosuppression that persists at least two to three years after the infection and that this effect of measles leads children susceptible to a higher risk of death from other infectious diseases. It's quite possible that, if this decrease in cardiovascular mortality that is associated with measles infection is real, it is part of the same phenomenon that leads measles to leave children immunosuppressed for as long as three years.

Of course, one can't help but note that Ji only picks studies that appear to show a benefit from infection. I suppose that it's not so odd then that he neglected to mention an article that appeared in the very same issue of the very same journal that the JACC study was published in, a review article about the association between periodontal disease and cardiovascular disease. Yes, it's been suspected for a long time that periodontal disease is correlated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and recent studies, although not conclusive, appear to bear out that relationship. Again, it's not clear if this relationship is causative or not or due to some other confounding factor, but then the same thing can be said of the results of the JACC trial that Ji promotes.

Of course, Ji can't resist making a certain analogy:

Germ theory has, in certain respects, taken on the characteristics of an infection itself. Not a physical one, but an ideological one, i.e. a meme. Ironically, these memes not only have a life of their own, and replicate like the very infectious entities they conceptualize, but they have physiological effects that can adversely affect immunity. A nebulous fear of "germs" (lethal, invisible, omnipresent), for instance, can contribute to a flight-or-fight/sympathetic dominant state and therefore can result in immune dysregulation, up-regulating cortisol and down-regulating the very cell-mediated immunity needed to prevent opportunistic infections.

Yes, that "fear of disease" can so amp you up that you suppress your own immune system. What rot.

Of course, it's all about what's natural:

As our scientific understanding of the microbe-dependent nature of our health continues to expand, and germ theory and its derivative agenda of vaccinology continues to confront evidence that contradicts its basic tenets, we finally can see a way past the increasingly dismal view projected by health authorities like the CDC and the WHO that germs will be the end of us all; that is, unless we employ "live saving" vaccines and drugs, or support global germ eradication campaigns that are not only not working, and by principle never will, but may actually be harming more than they are helping.

Ultimately, when we come to embrace the "germ" not so much as other but self, the endless war against microbes will give way to a type of peace and compassion between self, body, and the natural world that will be essential for true healing to take place.

That last link leads to an article by Ji that is amazing for its woo-fulness, How The Microbiome Destroyed the Ego, Vaccine Policy, and Patriarchy. It's one of those quack masterpieces that tries to relate disparate bits of science into a unified whole where everything relates to everything else. In this case, Ji makes the amazing claim that "99% of what it means to be human is microbiome-based," which is nonsense even knowing what we know now about the microbiome, and then goes on to "reason" that, because of mitochondrial DNA being maternally transmitted, plus maternal-fetal transmission of the biome, this must be true:

Moreover, the conditions surrounding gestation (important because of maternal-to-fetal microbiome trafficking in utero), her general health, and the way in which she gives birth (home, birth center, or hospital) now take on vastly greater importance than previously imagined. In other words, being born in a hospital via C-section and vaccination, will produce, genetically and epigenetically, a human that is so different – qualitatively – from one born at home, naturally, that they could almost be classified as different species, despite sharing nearly identical eukaryotic DNA (remember, only 1% of the holobiont's total).

Yes, that's how the title came about.

As fascinating as I find new research about the microbiome, it no more proves that the microbiome is more important to our biology than our own cells than epigenetics "proves" that we can "will" our own gene expression to change to whatever we want it to be. But quacks like Sayer Ji are all about the naturalistic fallacy. They also seem to forget that, microbiome or no microbiome, pathogenic organisms are pathogenic because they are able to over come everything standing in their way to causing infection—including the microbiome.

Ji's posts are good teaching opportunities, though, particularly about alt-med germ theory denialism.

oracknows Wed, 12/16/2015 - 21:00

Tags

biology

complementary and alternative medicine

medicine

Pseudoscience

Skepticism/Critical Thinking

complementary and alternative medicine

medicine

“99% of what it means to be human is microbiome-based,”

Since most of these 99% of bacteria, etc. are in our digestive tract, that's pushing a bit too far the whole "you are what you eat", "thinking with our guts", etc.

Ji's thesis is annoying, both for a physiologist and a philosopher (disclaimer: I don't even play either one on TV; I'm just a microbiologist).
Even if we literally were a human brain on top of nothing but micro-organisms, as long as the brain is the decision center, it would still have a major role in defining "being human". Maybe not 99%, since I will grant our brain is influenced by all the inputs it receives from all around the body, but far more than the puny 1% Ji is leaving.

about 8% of our genome is retroviral in origin

I take it that Ji didn't bother to actually read the underlying work. That's the LTR-delimited bits, not all the retroelements.

^ Of course, he's welcome to try turning some of those HERVs back on:

How, then, can these microorganisms be as deadly as we are told, while at the same time be responsible for making possible our life itself?

*koff*ALS*koff*

I am always baffled when someone said that the medical consensus is "ALL germs are BAD".
Because despite my lack of medical training, I know about beneficial bacteria since I was 10, maybe less. How ? Thanks to a famous edutainment cartoon which aired in France in 1987 (re-aired multiple times and sold videotapes and now DVDs), "Il était une fois... la vie" ("Once upon a time... life" ;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time..._Life ).
In the "Digestion" episode, we were introduced to "friendly bacteria" : https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_%C3%A9pisodes_de_Il_%C3%A9tait_…
(which I now know are Escherichia coli ; I did a double take when I read that, but as I read further, apparently only some strains of E. Coli are bad, proving my point further).
So there you have it ; it's pretty clear that the existence of good bacteria was already part of the consensus if they could talk about it in a vulgarisation show for kids.

"and which proves that we are more “germ” than “human,”"

God, what if I tell you that we are human, and that there is bacteria on us ? Does he know that guts are not the body, but a membrane between exterior and our body.

Then maybe we are just air, because, y'know, there a lot of air around us.

@ LouV

“Il était une fois… la vie”

Oh yes. Good show, good times. It was actually a spin-off of a sci-fi cartoon, itself a spin-off of an edutainment cartoon about history (both good ones, too).
The sci-fi cartoon also had as one of the main heroes a brown-skinned action girl. For the French 80's, both the gender and the skin color were slightly daring choices...

For a kid's show, the biology cartoon was going quite deep into complicated concepts.
As an example, it was describing repeatedly the whole DNA/RNA/protein synthesis chain of events. It's not something kids are introduced to before Lycée (Highschool? 15-y-old).

End OT
Although, closer to topic, I would say that today, we are lacking quality family-oriented edutainment cartoons or movies. Or rather, they are easily drown in the sea of stupid.
It doesn't help when confronted to the magical thinking à la Sayer Ji.

Once upon a time...Life.
I remember watching that series in South Africa. It was dubbed into english.

That's right. Long before the advent of vaccines and antibiotics, exposure of indigenous peoples of the Americas to the microbiome of Europeans naturally reduced the death rate of later generations from all causes of disease. Five years after the arrival of the Spanish microbiome to the area of Mexico, the indigenous population shrank from an estimated 25 million inhabitants to around 3 million, so there were far less to contract disease. Ain't nature grand!?

God, what if I tell you that we are human, and that there is bacteria on us ? Does he know that guts are not the body, but a membrane between exterior and our body.

Then maybe we are just air, because, y’know, there a lot of air around us.

Once upon a time, I used to tell students that we were best described as water with impurities.

Couldn't the increased survival in those who have had measles and/or mumps be because those diseases killed off the weakest potential subjects in childhood? Could those susceptible to CVD be more likely to die of measles in childhood? Just a thought....

He also forgot to mention this article (as described by Tara Haelle:

"If there were ever any doubt that measles is a dangerous disease, a study published in the journal Science yesterday blows that misconception away by finally explaining how large-scale measles vaccination caused such a plummet in childhood deaths – even from infections that seemed unrelated to measles."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2015/05/08/measles-vaccine-reduc…

I wonder how many of those Japanese men had mumps at just the wrong time and are sterile.

He also forgot to mention this article (as described by Tara Haelle:

No, I mentioned the very same study that Tara Haelle wrote about, with a link to my blog post about it when it came out: Here's the relevant passage from my post:

It’s also hard not to point out (as the authors of this study do) that measles does indeed result in immunosuppression that persists at least two to three years after the infection and that this effect of measles leads children susceptible to a higher risk of death from other infectious diseases. It’s quite possible that, if this decrease in cardiovascular mortality that is associated with measles infection is real, it is part of the same phenomenon that leads measles to leave children immunosuppressed for as long as three years.

And here's my post on the study:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2015/05/15/the-benefits-of-the-measle…

"How can there be criminals, when we all have loving mothers who are responsible for us being alive?"

That's the thought that popped into my head when I read Ji's black-and-white description of microbes.

Vile scumbag "paleo cardiologist" Jack Wolfson also JAQs off all the time on that "measles is good fer yer heart" conclusion on that paper from Japan (it's somewhere on that ignorantly spiteful facebook page for the "Drs. Wolfson")--which is why Wolfson continues to spew that all kids should get measles and mumps and every vaccine-preventable disease known.

Also, there's a similar thing happening in astronomy as these newer telescopes find more and more planets outside our solar system. Basically, the conspiracy nuts for alien abductions and Area 51 have concluded that NASA et al must be hiding soooo much more from we the people than they are telling us in these new discoveries (which to some of these freaks "proves" we didn't land on the moon, too and that the earth is not round).

That frame of mind for concluding that new discoveries must always ablate all prior discoveries is just bizarre. Just because we now have general relativity doesn't mean that Newtonian mechanics is invalid (though levitating swamis and probably deepak chopra would say otherwise). The airplane does not negate the car and the car does not disprove the bicycle and the bicycle does not debunk the horse and the horse doesn't mean you can't still just get up and walk somewhere. Computers are great. So are handheld calculators. So are slide rules. So are abacuses. So is pencil and paper or a stick writing numbers in the dirt. It's not as though Van Leeuwenhoek could deduce all known animacules when he first invented his microscope.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste: Sayer Ji should be the poster boy for this. He doesn't have a correctly synapted neuron anywhere in his noggin.

Somewhat humored by the CDC posting describing "Chronic Lyme" without patho to supoort it, and then they lump it into the same workup as other somatoform disorders anyway.

"What makes this situation all the more surreal is the relatively recent discovery of the microbiome, namely, the 100 trillion viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites, which outnumber our own cells 10-1, and which proves that we are more “germ” than “human,” and in many respects, would not be alive without them: e.g. about 8% of our genome is retroviral in origin, 90% of our immune system depends on bacteria in our gut. How, then, can these microorganisms be as deadly as we are told, while at the same time be responsible for making possible our life itself?"

If you took away all the human cells, I bet Ji would drool deliriously at what was left. Me, I'd be getting some gloves, a mask and some biohazard bags.

'Toxic Sludge Is Good For You'

Don't tell David L Lewis.

An analogy to consider. In the dead of winter, a small fire contained in one's house is very much a good thing. So why is setting someone's house on fire bad?

Ji has about a five-year-old's understanding of the world. Things are either "good" or "bad", no concept of context at all.

He must be a Jehovah's Witness o.0

http://hhv-6foundation.org/news/cfs-a-herpesvirus-infection-of-the-vagu… seriously just finished reading THAT and popped in here to see if there were any more comments on the Brucella/cow thread and found this article you wrote

This is as ludicrous as antivaxxers....they should research the diseases they prevent...I'd rather take my chances with the vaccines thanks. This made me think of a story on the news a while back about a little boy that dies because of the parents religious beliefs..something to this effect...http://childrenshealthcare.org/?page_id=132

"Somewhat humored by the CDC posting describing “Chronic Lyme” without patho to supoort it, and then they lump it into the same workup as other somatoform disorders anyway"~It's similar to post-sepsis...overactive inflammatory response...it needs a lot more research. Oddly I read a report from the NIH that they tested post treatment LD people and insisted that none of the test subjects have a history of depression. The problem with LD is that not everyone mounts and immune response so they test negative on the 2 tier test but test positive on the PCR test. It's a very strange disease

"Once upon a time, I used to tell students that we were best described as water with impurities."

-> There is a difference between trying to explain something to people in the easy way and constructing a 'scientific' theory onto pure BS.

But not meaning to be rude, I found your description quite misleading (even for very young student).

Orac- sorry missed that. When I said "he" I meant Sayer Ji- not you- had forgotten that study.

Also beware that JI likes to threaten to sue any and all critics.

I've been criticizing Sayer Ji's distortions of science for a long time now, and he hasn't come after me yet. I doubt that this particular post will change that.

If anyone has a perverted appreciation of scientifically non-feasible speculation like I have, there is a wealth of variations upon the microbiome theme by Teresa Conrick at AoA/ contributors. I looked over the past 18 months- 2 years and found a large number of her convoluted, baroque, nigh-unto-rococo, essays presenting her obsessional musings about intestinal contents which are, frankly, of the same order as their subject matter.

She's like Gamondes without the paste-up artwork.

How, then, can these microorganisms be as deadly as we are told, while at the same time be responsible for making possible our life itself?

Some things can be good sometimes and bad other times? Impossible!

On that note, even the cuddly microorganisms of the gut have a nasty tendency to kill you when they get into other areas.

There is a serious methodology problem with the above Japan study and that is they relied on the patients recall as to whether they had had Measles or Mumps. Prior to routine vaccination, most children would have been infected.

When you ask them 40 years later if they were infected and they answer "no" it could mean:
1) they were not infected
2) they don't remember they were infected

It is a big mistake to assume #1. Reporting you were not infected, when in fact you just don't remember being infected, is likely to be a function of both health literacy, as well as current overall health and particularly current brain health .

These are serious confounders and if they were not accounted for, then the data is bunk.

Capt.

re those "cuddly microorganisms of the gut"-

cultivating them by ingesting various pre- and pro-biotics as well as cultured foods like sauerkraut is becoming very Big Business amongst woo-meisters. Look at any of alties' sites and you'll see what I mean.

Does this guy think you can just run around outside and eat any old plant you find, too? Because natural.

A simple test to see how strong this Ji's denial of germ theory is really. Inject him with rabies virus and then set the vaccine out for his use.

Ji will have will have a simple choice continue to believe all germs are good and die or use the vaccine and live.

Of course he would come up with a third reason of why it isn't against his belief system to use the vaccine.

Denice Walter@30

Look at any of alties’ sites and you’ll see what I mean.

IIRC, GreenMedInfo sells probiotics. But Ji writes those articles purely to spread The Truth, not to drive profits. Honestly! There are no COI's when it comes to Truth.

Yup, he sure does. And we are the profit mad shills.

Hahaha. The GMI store is hilarious. PurEnema Coffee anyone?

Aside -- Big Pharma researches antibiotics:

do they do all the testing on humans, then sell the surplus half the product for animal feed? Or

do they test antibiotics _meant_ for animal feed?

And would you expect any actual difference if the product lines were separate from the beginning?

To elaborate on my comment #4 on "Once upon a time... Life" :
https://youtu.be/M4e6qf8r8Tk?t=1m51s
- E. coli are "caterpilars"
- The round flying crafts are Lymphocites B
- The blue guys with 4 legs are pathogenic bacteria (salmonella in this episode)

And in the 3rd part of the episode :
https://youtu.be/QY5q4GJOOgg?t=44s
https://youtu.be/QY5q4GJOOgg?t=2m6s

@ capnkrunch:

No COIs.
HOWEVER alt media which bills itself as "educational" or "informational" ( prn, NN) is nearly purely a commercial for the owners' products- even the political and economic speculations which sell products as part of survivalism or a crisis lifestyle.

#29 -- Incredibly important point as to recall. Commonplace that a 20-40 year old walks in with shingles complications, but no recollection of being infected or vaccinated regarding VZV as a pediatric. History is important, but interview can't be relied upon in every case --- how many Virgin Mary/unknown pregnancies or STIs occur in reality but are denied upon interview? quite commonplace really.

@ Captian_A #29

When you ask them 40 years later if they were infected and they answer “no” it could mean:
1) they were not infected
2) they don’t remember they were infected

Anecdotally, I would have been item 2.
Recently, I would have sworn I was vaccinated and had to check with my mom (and my medical little book) to learn I caught them all.

I've mentioned before that when I went to the NYC Department of Health for a hepatitis B vaccine, they didn't ask "have you had chicken pox?" They looked at my date of birth (pre-1989), confirmed that I had been born in the United States, and said that based on those facts they would assume that I'd had the infection, whether or not I remembered getting sick from it.

I was five when my brother and I had chicken pox and vaguely remember it; my brother was two and may not remember it.

@ Denice

ingesting various pre- and pro-biotics as well as cultured foods like sauerkraut is becoming very Big Business amongst woo-meisters.

Ji's article sure read as he is preaching to a choir of converts.
I'm thinking of his little snipe at the fluorinated sheeples (emphasis mine):

The cognitive dissonance generated by these diverging, if not diametrically opposed paradigms — “microbes as deadly” versus “microbes as essential to life” — is enough to drive the non-fluoridated mind a bit crazy.

@Cheryl: that HH6 website is SCARY! They are touting an article published in Medical Hypotheses? And HH6 is responsible for things as varied as amnesia (??), cancer, kidney disease (I guess all of them), liver disease (ditto)...good grief. I feel sad that people actually read and believe this trash.

Because despite my lack of medical training, I know about beneficial bacteria since I was 10, maybe less
Without beneficial bacteria there would be no Lambic beers.

Speaking of microbiomes...

#36 Hank
There is one germ (pun intended) of reality in your speculation--I know of one drug that was recycled from patients in order to be reused.

The drug was penicillin, and it involved the first person to receive it, during the early 40s in England. However, Big Pharma wasn't involved (that came later) and it wasn't done for profit on animals, but in people and out of desperation. There were a lot of infected patients in the hospital, not to mention that there was a war on and the Nazis were bombing them.

Back then, penicillin was difficult and expensive to purify from the first low-yield mold cultures, and the first gen drug has a fast clearance rate and mostly gets flushed out in the urine. The first patient had failed everything else, and the entire available supply of drug wasn't enough, so they purified the excess from urine and (allegedly) reused it. Poor guy died anyway because they ran out of drug.

The next trial was on children (they need smaller doses). I somehow doubt that a clinical trial proposal using recycled drug on kids would be approved today.

I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that the HHV-6 Foundation is basically an affiliate of Quest Diagnostics / Focus Labs.

Re: Measles,mumps,etc being "good for the heart".I grew up before the MMR,back when there were individual vaccines for each of these diseases.I would probably be dead had I gotten them.I have been diagnosed with two serious genetic diseases.One of which is a primary immune deficiency.I did,however,get chicken pox when I was seven years old.I was acutely ill,for weeks on end,and delirious and semicomatose most of the time.I don't remember much of this,but I do recall our family doctor actually making a house call.This was unheard of at that time.He advised my mother to take me to the hospital.Long story short,I spent about a week in the hospital,much of that time in the ICU.A little less than a year later,I developed a cardiomyopathy,that has caused me 40+ years of pain and suffering. Cardiomyopathy is a very common complication of many these "beneficial" diseases those "evil" vaccine makers want to deny our children the benefits of.

But I have also seen where some antivaxers say that these diseases really are good because they cull the gene pool of the weak and inferior,who presumably will not be a drain on society.Which gets us back to the extreme libertarian mindset held by so many antis...

Despite multiple exposures, Mr. Delphine did not contract chicken pox until he was 15. And when he did, he got a terrible case. He had pox everywhere. If you know what I mean. And I think that you do.

He scratched so badly in his sleep in a certain region that he bled profusely. As he lay there in agony on his bed, his mother (peds nurse) came into the room with a bottle of something and some gauze, saying, "I need to have a-" to which he quite understandably shrieked, "GET AWAY FROM ME!!!!1!!!!1!!!!!!!!!!"

This study that suggests mumps infection may be protective against ovarian cancer has been linked by anti-vaxers as well as "proof" that these infections are beneficial.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951028/

What are your thoughts on that one, Orac? (or anyone else!)

I find it hard to take seriously anyone who claims there are "60+ vaccines in the childhood vaccination schedule" when the actual number is 13.

Mr. Ji is a lying sack of biome.

Ji writes:

"The cognitive dissonance... is enough to drive the non-fluoridated mind a bit crazy."

Well then. If flouride is needed to make people smart enough to understand germ theory, then that's all the more reason to promote it, isn't it? Bring on the flouride for my kids! It seems lack thereof makes you more than a wee bit crazy, perceiving cognitive dissonance where there is none.

@ Kristina:

Hilariously, Sayer Ji isn't the only woo-meister to consider himself intellectually endowed:
Only today, Mikey critiqued lowly Yale students who don't have the cognitive abilities that would allow them to emulate his genius.
Similarly, whip smart** polymath** Null often questions graduate students at elite New York universities who can't seem to get the correct answers to his searching questions whilst their professors seek him out for their own enlightenment.
Alison MacNeil thinks that doctors are @sshats and other TMs complain about how physicians can't comprehend their research.

** yeah right

My guess is that they're trying to look into latent viruses as the cause of diseases w/ no know cause? Hard to say..I know HPV and EBV can cause cancer..not sure about the other Herpes viruses. Either way I just read it and it was really freaky and then pop in here to see that there's someone that thinks disease CAUSING microbes are a good thing? My "take" on probiotics is that they DEAD..that's why they "boost the immune system" I suppose..if they even manage to survive the stomach acid. Live beneficial bacteria I can see, especially after a round of antibiotics, like homemade Kefir..but the pills? Am I missing something here? Or maybe a bacteria enema..like the coffee(wouldn't the caffeine CAUSE irritable bowel?) ..people do some strange things. Colonic cleanses? Wiping out the flora colonies..yeah now THAT'S a good idea...don't get me started ;)

I find it hard to take seriously anyone who claims there are “60+ vaccines in the childhood vaccination schedule” when the actual number is 13.

To be fair, I think they count each dose + if the vaccine is a combined one, they count each vaccine separately (MMR = 3 vaccines) to have this number. So I don't think it is a lie, just an alternate and bizarre way to count "vaccines".

@"Quest Diagnostics / Focus Labs" and IGeneX?? I SWEAR they're in cahoots with the "Lyme literate" doctors..dunno why...just a gut feeling I guess.

"To be fair, I think they count each dose + if the vaccine is a combined one, they count each vaccine separately (MMR = 3 vaccines) to have this number. So I don’t think it is a lie, just an alternate and bizarre way to count “vaccines”."

Even if you count every component separately that just gets you to 19 "vaccines". The only way you could come up with anything remotely like 60 is to count every single dose as a separate vaccine. By that "logic", someone taking an antibiotic twice a day for two weeks is on 28 antibiotics.

For antivaxers like Ji, it's a blatantly dishonest attempt to exaggerate the number of vaccines on the pediatric schedule in order to scare parents.

Let's see if I can do Sayer Ji's math, with what I recall from my children's childhood vaccine schedule (year withheld at present..) Hoping I didn't forget any...
2 months: 5
4 months: 5
6 months: 5
15 months: 4
18 months: 4
5 years: 7
Hmmmmmm....30 vaccines. Why, that's horrible! That's scary! That's uh..oh wait.... 4. 4 vaccines.
DTP x 4
OPV x 3
HIB x 4
MMR x 2
I guess 4 vaccines doesn't sound as scary....

That was my 1990 daughter. She's alive, healthy, but could possibly get shingles due to having had chicken pox at age 3.

When I went through a college-based program for animal health technology to get my degree and eventually my license, microbiology 101 was rumored to be the most difficult course in all of the full-time 2 year program. I dreaded it! Come to find out I was doing so well in the class that half way through I was offered a small scholarship. College admins[?] walked into class and practically stopped the whole class to offer me the scholarship. I turned red (and turned it down for a person less financially privileged than me). After that I was known as the go-to person for other classmates for studying for tests as well as scholastically-inclined [I'm not really that way: I have dyscalculia]. I am so extra thankful that I was never exposed to this kind of thinking i.e. germ theory denialism and pseudoscience in general before I started my classes [or at all really].

I see so many kids nowadays as some of the most stubborn pseudoscience followers [they they simply can't ever admit they are wrong!] around. Other people have never learned how to fight their cognitive biases and live to a ripe old age with a "pathologically"-closed-mind as a messed-up psychological coping strategy.

I was an undiagnosed autistic girl that took everything either at face value or simply literally because no one taught me the value of critical thinking --thus I took TV and pop-media at face value like so many kids do.

If autism and the BAP [broad autism phenotype] is as common as we are learning, there are so many other people out there that are vulnerable to purposeful and inadvertent deception. Some jerk-faces/extremist libertarians just see this as a "st-pidity-tax"-- this is simply not fair nor ethical in a country that has no real critical-thinking taught in our education system [especially the primary grades]. It was a dark-day for the public when the practice of both editorial "balance" and quack fighting by the government was either not funded or not given the power to regulate or restricted from enforcing regulations by either unethical and/or ignorant politicians.

Germ-denialist ideology is one of the most infuriating pseudoscience tendencies I've ever come across, especially for a person that grew to *love* microbiology. I can't wait until the people blocking the teaching of critical thinking and common misconceptions no longer has significant political influence! They are like a lead-weight tied to our nation and world where many of their citizens and attempts at companies are already in deep water.

I did,however,get chicken pox when I was seven years old.I was acutely ill,for weeks on end,and delirious and semicomatose most of the time.

I was in college and wound up staying nearly alone in the noble Salisbury House over winter break. I think I heard side 4 of Traffic's On the Road for at least 24 solid hours before I was able to struggle the 10 feet to make it stop.

Then again, I think I've related that anecdote before. It's one of the few things I remember of the two weeks.

What are your thoughts on that one, Orac? (or anyone else!)

MUC1 is a Cynthia Parker fave. I may be able to start using my "real" machine* tomorrow, but if you scout around, there's at least one PMC entry that also reports susceptibility to other cancers as a result of mumps infection.

I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that she only started this trip after being sorely mocked for completely misunderstanding the Mayo multiple myeloma result.

* For values of "real" that include "laptop with dead screen." Donations are welcome.

@Annie #51

I find the paper underwhelming, but sufficiently provocative to warrant further study.

The actual original research presented in that article is on the correlation between mumps and ovarian-cancer-associated biomarkers, not cancer itself. So in principle they didn't even look for a correlation between mumps and cancer protection.

The paper also presents a meta analysis of papers that did look at the correlation between mumps (or childhood infections in general) and ovarian cancer. The authors claim statistics show an effect, but looking at the graph they made, I am not personally convinced. Looked like it could just be noise.

This article is coming from a group that has been insisting for years that baby powder causes cancer. Not a ridiculous hypothesis, but the way they always state it as a fact, despite being unproven, sort of turns me off to them.

Soooo, if the theorist claims that his essence is 99% bacteria, let me make a modest proposal: Let us increase his bio-diversity, exercise his immune cells empower that 99% to express itself as follows: Feed him to my dog.

His bacteria will not only still be around, they'll be introduced to interesting new friends, and his essence will get to hang out at the fire hydrant and, erm, a very expensive natural facility. That place has an amazing biome!
From the bacteria's point of view, there's no downside to this proposal.

That was my 1990 daughter. She’s alive, healthy, but could possibly get shingles due to having had chicken pox at age 3.

My dad disturbingly reported yesterday that "they say you shouldn't get it" when queried after reporting that his brother-in-law's wife,* who just recovered from CLL came down with shingles as a door prize.

Now, he says that he doesn't know whether he's had chickenpox, which is fair enough, but I could use some solid epidemiological data before trying to put my foot down in one way or another.

* Is there a name for this?

It pleases me to anthropomorphize my microbiome. I like to believe that they worship me as a god, especially after I gave them the Yaweh treatment during my colonoscopy prep.

Thanks Bob and Narad! :)

I like to believe that they worship me as a god, especially after I gave them the Yaweh treatment during my colonoscopy prep.

Should've gone for the Ya Ho Wha 13 treatment; that GoLytely nonsense only earned me two grades of "fair" last year.

The cognitive dissonance generated by these diverging, if not diametrically opposed paradigms — “microbes as deadly” versus “microbes as essential to life” — is enough to drive the non-fluoridated mind a bit crazy.

Cattle are domesticated herbivores. Sheep are domesticated herbivores. Bunny rabbits are domesticated herbivores. Therefore mammals are domesticated herbivores.

What's that you say? Siberian tigers are carnivorous mammals that will eat you? That's just your weird sciency way of thinking.

The cognitive dissonance generated by these diverging, if not diametrically opposed paradigms — “mammals as lethal predators” versus "mammals as domesticated herbivores” — is enough to drive the non-fluoridated mind a bit crazy.

the 100 trillion viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites, which outnumber our own cells 10-1, and which proves that we are more “germ” than “human,”

By weight and by volume, human cells are orders of magnitude larger than bacterial cells, and even more vastly larger than viruses, so by weight and by volume we are vastly more human than "germ". Does he imagine that when doing a paternity test, one must carefully sift through the sample, picking out the one in ten cells that is actually human?

In other words, being born in a hospital via C-section and vaccination, will produce, genetically and epigenetically, a human that is so different – qualitatively – from one born at home, naturally, that they could almost be classified as different species, despite sharing nearly identical eukaryotic DNA (remember, only 1% of the holobiont’s total).

And you can change species! Well, "almost" change species, by taking a course of antibiotics and getting recolonized. Also people born in other countries who grew up eating different foods -- well, they aren't really human like you. Not quite the same species at all.

@LW

Cattle are domesticated herbivores. Sheep are domesticated herbivores. Bunny rabbits are domesticated herbivores. Therefore mammals are domesticated herbivores.

Ponies are also domesticated herbivores, yet any reader of Popehat should be aware of the pony menace.

Spectator @#64
Why would you ever do that to your dog?
MoB @#72
I don't need Popehat to tell me about pony menace--I'm a veterinarian.

I'd just like to show one of these "all bacteria are the same" peeps one of those trees of life in which the bacterial and archaea groups are vast branched systems with all animal diversity making a much smaller shrub. I guess that would at least in part be based on DNA though, and at some point they'll get round to denying everything except their concept of epigenetics.

@ Cate K:

Oh come on! I'll bet that you're just a shill for Big Microbe.

At any rate, yeah, they pick up a concept from science that sounds radically new and sexy - and unknown to most of their audience( like most of reality I should add) - and then they fiddle around confabulating links to their older cherished ideas. Beside quantum this-n-that they might add entanglement. I haven't heard much about strings though. Surprising.

Microbiome is the new epigenetics.

In psychology, they like talk about cognition and archetypes.
Funny how they seem to skip over vast areas of physiology to think up ways to show that various substances 'poison' neurons, creating autism. Schizophrenia is caused by a B vitamin defiency it seems to some.

from one born at home, naturally

One can also nitpick and points out that practically all of human homes are totally non-natural things (the exceptions being in the mud-and-wood corner, and only because insects like ants and termites do it, too).
The cushions, heaters, clean tap water are not natural, no matter what.

Being born naturally means landing in a mix of dirt and your moither's bodily fluids, under the open sky, and having your mother or some close relative (or seagulls) eating your placenta to avoid attracting predators.
I'm ready to bet the microbiome of someone really born naturally will be very different* from those sissies born in the comfort of a modern human house. So the latter are no more entitled to "being human" as the ones born in hospital.

* to start with, dirt and Clostridium tetanii go well together. And if a seagull was not involved in your birth, unlike Nature meant it to be, think of all the fungi and bacteria you are missing because you weren't exposed to bird poo.

But.. But.. The antivaxxers tell us that improved hygiene and hand washing removing the bugs caused the drop in cases.. Surely this would be worse for us if we listen to Sayer Ji's reasoning? Or perhaps we're washing away TOXINS..

Another day, another fruitcake..

I gave them the Yaweh treatment during my colonoscopy prep

Four pints of ESB and a Rogan Josh, and it's all Destruction of the Cities of the Plain.

@ DW :@ Cate K:

Oh come on! I’ll bet that you’re just a shill for Big Microbe
If Cate K works here, she must have a lot of fun: http://www.giantmicrobes.com/

And if a seagull was not involved in your birth, unlike Nature meant it to be

As fond as I am of the possibility of leading people to believe that France has idiosyncratic versions of such things, cigognes are "storks."

I for one am glad for the hospital, baby number two would not have made it otherwise. I also highly recommend the shingles vaccine. I had shingles. It was awful. I have been in labor twice and shingles was in some ways worse. I didn't get an epidural with the shingles. I also got them at the ripe old age of 32 so I say the sooner you can get the vaccine the better.

I'm currently 38 weeks pregnant and recently found out that I tested positive for Strep B. For those who aren't familiar with Strep B (which I wasn't until my OB told me about it):

"Group B streptococcal bacteria can cause a wide range of illnesses in susceptible people including newborns, the elderly and those with pre-existing medical conditions such as diabetes or cancer. Out of every 1,000 newborns, one to four will contract group B streptococcal infection (GBS) from their mothers during birth.

In most cases, the pregnant woman shows no symptoms; they are usually not even aware that they are carrying the bacteria. Of those babies infected, between 10 and 20 per cent will become ill. Some of the life-threatening complications of GBS infection in newborns include bacterial infection of the bloodstream (septicaemia), pneumonia and meningitis."

I was asymptomatic so I was quite shocked to learn that I tested positive. I now have to have intravenous antibiotics during my labour to protect my baby from the risks mentioned above and feel very lucky my doctor tested me as I would never have known I had this bacteria.

Yet according to Sawyer Ji's logic, because Strep B isn't harmful for me I'm guessing I should be having a natural birth without medical intervention and just let my baby take the risk? This is why this blog is so important, these people are not harmless idiots but are dangerous to those who don't know any better and might trust their advice. Thanks Orac for your tireless work in fighting pseudoscience with real science :)

Lauren

I was asymptomatic so I was quite shocked to learn that I tested positive

It’s actually fairly common – about a quarter of healthy women carry the bacteria (multiple sources, including this one http://www.medicinenet.com/group_b_strep/article.htm ).
It’s also not that big of deal getting the antibiotics, unless you’re dead set against having a IV during labor. In my own risk-benefit analysis, the possible consequences of skipping them were much, much worse.

The truth hurts
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25760553

THEO - the truth never hurts.

Unless the truth is that you've been stabbed, in which case it hurts quite a lot.

Krebiozen @ 10: I thought so too. Selection effect: some of what would have been future cases of CVD probably died of complications of measles etc. as children.

That's testable: take the known prevalence of deaths from complications of measles & mumps, factor into the reported numbers, and see if the apparent decrease in CVD goes away.

---

Chris Hickle @ 15: Great rhetoric.

Newtonian mechanics also lets us point a rocket at the sky and predict when our probe will get to Jupiter years later, to an accuracy of within 1/2 hour. The sheer beauty of that is deeply inspiring.

What I don't get is this: FDA went after Wilhelm Reich ("I got an Orgone Accumulator / and it makes me feel greater..." extra credit for naming the band that wrote the song;-) and took his flaming BS out of circulation. So why can't they go after the Big Bad Wolfson and Soothsayer Ji? Promoting quackery is medical fraud, plain and simple, and no free speech claims for fraud.

----

Re. probiotics: there are weak findings to the effect that they may help prevent recurrence of C.Diff. Having had the latter, I've been taking the former, until I can get whatever test it takes to determine whether I'm at risk for a recurrence. At worst I'm wasting @ $20 / month, which is a small price to pay if it's been doing any good. Though all factors equal I'd sooner not be popping pills (or capsules as the case may be) that aren't needed or aren't doing anything.

Needless to say I'm terrified of the prospect of a post-AB world, and with the most recent findings from China, I figure we should start living as if we're already there. That means wash hands every single time after using the toilet, before preparing food, before eating. Also wash every cut thoroughly and put a bandage on it to prevent random dirt getting in and causing an infection. As I read on a decently-credible news site, clean clothes, clean sheets, and clean bath towels & hand towels are also helpful. Though, I'm not about to become a germophobe who nukes my kitchen with bleach daily (unless there are decent peer reviewed findings saying otherwise).

re "Big Bad Wolfson" / "Soothsayer Ji"
That's hilarious

I got an Orgone Accumulator

Do you also have a Silver Machine?

Denice @ 88: Thanks:-)

Herr Doktor Bimler @ 89: That was an attempt at humor, so either you missed it or it wasn't a particularly good attempt.

That's from a song lyric by a band that was known for its "psychedelic" sound: syncopated rhythms, contrasting foreground & background melodies, odd instrumental fills, etc., and lyrics that often embody the "loose association" style of songwriting that suggests an LSD trip (or to a psychiatrist, a key diagnostic sign of schizophrenia).

Here's another hint from a spoken-word piece they did as an intro to a different song:

"....You may notice small objects, like ornaments, oscillating..."

C'mon now y'all, someone here has to have heard this band at least once, on a college FM station back when those existed.

Anyway my point was, if FDA could shut down Reich, why can't they shut down some of these modern quacks who are if anything a heck of a lot more harmful?

---

In other news: Colistin-resistant bacteria discovered on three pig farms in the UK:

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35153795

Uh-f***ing-oh, here we go...

None of this is as bad as the claims of meridian-based acupuncturists. At least Ji admits that bacteria/viruses exist. Most traditional acupuncturists actually claim that germs do not exist. Like, at all. As in, germs are in the same league as unicorns. Of course, the lines of magical energy running through the body, those are totaly real.

C’mon now y’all, someone here has to have heard this band at least once

They have been known to play "Silver Machine" also too.

Tsk. I put it down to the spirit of the age.

Possibly I was under the influence of a brainstorm.

I watched almost the whole of Hawkwind's set at the Milky Way in Amsterdam 30-something years ago while believing they were the support band - my consciousness may have been slightly impaired. It was Silver Machine that gave it away, of course.

Great to see Orac The Sterile™ even approaching information about the microbiome, without mere mention of protective microbes reduced or absent as mechanism behind vaccine injury. Completely disregarded is microbial regulation of immune response to vaccination. At least he's a fan of David Bowie.

New article:
Parents question vaccines as epilepsy rates rise to 1 in 20 children under five
http://www.examiner.com/article/parents-question-vaccines-as-epilepsy-r…

1 in 20!!!!! Really?!!!

Show your work, Keith, because nowhere in the cited source does it say "1 in 20."

So no, not really.

Epilepsy incidence has always been high in infants, with most 'growing out of it' as they get older. Since epilepsy incidence in children has been steadily decreasing, with one study finding a 40% reduction over the course of a decade, I don't think vaccination is causing it.

Lawrence, this is the page cited in the article:
http://www.seattlechildrens.org/medical-conditions/brain-nervous-system…
"About 5% of children younger than 5 years old have epilepsy. That is about one in every 20 children under 5."

Seattle Children's is a reputable institution, but that's a general information page, not anything resembling a peer-reviewed paper. Crucially, it doesn't discuss changes in how many children have epilepsy, meaning it doesn't disagree with Krebiozen's point that the incidence is decreasing. Based only on that web page, the incidence could be increasing, decreasing, constant, or varying with the sunspot cycle.

Consider the flat statement that "there were more than 30,000 fatal motor vehicle crashes in the United States in 2013." That's alarming. But it's also true that both the absolute number of deaths from car crashes in the United States, and the number of deaths per million miles traveled, have been decreasing for years. To say "your chances of dying in a car crash are lower than they have been in decades, therefore we must be doing something wrong" would be absurd.

But if epilepsy rates are not "skyrocketing", that would mean that Alicia Bayer ("Mankato Attachment Parenting Examiner") is an ill-informed shouty histrionic person, who could be equally inventive about the link between epilepsy and vaccines!
That would be shocking.

One possible reason for falling epilepsy rates in children is vaccination, as mentioned in this 2013 article.

"It found both the number of children with epilepsy by five years of age, and the annual rate of identification of new cases fell over time."

"Overall, the number of children born between 2003 and 2005 who were treated for epilepsy by the age of five was a third less than children born around a decade earlier (specifically born between 1994 and 1996)."

"One theory to explain this drop in cases is that clinicians have got better at diagnosing epilepsy, so less children are being misdiagnosed with the condition."

"Another theory is that the introduction of the meningitis C vaccine in 1999 may also be partially responsible – serious brain infections are a significant risk factor for childhood epilepsy."

"Whatever the reasons for the change, this well-conducted study suggests the welcome news that the incidence childhood epilepsy in the UK is receding. "

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2013/02February/Pages/Sharp-decline-in-UK-child-…

In the U.S., H. flu meningitis (and the resultant risk in developing a seizure disorder) has been greatly reduced by the H. flu vaccine.

I suspect that the number of antivaxers able to recognize cause and effect in these situations is way less than 1 in 20.

It's well accepted that vaccines cause seizures and that those seizures can in significant percentages (some say over 10%) lead to chronic seizure disorders (epilepsy).

The question is if the mechanism behind the seizures, febrile and otherwise, is a matter of microbial predisposition.

Throw genes out the window for a moment considering the rarity of things like Dravet syndrome accounting for only 2.5% of seizures post vaccination. What about the other 97.5%?!
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0065758

Media and science overplay genes when the focus should be flora.

Microbial predisposition also explains biological plausibility for African American boys found at greater risk of autism by MMR.

But will Orac The Sterile™ talk about it? No, he will not.

Today's Ben Swann's film release:
"Truth in Media: CDC, Vaccines and Autism"
http://truthinmedia.com/cdc-vaccines-autism-coverup/?utm_source=newslet…

This Mayo Clinic video only begins to reveal the excruciating flaws of our one-size-fits-all, barbaric vaccine protocol beginning within hours of birth:
"Mayo Clinic Discovers African-Americans Respond Better to Rubella Vaccine"
http://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-discovers-afri…

Have you seen the latest news, even covered by Time magazine?
"Babies in the Womb Aren’t So Sterile After All"
http://time.com/4159249/baby-microbiome-womb/

C'mon, Orac, try to dig just a little bit deeper.

Microbial predisposition also explains biological plausibility for African American boys found at greater risk of autism by MMR.

But will Orac The Sterile™ talk about it? No, he will not.

Today’s Ben Swann’s film release:
“Truth in Media: CDC, Vaccines and Autism”
http://truthinmedia.com/cdc-vaccines-autism-coverup/?utm_source=newslet…

This Mayo Clinic video only begins to reveal the excruciating flaws of our one-size-fits-all, barbaric vaccine protocol beginning within hours of birth:
“Mayo Clinic Discovers African-Americans Respond Better to Rubella Vaccine”
http://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-discovers-afri…

Have you seen the latest news, even covered by Time magazine?
“Babies in the Womb Aren’t So Sterile After All”
http://time.com/4159249/baby-microbiome-womb/

C’mon, Orac, try to dig just a little bit deeper.

Apologies for the double post above. Hope everyone is having a beautiful day, walking compost heaps prone to spontaneous combustion that you are . . .

Here are the new series of papers, including:
"Microbial programming of health and disease starts during fetal life"
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1542-9768

We have the nerve to vaccinate within hours of birth under the mythological assumption that babies are sterile in the womb and in complete disregard of microbial regulation of immune response to vaccination including adverse events.

How can we improve vaccine safety based on these new realizations?

In human bodies, there are a wide variety of bacteria that naturally inhabit the gut, mouth, and other areas. These bacteria, known as commensal microorganisms, find an inviting environment within the human body and can provide the body with some benefit.

Some commensal organisms have the ability to protect their host from infection by another microorganism, either by inhibiting the intruder’s growth or by activating the host’s immune system. Communities of commensal microbes can also influence infection rates, sometimes providing even a more robust protective effect...
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/its-time-to-rethink-how-we-ident…
======================

herr doktor bimler, I'll use this forum as a surrogate to observe that:

Nutkin did not look so 'shambled up and down like a dead thing' moreso than he looked like Ralph Macchio's 'coming out' moment after Ron Thomas swept his knee.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087538/

Ohh! hdb, I did not mean to imply ^^ that Ralph Macchio always assumes the role of a 'furry', or anything.

Nutkin did not look so ‘shambled up and down like a dead thing’ moreso than he looked like Ralph Macchio’s ‘coming out’ moment after Ron Thomas swept his knee.

Apologising in advance to anyone wondering what Gilbert and I are on about -- but he's right, Beatrix Potter squirrels do display a martial-arts appearance at times.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mBkClK9qOME/Tzdz0-huJeI/AAAAAAAADa8/Jv2XfzYNs…
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yNIVRdCQzz4/Tzd2y0cmu6I/AAAAAAAADbI/Yn6hphGJe…

New paper:
"Transkingdom control of viral infection and immunity in the mammalian intestine."
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6270/aad5872

Why are there still no papers about how measles interacts with bacteria? There are for polio and HIV. Meanwhile, 95% of all polio cases are asymptomatic . . . and measles is considered a mild childhood disease in most cases. Do bacteria make the difference?!

Vaccine injury is apparently a matter of microbial predisposition, disregarded by Orac.

Click on the photo of the new paper:
"Intestinal microbiota promote enteric virus replication. Enteric viruses can interact with bacteria before initiating replication in the mammalian intestine. This illustration shows norovirus interacting with bacteria. Through these interactions, and/or through microbiota-mediated alteration of host immune responses, intestinal microbiota facilitate enteric virus replication in the gut."

Good morning to all the folks here in Sterile Oracland™, including The Big Sterile himself.

Several new papers already in 2016 about NEC (necrotizing enterocolitis). Probiotics are known to reduce NEC mortality. This new paper is especially interesting:
"A necrotizing enterocolitis-associated gut microbiota is already present in the meconium: results of a prospective study"
http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/01/19/cid.ciw016.short

HOW CAN WE HAVE THE NERVE TO VACCINATE PRETERM INFANTS WEIGHING ONLY 2.2 LBS AS FULL TERM PER CURRENT CDC PROTOCOL? Preterm infants have reduced or absent protective bacteria making them more vulnerable to vaccine injury. This also applies to full term newborns, a matter of microbial predisposition based on race, gender and maternal health.

OK, Keith. I read the abstract, as I don't have access to the journal. It says infants at higher risk for NEC have higher amounts of the bacteria that causes NEC in their stool. NOTHING about vaccines, NOTHING about probiotics (which, as far as I know aren't increasing staphlococci in the gut) except : Contrariwise, in post-meconium, increased numbers of staphylococci were negatively associated with NEC. These findings suggest causality but this should be verified in induced infection trials in animals, targeted antibiotics and/or probiotics trials. Making clear more studies are needed.

By the way, Keith. it's also well known that breastfeeding/breast milk decreases the risk of NEC, and that infants who receive IV antibiotics may be at higher risk. I've been out of MFM for nearly 17 years, and I knew that back then.

Mr Keith Bell, this is the internet fire department. We've had a lot of complaints about smoke coming from your posts, so we're going to have to ask you to stop setting fire to strawmen.

Allow me to explain this succinctly: A small fire in the fireplace warming you up is good. A house on fire is bad.

Decades-old myth that colonization begins at birth is finally obsolete. It begins in utero.

What's next is accepting vaccine response is regulated by microbes including adverse events such as autism and epilepsy.
"Maternal group B Streptococcus and the infant gut microbiota"
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&ai…

Exposure of newborns to the maternal vaginal microbiota is interrupted with cesarean birthing. Babies delivered by cesarean section (C-section) acquire a microbiota that differs from that of vaginally delivered infants, and C-section delivery has been associated with increased risk for immune and metabolic disorders.

http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nm.4039.html

To reverse the potential ill-fate of C-section babies, researchers smeared surgically delivered babies with the vaginal fluids from their mothers in the moments just after birth. After tracking the babies and their microbiomes for a month, the researchers report Monday in Nature Medicine that the quick slather partly restored normal microbiome development.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/birth-of-a-microbiome-researcher…

Keith, do you know what a non sequitur is? You may as well have said 'What's next is accepting witches cause autism by cursing people."

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/birth-of-a-microbiome-researcher…

A sad aspect of that Ars Technica link was the admission that in modern science, every meaningless tiny-number study requires a clickbait press release for the churnalists:

It’s important to publish this proof-of-principle and make it public now, first author Maria Dominguez-Bello of New York University said, because “it gives credibility,” to the idea. The credibility is sorely needed as she and colleagues compete for grants to do the larger, next-step studies, she said.

Yes, that Nature Med was a meaningless tiny-number study. 7 VB, 7 C/S, 4 'smeared' C/S. Baseline imbalances - EBF and lack of maternal treatment with antibiotics was over-represented in the VB babies (all but one of the C-section babies were combo-fed). An overwhelming buttload of comparisons, and it isn't clear how many, if any, were pre-specified. Massive overlapping error bars. Measurements where sometimes regular C/S looks like VB, and sometimes smeared C/S looks like VB. It's a fishing expedition.

And this is starting with a postulate that is far from proven, or even terribly well demonstrated - that the different microbiomes in VB vs C/S a: exist and b: have any long-term consequence. People love to take the observation that mom/baby pairs who have easy VBs generally tend to be healthier, and try to make it all about VBs being healthier, when the easy birth is just a symptom of nothing going particularly wrong with either of them.

The researcher herself admits that her study was worthless junk-science and blames the funding circus for forcing her to pimp it out.

It's high time to take the vaccine industry to task regarding the fetal microbiome.

"Obesity, Diabetes in Mom Increases Risk of Autism in Child
NEW STUDY OFFERS NEW EVIDENCE THAT AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER RISKS MAY BEGIN IN UTERO"
http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2016/obesity-diabetes-in-mom-in…

"Those children with mothers who were both diabetic and obese were more than four times as likely to develop autism compared to children born to normal weight mothers without diabetes, they found."

New study per above:
"The Association of Maternal Obesity and Diabetes With Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities"
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2016/01/27/peds.201…

If Comment 124 was a clue on "Jeopardy", the 'answer' is "What is a non sequitur?"

“Those children with mothers who were both diabetic and obese were more than four times as likely to develop autism compared to children born to normal weight mothers without diabetes, they found.”

People seem to develop obesity, blood lipid, and sugar problems after abandoning the cannabinoid, CBC, and reaching for the Resperidone class of atypical antipsycotics--

This drug is well-known to cause significant weight-gain, insulin resistance, and metabolic problems in people. Kirby and colleagues had a hunch that the hefty side-effects were linked to changes in the gut microbiome, but they were unsure of the exact mechanism.

In the study, the risperidone-drinking mice also gained weight—an average of 10 percent of their normal body mass in just two months. And when researchers sequenced the microbes in the mice's poop, they found that the microbial communities in the animals’ intestinal tracts were dramatically altered...

...To fatten the link between the microbial changes and the metabolic changes, the researchers transplanted microbe-loaded poop from the drug-dosed mice into normal mice that never had risperidone. Those normal mice then gained weight and burned fewer calories, just like the drug-dosed animals.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/psychiatric-drug-not-antibiotic-…

Et tu, Exxon?

milhayser — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 12:44:10 +0000

Et tu, Exxon?

New reporting by Inside Climate News shows that petroleum giant Exxon knew, more than thirty years ago, that burning too much fossil fuel would cause catastrophic climate change. Comparing Exxon's subsequent emphasis on profits over planetary health to the efforts of Big Tobacco hiding the dangers of cigarettes, PZ Myers writes "the future is going to look back on rabid capitalism as one of the damning pathologies of our history." Now that the wider public is accepting the fact that anthropogenic global warming will transform and could destroy our way of life, Exxon is very much on the hook. Greg Laden, conducting data analysis to prove the accuracy of Exxon's early research, asks "How surprised should we be that a major corporation would both look into and ignore, possibly even repress, the science associated with their primary activity?" While a conspiracy comes to mind, William M. Connolley is a bit more circumspect on Stoat, noting that Exxon's research, building on well-known science, appeared in the peer-reviewed literature. Connolley writes, "confirming publically available information with other publically information available is hardly the stuff of deep dark secrets." But with the public face of Exxon obfuscating the truth since 1989, it's hard not to look at them as evildoers. See also: Exxon speaks.

milhayser Fri, 10/30/2015 - 08:44

Tags

I think that we can be fairly certain that Exxon is well protected by a phalanx of expensive lawyers against our moral outrage. They should be able to easily fend off any torch and pitchfork attack that we want to wage against them. In the big picture they certainly do look like planet wrecking villains, but they did, after all give us things we wanted and needed,and I am sure that may be part of their defense. Have you walked to the store to buy groceries lately? Put up a couple cords of firewood for the winter? Hauled water from the stream? If you are ready to give up every minute of your free time to devote to fossil fuel free survival, then you should feel completely free to take the moral high ground against Exxon Mobil. Or if you have converted to completely fossil free energy already, kudos to you.

In the mean time, I think it would probably be very helpful to the plight of our species and our planet if we could somehow get some more leverage on Fossil Fuel Incorporated to force them to more openly and very publicly admit that yes, we have a climate problem that they (and we ) are the cause. They have supposedly admitted to this in the open literature. They say as much on their website. But it is still being said at such a low volume that the denialsphere is not hearing it or responding to it.

I think that Exxon Mobil had better work to shut down the denialsphere that they have created, that is today's problem. As it stands now, the CEO of Exxon can publicly mock sustainable energy with impunity, and he doesn't have to do anything to put out the fires of denialism that his company ignited decades ago. That, to me is the real moral outrage. The chief Exxon planet wrecking eco-terrorist can claim innocence, even though his sleeper cells of terrorist climate wrecking thugs are free to poison the minds of the public. He can giggle all the way to the bank because climate science is tied up by his pea brained proxy army of web parasites. And here they come now....Look out.

Who thinks what about climate change and science?

gregladen — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 08:13:26 +0000

Who thinks what about climate change and science?

Two items of interest.

1) A new poll looks at conservative and liberal views of science. The findings are not especially unexpected, but the details are interesting. The image above is from this infographic, and the details are given here.

Yes, the detail are quite interesting.

2) If you care, there is some information on what the 2016 GOP candidates stand on climate change.

This is put together by CBS and is here.

gregladen Tue, 09/01/2015 - 04:13

Tags

A new poll looks at conservative and liberal views of science.

Why did they not poll the majority of people? Why only conservatives and liberals?

They apparently captured moderates in the survey too.

To paraphrase the meme, objectivity really does have a left wing-bias.

...erm, left-wing bias.

No wonder we keep flying in circles...

Humpty Dumpty and cranks, quacks, and antivaccinationists

oracknows — Wed, 08 Jul 2015 01:24:03 +0000

Humpty Dumpty and cranks, quacks, and antivaccinationists

One of my favorite quotes from classic literature comes from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, when Alice encounters a rather strange character named Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty, as you will likely recall, was a giant egg with whom Alice got into an argument about the meaning of words:

And only ONE for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'

'I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'

'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master—that's all.'

This passage has a tendency to come to mind when I come across antivaccine activists (or, for that matter, quacks and cranks of almost any sort) on Twitter. For example, just yesterday, I came across these Tweets:

@Montel_Williams @unavdblyunsafe The "antivax" label isn't realistic. Most of us simply want safer vaccines with uncorrupted studies.

— Superabimus (@superabimus) July 7, 2015

Ah, yes. Who doesn't want "safe vaccines" Who doesn't want "uncorrupted studies"? Certainly I want those things! The devil, of course, is in the details. Here's where Humpty Dumpty comes in. What does Superabimus mean by "safe vaccines"? What does she mean by "uncorrupted studies"? Words have meaning, but, more importantly, in science, you have to be able to define your terms. If you're an antivaccine activist, we will certainly disagree over what constitutes as "safe vaccine." However, if you define what you mean by "safe vaccine," listing verifiable exact criteria that you would use to determine if a vaccine is "safe" or not, we could at least have a conversation over whether a given vaccine meets those criteria. Similarly, we might disagree over what constitutes an "uncorrupted study," but if you at least can list the criteria by which you judge if a study is "uncorrupted" or not, again, we can have a conversation.

We can't have a conversation if you won't define your terms and list your criteria, at least not one that is meaningful.

This is also the difference between those who understand science and those who do not. Those who understand science know how critical it is to precisely define one's terms. How did Superabimus do on this score? Sadly, not very well. She was asked by more than one person to define what she meant by a "safe vaccine," with the premise being that they can't all be dangerous. Of course, this is one of my favorite ways of identifying an antivaccine zealot, to ask those railing against vaccines which vaccines they consider sufficiently safe to recommend and which they do not. Someone who has concerns about vaccine safety not rooted in pseudoscience, ideology, or emotion would be reasonably expected to be able to answer that question based on, as I discussed above, specific criteria they can enumerate.

Of course, that's almost never what happens when I ask that question. What usually happens is one of two things. The antivaccine activist will dance around the question, often with a mighty Gish Gallop of changing the topic, trotting out studies that they don't understand and/or that don't show what they think they show, and in general avoiding saying anything specific. Alternatively, she will list criteria for vaccine safety that are not achievable in the real world, such as being absolutely, 100% safe, without a chance for an adverse reaction, while also being 100% effective, which no vaccine is. Whether such unrealistic criteria for vaccine safety are a result of ignorance about how medicine in general—and vaccines in particular—work is often impossible to say. Often it's both. It's also often a matter of motivated reasoning, in which evidence is marshalled to support a predefined viewpoint, rather than to arrive at the truth. I also can't help but think that, somewhere, somehow, at some level, they must know that such criteria are unattainable and unreasonable to expect.

So how did our friendly neighborhood antivaccine Twitter denizen do? Not very well. She assiduously avoided direct answers about vaccine safety. it was so bad that fellow antivaccine activists tried to come to her rescue. For example:

@superabimus @unavdblyunsafe @gorskon @Montel_Williams Placebo-controlled double-blind study of curr vax schedule funded by ind source.

— Robyn Chittister (@rredhead926) July 7, 2015

This sort of comment reveals a shocking ignorance of how clinical trials are done and the ethics of clinical trials. Such a clinical trial would be completely unethical, as I have described many times in the past. Even doing epidemiological studies of vaccinated versus unvaccinated populations is not a simple matter and require far more human subjects and money to do than antivaccinationists can possibly imagine.

Of course, this brings us to the question of what antivaccine activists mean when they demand an "uncorrupted" study. When a physician or scientist says he wants an "uncorrupted" study, he usually means a study not run by big pharma. However, as we know from Humpty Dumpty, words can be tortured to mean whatever Humpty Dumpty wants them to mean, and in the antivaccine world an "uncorrupted study" goes far, far beyond no big pharma involvement. For instance, because the central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement posits that the CDC is at the heart of a great conspiracy to "cover up" data and studies showing that vaccines cause autism, no study with any CDC—or even government—involvement can be considered "uncorrupted." By extension, no study with the involvement of any government, not just the U.S. government, can be considered "uncorrupted." Any study in which a scientist they don't trust (as in Paul Offit) cannot be considered "uncorrupted."

Truly, the word "uncorrupted" and, by extension, the word "corrupted" can mean whatever Humpty Dumpty wants it to mean. Basically, through the power of motivated reasoning and the Dunning-Kruger effect, antivaccinationists will believe only studies that support their bias and disbelieve studies that don't, finding a convenient reason to label them as somehow tainted or corrupt.

Similarly, when cornered on the question of how they define a "safe" vaccine, they will always find a way not to answer the question while maintaining "plausible deniability" of the contention that they find all vaccines dangerous and are, in fact, antivaccine. Indeed, here's the ultimate:

@gorskon @GingerTaylor You are misinterpreting what I said. I'm asking for individual risk assessment. No vax or person is the same.

— Maria Rossi (@vixenvalentino) July 6, 2015

And our friend Ginger Taylor chimed in:

@gorskon detailed med history/biomarkers fed into risk algorithm for asd/devdisorder/vaxinjury/autoimmunity/neuro based on current research.

— Ginger Taylor (@GingerTaylor) July 6, 2015

When it was pointed out how that sounds all very impressive to a nonscientist, it is scientifically unvalidated rubbish, as others pointed out:

@pedsdocjacques @gorskon @vixenvalentino @GingerTaylor the study you'd have to do to validate such a test would be a nightmare.

— Doug Boudreau (@db247365) July 8, 2015

And:

@pedsdocjacques @gorskon @vixenvalentino @GingerTaylor first of all you'd have to come up with testable markers.

— Doug Boudreau (@db247365) July 8, 2015

You get the idea. "Predictive algorithm," too, is a term that can mean whatever antivaccinationists want it to mean. As Todd W. points out, the same is true for "injected directly into the bloodstream," a claim frequently made by antivaccinationists about vaccines. It's not just vaccines, either. It's any area of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories that you can imagine.

What distinguishes cranks, quacks, and pseudoscientists from real scientists and physicians is that the latter have precise definitions and criteria for what they mean and how they determine whether, for instance, a medicine or vaccine is safe and effective. In contrast, antivaccinationists, supporters of alternative medicine, creationists, denialists of human-induced global climate change, anti-GMO cranks, and the like are almost always very vague about what the terms they use mean. They are truly Humpty Dumpty, and to them words mean what they want them to mean, no more, no less. Just try to pin them down about what they mean when they use terms like "safe," "uncorrupt," or "unbiased," and you'll see what I mean.

Words matter. Definitions matter. In science, criteria for determining whether a conclusion is justified matter enormously. To cranks, they matter, too, but not in the same way. Rather, they matter as rhetorical tools to obfuscate and apply a patina of reason to massive unreason in order to disguise it as seemingly reasonable to those who don't have the core knowledge to recognize the quackeyr and pseudoscience they are arguing. That's why debating a denialist is, as Deborah Lipstadt so famously put it, "like trying to nail a blob of Jello to the wall." It might be fun to try for a little while, but the end result will always be frustration and the denialist's mind won't be changed.

oracknows Tue, 07/07/2015 - 21:24

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By extension, no study with the involvement of any government, not just the U.S. government, can be considered “uncorrupted.”

Not funded by pharmaceutical/chemical industry, not funded by by government agencies, not funded by NGO foundation like Bill & Melinda Gates'...
Indeed, that doesn't leave many sources of funding for a truly "uncorrupted" study.

Well, ambulance-chaser lawyers (Wakefield) or shopping center chains (Séralini) are apparently acceptable, non-biased sources of financing for the alternative crowd.

On a different, but similarly conspiracy-filled topic, I was once told at a meeting by an anti-GMO person that you could not trust any scientific tudies conducted by companies, Governments or Universities as they were all paid off by Monsanto.

They then proceeded to talk about a study they liked, which I happily pointed out was conducted at a University and therefore corrupted under their rules.

Truly, the word “uncorrupted” and, by extension, the word “corrupted” can mean whatever Humpty Dumpty wants it to mean.

"Corrupted" roughly translates as "funded by anyone other than an anti-vax lobbyist".

In an earlier thread a troll was linking to a report published in “Issues in Law and Medicine”, which on close attention turns out to be a nozzle through which the "National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent and Disabled Inc" squeezes out an unprocessed stream of anti-abortion, anti-contraception theocratic bullsh1t . But it the report was anti-vax, so therefore it must be "uncorrupted"!

Funny how the one study recently funded by SafeMinds (the follow-up Primate Study) didn't show what anti-vaxers expected it would show......

And yet I don't see anti-vaxers ponying up money to fund the very studies they claim they want to see.....

I wonder if anyone has done a power analysis for a hypothetical vaccinated versus unvaccinated study. This means determining how many kids would need to be enrolled to reliably detect a side effect that occurred in 1 in 1,000 people, for example. The rarer the side effect, the more people would need to be enrolled.

Whenever someone suggests a vaccinated versus unvaccinated study, I always ask them what their power analysis revealed about how many people need to be enrolled in the study. No answer so far.

Placebo-controlled double-blind study of curr vax schedule funded by ind source.

I was just saying in another thread that I can't figure out why this one won't die. If Avers would just think for a second they would realize that even from their point of view it's unethical. If I "knew" that vaccines were poison I would never advocate a study like this. Then I again I'm not an awful person who hates children.

If Avers would just think for a second

I think I see the problem here :-).

Speaking of which, "think" is another one of those words the anti-vax uses to mean what they want, instead of what most people use it to mean. You are supposed to look at web sites they approve of, ignore the ones they don't (because those web sites are in on the conspiracy), and naturally come to the same conclusions they do.

As for the proposed study in question: Maybe these people are stuck in a world where scientists routinely perform Godwin-worthy experimental medical atrocities. There is a reason we have institutional review boards: to prevent any research involving human or animal subjects from becoming such an atrocity. Anybody who is familiar with IRBs and not self-deluded would realize at once that no IRB would approve any study along the lines of what the "safe vaccines" people want.

@Yvette - That's been discussed here:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/08/24/its-so-cute-when-anti-vaxe…

I would argue that we should be developing those "nightmare" algorithms to model genetic markers for predisposition.

No one's saying that we shouldn't. What I'm saying is that antivaccinationists have no clue just what's involved in doing so. There's also the question of risk versus cost. Given how rare true vaccine injuries are, how many resources are we willing to divert to invest in this research, given that it will take a lot of resources to develop and validate such models. The bang for the buck, from a public health perspective, is not that great, and even a near-perfect predictive risk model wouldn't persuade antivaccine parents to vaccinate.

Thanks for the link love, Orac!

@capnkrunch and Eric Lund

Exactly. Having served in a volunteer capacity on an IRB for a while, I got to see and be part of that whole process. There are a lot of regulations to keep in mind. That IRB also required certification that you understand and can apply ethics requirements to different scenarios.

Which brings to mind a couple other things AVers trot out but don't really understand: The Nuremberg Code and the Belmont Report. They're happy to cite them when they think they support their attacks on real medicine, but quickly forget about them when convenient.

Why would my newborn *need* a hep vaccine? Hopefully he didn't, but I for one practice "better safe than sorry" and I consider vaccines to be as safe as potatoes and broccoli. Yes, he could have been allergic to one, or have had a side issue that means he shouldn't have one. (His cousin gets hives from potatoes and their grandfather takes a medication that doesn't always play nice with dark greens). I'd have given him all his vaccinations as a newborn if that were possible. I didn't catch chicken pox until I was 9, so I wouldn't have *needed* a vaccine at 7, though my sister would have, since she was 7 that when we got it that summer. Good thing we caught it then and not the next june, when our brother was a newborn. You never fricking know when you might catch a vpd.

Here Doktor - 'corrupted' to these people means 'with findings that support my opinion.'

I recently argued with an anti-vax mom about Hep B vaccine. She somehow could not imagine a scenario in which a newborn could need surgery - because you know, accidents never happen to newborns, right?

It's always the Hep B vaccine...because when people see "Hep B" they think DIRTY SEX!

While it won't change antivaxxers, I think somehow changing the population's impression of "sexually transmitted" to "blood-borne pathogen" will help. A blood-borne pathogen that can be passed through just about every body fluid except clean sweat, including a bite, and can live active and transmissible for up to 14 days even in DRIED fluid. Fluid that comes from the high percentage of chronic HBV carriers who aren't even aware they have the infection.

Last I knew, birth was a blood bath. HCWs are one of the highest risk groups for HBV and they're in that room with all kinds of sharp objects. Kids spit and bite each other all the time. Yet it's still predominantly known as from sex and drug use, even on sites from the CDC and WHO. Education really needs to be updated to include vertical transmission to newborns, and non-sex/drugs horizontal transmission to anyone.

Herr doktor bimler @ 4: "...nozzle..." Instant contagious meme! Congratulations.

Nozzle: noun, a particularly aggressive source of propaganda that is at odds with facts established by science.

---

Something to try on the antis:

"Have you ever given your children any sort of medicine?"

"Yeah, I give them (whatever), what's it to you?"

(quick look-up of statisics) "How do you justify that, in light of the fact that the reported serious side effects of (whatever medicine) include (list)...?

They will of course play "duck and cover" or at least "quack and run." But the goal of these sorts of exchanges is show undecideds (who are probably lurking in the background) that the antis are full of bovine excrement.

There will be those who reply to the initial question, "I only give them homeopathic remedies and traditional Maoist herbs." Deal with those as you wish, but mild ridicule works better than crushing ridicule, as the latter tends to shift undecideds' sympathies toward the recipient.

because when people see “Hep B” they think DIRTY SEX!

Just like when they see "Gardisil" and think "precocious and/or promiscuous sex".

As a physician it is sometimes a real struggle to get patients to see the value in being immunized. I also deal with an immune suppressed population due to organ transplant and immunization is especially important for protection. Patients hear conflicting messages on TV and other media all the time.
You can check my June 14th post on "Is bad luck really a diagnosis"?
http://darwinskidneys.blogspot.com

I am quite baffled about the statement capnkrunch re
'Placebo-controlled double-blind study of curr vax schedule funded by ind source'. "If I “knew” that vaccines were poison I would never advocate a study like this. Then I again I’m not an awful person who hates children". You know, there are actually enough children to do the study - there are enough not vaccinated whose parents know that they cannot be safely vaccinated. There are enough adults that know that they themselves cannot be safely vaccinated to participate too. I put my hand up for it. Immediately. Can I prove that I cannot be safely vaccinated? No. I 'only' got polio from the vaccination. Was it reported? Of course not. I also 'only' got the flu and then bronchitis every time I got the flu injection. Was it reported? No of course not. I also got chronic fatigue immediately after a TB 'vaccination'. The thing is the idiot doctor put three into me because the first two didn't register. Brilliant. I was dizzy within an hour and could barely stay awake for the next three years. Great stuff this vaccination medicine, people. Now - how would I prove that I am sensitive to vaccinations? Well to have another one of course. That's how its done. But you know what? I prefer to live disease free rather than getting free doses of it from the government. I have no intention whatsoever of ruining my life quality to please people who don't trust the very thing that they say protects them. For goodness sake, it isn't rocket science - if vaccinations work then you are safe, aren't you? And if they don't work, what is your problem? You say that you are concerned about those who can't vaccinate. NO you are not. You harrass those who can't vaccinate. The only dead babies you report are those that were not vaccinated. You don't openly report those that are dead FROM vaccination or those that are maimed for life. You call them 'anecdotes'. You call the parents liars. And I am not an anecdote either - I a person who has had enough of being made ill by vaccinations and this 'vaccinations are very safe' . Vaccinations can and do harm people. They are a medical procedure that must be a choice. The herd immunity in Australia is already safe. Australia is over 90% vaccinated. You don't seem to be too worried about the wealthy people who don't vaccinate their children. Isn't that interesting? Those that go to private schools? Or the doctors that have been granted permission to not vaccinate their families because they have been able to show that they fully understand the whole story about vaccination? It is true that vaccinations appear safe for most. But they are not safe for too many. They were not safe for my children - who by the way, were never ever ill and not vaccinated. It is total garbage that it is the unvaccinated who are more prone to something like measles. When vaccinated kids were getting measles, mine were not. And anyway, I had measles as a child and so did the whole jolly town. We are all still alive and fine - from that. However, once we had been vaccinated against polio - several kids in that town now had polio. Myself included. There is too much unknown about the safety of vaccinations. The safety tests must be done and there are enough people to do it. It is not irresponsible and all. It is, however, highly unethical and dangerous to coerce people who may feel that they have no choice but to comply if they can't afford to risk being jailed for not sending their child to school. And it is horrific that any child's education should be a bargaining tool by the government. It is also horrific that anyone's job should be on the line due to not being vaccinated.What could happen instead is regular mandatory health checks. Doesn't that sound reasonable rather than removing people's right to consent? Or does it seriously sound like a good idea to everyone here to hand the government the right to tell everyone what medications they must take under pain of punishment? It will be really interesting what you all think of this idea in a few years if this allowed to go through. I do realise that right now, so many actually believe that governments motivations are for the good of the people and not their own power advancement. Just use your imagination just a little. Where could it go? What sort of things could everyone be forced to take - and what could happen if the government gets to say by law that it owns the rights to your children's bodies and yours? Does anyone know history by any chance?

I just want to make a general point about medication, and presumably vaccines, and the studies done with them.
When I was working on new drug studies, I asked the rep what she considered an adverse event. Would getting hit by a bus qualify? Yes. Losing his/her savings in a bank crash? Also yes. Getting hit by a meteor? Of course; the reason being that there would be an outside chance, however small, that the subject's ability to predict or escape from the adverse event might have been affected, even in the event of a meteor strike.

I really don´t know why Ginger et al continue to push for these things. It´s not going to happen. Period.
I know they want to think that their snowflakes are different from one another, but they really aren't. It is beyond arrogant to think so. If and when people get a reaction to a vaccine, it's not because they're unique. It's a combination of different things, but it's not unique.
But that's par for the course for people like Ginger, who think that they are smarter than they really are, or that they should be heard at the same level as true experts. Her smug attitude and self-delusion will change nothing. Tomorrow, a year from tomorrow, and a century from tomorrow, we will still be using vaccines. In some cases, we will still use the vaccine technology we use today, and nothing will stop that.
Ginger and her friends need to realize that they are part of a cult that is a couple of hundred years old and has accomplished absolutely nothing good in terms of public health other than to give me work to do, and, of course, a few laughs and a few eyerolls. Their product is pure evil, working hard to make sure that children get vaccine-preventable diseases. Heck of a legacy if you ask me.
Like Donald Trump, if my kids ever ask me who Ginger or Wakefield or any other antivax loon was, my answer will be a hearty LOL.
In other words, they can go eff themselves because we're not halting vaccination programs that are based on clear and sound scientific evidence.

The commenters at Natural News today don't even believe in germ theory. Reading the debates of anti-vaxxxers is certainly an eye-opener. By which I mean startling or possibly even frightening.

@ capnkruch #7

If I “knew” that vaccines were poison I would never advocate a study like this.

[Standing ovation] Oh, yes! This reminds me of one of my grad school profs' comment on the experimental 'social science' studies attempting to establish links between pornography and 'aggression' by recruiting college-male research subjects, showing them pornos, and doing some before-and-after 'attitude assessment measure" e.g. the work of researcher Edward Donnerstein. She (grinning) referred to this as "Eddie's school for rapists". At a conference, a few of us posed the question to one of Donnerstein's grad students, who was working on similar stuff: 'How can you show this stuff to volunteers if you even suspect it leads to violence towards women?' He got what I perceived as a slightly crazed look in his eye, and replied, "This is important stuff, and I just have to KNOW!"

Then I again I’m not an awful person who hates children.

Without opening the can of worms containing "awful person", "hate" and how AVers feel about their own "damaged" kids, I think we can safely say that this is more evidence that these folks are all me-me-me, and would happily damage somebody else's kids in that placebo-controlled double-blind RCT if it validated their martyrdom in having to deal with a special-needs child rather than showing off to the world the perfect special snowflake reflection of their oh-so-wonderful special selves.

"WhiteCrow" is a Poe, right? I hit the antivax bingo about ten lines in.

WhiteCrow: "Vaccinations can and do harm people. They are a medical procedure that must be a choice."

Just provide the PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers that any vaccine on the American or Australian pediatric schedule causes more harm than the disease.

Though before you do that: learn how to use paragraphs.

HDB @4 -- With your "nozzle" meme and your "vuvuzueala-blower status" yesterday, you're defintely on a roll. Which is certainly better than being on a bun!

Ren @25 -- I didn't read WhiteCrow, because the lack of paragraph breaks correlates so strongly with, well, you know.

Finally: As with all cranks, these folks suffer from epistemic closure. In a similar manner, global warming pseudo-skeptics have come up with an exactly parallel conspiracy theory to argue away any evidence for the scientific consensus -- namely that all those physical scientists get grants from the Government, which means they're adjusting the results to please their paymasters. The fact that the Government, and all other governments worldwide, is doing far less than needed to mitigate the threat, is conveniently ignored.

A great read on epistemic closure, and how it applies to the entire political Right in the US, is Bruce Bartlett's "The Revenge of the Reality-Based Community", published in (of all places) The American Conservative. It's easily found online.

Also, WhiteCrow, here is some reading for you and your privileged bum:
http://epidemiological.net/2015/07/07/colombia-day-15/

Here, White Crow--digest this: http://thespudd.com/im-not-anti-parachute-im-pro-safe-parachute/

You know, there are actually enough children to do the study – there are enough not vaccinated whose parents know that they cannot be safely vaccinated. There are enough adults that know that they themselves cannot be safely vaccinated to participate too. I put my hand up for it. Immediately.

That's not the study, WhiteCrow. They want DOUBLE-BLINDED, which means the vaccinated and unvaccinated which straw they drew. It's the only way to ensure it's truly random. You sign up, you get an injection, you don't know what it is, placebo or vaccine!

Antivaxxers won't do it anymore than someone like me, who would never let my child go unvaccinated, especially if I never knew. They'd never allow it to potentially not happen.

You're thinking retrospective, on groups of kids who were never vaccinated because their parents are antivaxxers which HAS BEEN DONE, or a non-blinded study in which each participant is biased towards what they know is going on. Try again.

If it weren't for your study suggestion, I'd think Poe. But you honestly seem serious in your stupidity in that regard, so I really think we've gotten an honest to goddness antivax bingo out of you.

palindrom -- back in the old days (when I was a child, so late Jurassic), "conservative" =/= "knuckle-dragging science-denier."

My very conservative father (may he rest in peace) would be reeling at what passes for conservatism nowadays.

Whitecrow, you realize you're suggesting that we compare health outcomes between a cohort of healthy, vaccinated subjects and a cohort of unvaccinated subjects suffering from at least one known medical condition serious enough to render them an unsuitable candidate for routine vaccination? By what stretch of the imagination could those two cohorts be considered similar enough to generate any meaningful conclusion?

I had measles as a child and so did the whole jolly town. We are all still alive and fine – from that.

Survivor's bias: many others had measles and are not alive (my great uncle, Roald Dahl's daughter, the immunocompromised women in Clallam county, the child in Germany who was too young to be vaccinated against mealses, over 145,000 people worldwide in 2013 alone...) and many other's are not fine but suffering serious adverse outcomes other than death.

"I would have moved my arm and blocked that meteor, but because it was just too darn sore after being stuck by that needle I got hit by it instead."

The ethics issue means that only a non-randomized retrospective study would be permitted, and the problem with that is that the unvaccinated are self-selected. We don't know how many people don't vaccinate their children because of a family history of immune problems, for example. If more unvaccinated people have immune problems (and therefore more frequent and more serious infections) this would be a confounder that made it look as if vaccines prevent against infections.

Similarly a parent who doesn't vaccinate may well be less likely to take a child to see a doctor they have an ear infection, for example. This would skew the results in the opposite direction, making it look as if vaccinated children get more ear infections. Even a case control study wouldn't overcome the latter problem.

The violence of anti-vaccine rhetoric has consequences:

Authorities have warned California legislative offices to be on the lookout for a Southern California man arrested last week and suspected of spraying graffiti that threatened lawmakers for the approval of Senate Bill 277, which outlaws religious and personal belief exemptions for school-required vaccines.

The California Highway Patrol issued a bulletin to sergeants-at-arms’ offices in the Assembly and Senate about Marlon Brian Andrino, who was arrested July 2 in Beverly Hills on a charge of felony vandalism. Police say Andrino spray-painted “4 Every Kid Afflicted A Public Figure Will Die, SB 277” at four locations.

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article267…

I hope Orac doesn't mind, but here's part 1 of 4 discussing why, with references to legal and ethical documents, a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study would never fly: http://www.harpocratesspeaks.com/2011/03/vaccinated-vs-unvaccinated-rct-overview.html

You know, there are actually enough children to do the study

Once again, cue Prometheus.

Forgive me if this has already been posted, but Superabimus' nym means "We shall overcome" in Latin. Way to co-opt a civil rights history to which you have no right and swank about your eddication at the same time. Fiends.

I don't even want to start with the Wonder Woman avatar ...

It is total garbage that it is the unvaccinated who are more prone to something like measles.

Uh-huh.

@Narad

Aw, man. I miss Prometheus.

Is Whitecrow even American? How do you get chronic fatigue from a TB vaccination that was never given in the USA? Is he/she talking about the simple TB test???

Yeah, I hit Bingo myself, but I really did try to wade through that screed.

You don’t seem to be too worried about the wealthy people who don’t vaccinate their children. Isn’t that interesting?

Only in the sense that you seem to be admiring something that you pulled out of your ass.

@White Crow -

I had to smile at your "quietly letting the wealthy off the hook." Both comments and blog posts here point out that the majority of personal belief exemptions and vaccine deniers are affluent and white. We call them out. We don't give them a pass.

We also are hampered by truth. We will never say vaccines are 100% safe or will give 100% immunity. They are safer than the disease and are constantly evaluated and researched for improvement.

I understand why vaccines are scary. You have to let someone approach you with a needle and they assure you it will make a permanent change in the way your body works. There's a part of your brain that says, "Not so fast... if they can do a good change, they can do bad ones, too." That's only human. If you have had a vaccine reaction, it is even worse. My worst vaccine reaction ever was a low-grade fever and icky for 24 hours after a flu vaccine. Who knows. May or may not have been related.

WhiteCrow@20

There are enough adults that know that they themselves cannot be safely vaccinated to participate too. I put my hand up for it. Immediately.

You clearly don't understand RCTs. The 'R' is for random. Your children would be just as likely to be in the vaccine group as the placebo group. You are volunteering your children to be given something you "know" to be poison. If you don't want your children in it then that's even worse, you are requesting that others poison their children to prove your point. Like I said before, THINK! Eric Lund got it right in #8.

sadmar@24

“This is important stuff, and I just have to KNOW!”

Reminded me of this.

back in the old days (when I was a child, so late Jurassic), “conservative” =/= “knuckle-dragging science-denier.”

Anti-vaxers are not the only people in the US who have been playing a Humpty-Dumpty like role in public discourse. I frequently wonder just what these so-called conservatives are actually conserving. They certainly don't follow the dictionary definition. And they prefer not to be constrained by reality, another trait American conservatives have in common with anti-vaxers.

As conservative icon Rush Limbaugh once said, words mean things. That's about the only sensible statement that has ever been attributed to Mr. Limbaugh, and he certainly doesn't follow that advice.

Sequela of vaccine-preventable diseases include the little-known but feared consequence of loss of paragraph skills (as demonstrated by WhiteCrow).

Not fatal, but somewhat debilitating.

In related news, over at AoA, Julie Obradovic badly misunderstands the categorical imperative – to the point of not recognizing the part of speech – today.

It's of course just a weird prop, but the commentariat hasn't noticed that one immediate outcome is that hiding is the herd and all related constructions go right out the window.

MI Dawn @42:

If Whitecrow is around my age (51) they might have gotten the TB vaccine here in the U.S.: it was given to (some) American children for a few years.

That's a relatively minor point, but worth mentioning, I think.

^ "in the herd"

Is Whitecrow even American?

"The herd immunity in Australia is already safe. Australia is over 90% vaccinated."

Note also the spelling "realise."

Narad, I try to stay out of AoA...

The post below Obradovic's is Dachel getting all snitty about Emily Willingham returning to Forbes, and Willingham's coverage of Steve Silberman's upcoming book, Neurotribes.

I can hardly wait for Neurotribes to be published... and the "autism is vaccine injury" crowd are going to have quite strong reactions to the book. As in "blown fuses".

#52
Liz Ditz,
THERE YOU ARE!
How many California Assembly persons have you contacted to push the OVERTURN THE THIMEROSAL BAN campaign? I've already contacted many, and they were VERY interested. I really need everyone's help to get the ball rolling. I'm still waiting for Herr Doctor to get a model bill written. Don't forget to push these points:

Why do you continue to keep LIFE-SAVING THIMEROSAL out of California vaccines?????????? ARE YOU JUST RACIST? DO YOU WANT TO CONTINUE TO DRAIN THE TAXES OF CALIFORNIANS UNNECESSARILY?

IF IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR AFRICA,
IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR CALIFORNIA!

Please vote to OVERTURN THE CALIFORNIA BAN ON THIMEROSAL!
It is SAFE. It is EFFECTIVE, and it is CHEAP!
BRING BACK THE ECONOMICAL MULTI-DOSE VIALS!
Supported by Californian’s HOPING for some CHANGE to pay the BILLS.

http://www.semissourian.com/story/147068.html
“The outcome reflected the position of the World Health Organization that the small amount of thimerosal used in vaccines is safe. Even the American Academy of Pediatrics, which called for thimerosal to be removed from children’s vaccines over a decade ago, last year came out in favor of exempting the preservative from the mercury treaty.

The exemption also stemmed from a widely shared economic judgment that the cost to make and distribute thimerosal-free vaccines would be steep and couldn’t be justified by the uncertain benefits.

Richard Mwendandu, a delegate from Kenya, said African nations that expressed concerns about thimerosal agreed by the end that the preservative is still critical to vaccination programs aimed at reducing childhood deaths, and should be used until a good alternative is found. “There is no cost-effective and reliable alternative at this moment,” Mwendandu said.”
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/30/world_health_organization_approves_use_…

“Senator Elizabeth Warren: Vaccines are safe, effective & protect our children”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79UlXgoQwGk

#36
WE ARE ALL ARTISTS NOW!
I guess Marlon Brian Andrino should take a cue from U.C. Berkely...

“We are a collective of queer and POC artists responsible for the images of historical lynchings posted to several locations in Berkeley and Oakland,” reads a notice the group distributed. “These images connect past events to present ones – referencing endemic faultlines of hatred and persecution that are and should be deeply unsettling to the American consciousness."
http://www.berkeleyside.com/2014/12/13/effigy-hung-from-sather-gate-bef…

Hey toto. I don't see what the fuss is about return of thimerosal. After all it's not like you and your ilk changed the opinion about vaccines after the removal of it. Au contraire, the whole "mercury and toxins" thing keeps on strong.

So if vaccines are root of all evil either way and apparently contain mercury just because of course they do, it's vaccines we are talking about after all, why not just put thimerosal back in? Makes no difference.

"“The herd immunity in Australia is already safe. Australia is over 90% vaccinated.” Narad

Well I can't wait for the next epidemic of 'vaccine failure' there, it's a sure bet.

Oh looks like herd immunity in Australia has just gone down Narad, pity I didn't put a wager on it!

As many as 4,500 people could be sickened by measles after a paramedic infected with the highly contagious virus visited four hospitals and a tourist site, officials in the state of Queensland, Australia fear. The paramedic represented the eighth case of measles in Queensland in 2015.

http://www.ibtimes.com/australia-measles-outbreak-2015-thousands-risk-a…

So Narad, is this primary vaccine failure, dodgy batch, wrong process or again - mythical medical herd immunity 'not in action'.

Glad you are not planning my health plan!

And how is a non-vaccinated person contracting measles "vaccine failure?"

"but this misses the complexity of measles transmission, and that fact that measles epidemics can occur despite high rates of vaccination and despite the vaccine itself having high efficacy (>90%). Much fuss is being made about poor vaccination rates in children in the US - however, overall vaccination rates are 92% in the US and similarly high in Australia. In the affected areas in Sydney, measles vaccination rates according to the Australian Childhood Vaccination Register were over 95%, but the register only captures children under the age of 7 registered in Australia. Furthermore, measles is declared eliminated in both the US and Australia." measles peer reveiwoo

So measles still occurs in highly vaccinated and people like Narad still claim irradication - I mean seriously - it's either here or it isn't, are you sure you aren't basing your bias on medical peer review? despite high vaccination - that means it never works, you can't blame the unvaccinated.

The medical myth of elimination versus eradication, more weasel words from the doctors.

Sitting ducks

@Frequent Lurker #16
Funny thing is, I've never thought of Hep B as a sexually-transmitted disease. Probably because over here the vaccine was for many years not mandatory to anyone but HCWs - but people were advised to get a full series of shots before any planned surgery. So for me it was always a blood-borne disease - and so it is for many people. And then you get this anti-vax mom who claims that her newborn baby does not need the shot, because after all, newborns to not go to a dentist, a hairdresser or a beautician and they are protected by their moms from any nasty accidents like falling out of the pram, which would send them into ER - so there are no ways to contact the virus.

So I read phildo's link before blocking the sockpuppet. The Australian man's vaccine status is unknown. And, IIRC, while Australia as a country has good vaccination levels, there are pockets where they are very low, and Queensland has a bunch of those pockets.

Can any of our Oz friends correct me if I'm wrong?

For the record, phildo, eradication of a virus doesn't mean there are no cases. It means it is no longer endemic, that is, new cases are either imported or are contracted from the importer, and the outbreak burns itself out. You cannot guarantee no cases at all until it's eradicated from the whole planet.

"Hey toto. I don’t see what the fuss is about return of thimerosal."
I guess you can't read. Let me try again.
MONEY MONEY MONEY!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETxmCCsMoD0

AN EXTRA $.50/ JAB TO TAKE OUT A HARMLESS SUBSTANCE THAT KEEPS VACCINES SAFE. AN INCREASED COST OF UP TO $18.4 MILLION!
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=CALIFORNIA+POPULAT…

IF IT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR AFRICA
IT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR CALIFORNIA!

The exemption also stemmed from a widely shared economic judgment that the cost to make and distribute thimerosal-free vaccines would be steep and couldn’t be justified by the uncertain benefits.

“Senator Elizabeth Warren: Vaccines are safe, effective & protect our children”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79UlXgoQwGk

CONTINUING THE THIMEROSAL BAN MAKES CALIFORNIA LOOK RACIST AND IT MAKES IT APPEAR THAT ANTI-VAXXERS ARE TELLING THE TRUTH: THIMEROSAL CAUSES VACCINE INJURY.

Now is the time to OVERTURN THE BAN. The MANDATED VACCINE LAW passed with flying colors. THE CITIZENS KNOW ALL VACCINES ARE SAFE, INCLUDING ONES WITH FULL THIMEROSAL DOSES. NOT OVERTURNING IT GIVES A FOOTHOLD TO THE ENEMY!

CAN I COUNT ON YOU TO CALL THE CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLY MEMBERS AND PUSH FOR THIS BILL?

LIZ! Dr. Bemler! I need to hear from you!

phildo@57

So Narad, is this primary vaccine failure, dodgy batch, wrong process or again – mythical medical herd immunity ‘not in action’.

Unsurprisingly, you seem to have misunderstood what "at risk" means.

@59

The medical myth of elimination versus eradication, more weasel words from the doctors.

Oh phildo, weasel words are what your ilk uses when they refuse to define them or change generally accepted meaning (i.e. "directly into thebbloodstream" for IM injections). Elimination and eradication have well defined meanings when it comes to diseases. Note that this is from 1993. Thanks to the lies you and yours spread measels is no longer an example of elimination of infection.

-Elimination of disease: Reduction to zero of the incidence of a specified disease in a defined geographical area as a result of deliberate efforts; continued intervention measures are required. Example: neonatal tetanus.
-Elimination of infections: Reduction to zero of the incidence of infection caused by a specific agent in a defined geographical area as a result of deliberate efforts; continued measures to prevent re-establishment of transmission are required. Example: measles, poliomyelitis.
-Eradication: Permanent reduction to zero of the worldwide incidence of infection caused by a specific agent as a result of deliberate efforts; intervention measures are no longer needed. Example: smallpox.

By the way, I respect your decision to stop impersonating others. Keep up the good work!

"And how is a non-vaccinated person contracting measles “vaccine failure?”Lawrence the trying

My dear boy, Narad harped on about herd immunity - shouldn't matter whose been vaccinated or not, point was even Narad's medical myth of reaching the required 90blah% means fail again for associative 'protection'.

I still ain't Phil, never was, just seemed easier to join the flow of sewage by picking up any name. Johnny isn't Johnny and NobRed may be Narad - we just don't know.

What on earth Capcrunch is we can only guess, I have a vision of something like a cross between a homeopath and a straw man.

“And how is a non-vaccinated person contracting measles “vaccine failure?”Lawrence the trying

My dear boy, Narad harped on about herd immunity – shouldn’t matter whose been vaccinated or not, point was even Narad’s medical myth of reaching the required 90blah% means fail again for associative ‘protection’.

I still ain’t Phil, never was, just seemed easier to join the flow of sewage by picking up any name. Johnny isn’t Johnny and NobRed may be Narad – we just don’t know.

What on earth Capcrunch is we can only guess, I have a vision of something like a cross between a homeopath and a straw man. It's all in the name.

Keep it up Phillip Hills. I imagine you are only one or two new user auto moderations from getting yourself banned.

Um, maybe I'm misunderstanding the Phil, but it almost read as if he thinks what is meant my herd immunity is at some magic % then all unvaccinated people become magically immune through osmosis and since that doesn't happen, there is no herd immunity.

The protection is much more fragile than that, how it protects those who can't be vaccinated is when someone brings it into a community that has had zero cases--regardless of how someone managed to catch it elsewhere and bring it in--the odds are it is unlikely anyone exposed to the infectious person gets sick and thus it dies out like a candle under a fire hose rather than spreading like a candle set too close to a window curtain. How bad the spread will depend on how "flammable" the population is.

New disease no one has ever had will cause a "hotter" and more damaging "fire" of infection than a disease that at least some people can't get or a population where odds are no one near the sick person can get ill so the vulnerable person is almost never exposed to the disease at all.

@#69: "How bad the spread will depend on how “flammable” the population is."

I like the fire analogies... I often refer to the unvaccinated as "kindling".

I'm getting thoroughly fed up with 'pheeldo' or whatever he wants to call himself changing his 'nym. I have killfiled him and have no wish to see his offensive drivel. I hope Orac either bans him or insists he sticks to a 'nym.

The (only) problem with banning someone like phil/pheel/false johnny is that such an act will inflate an already swollen ego and lead to delusions of relevance.

Does anyone know of a good killfile for Firefox that works on IP addresses rather than names? With both toto/Toto and Phildo/johnny/phlido/pheeldo playing "change that 'nym" I'd like to be able to block them more permanently.

For an IP based block to work, you would have to know their IPs, and I'm not aware of any message board or blog commenting templates that distribute the IPs of the commenters out to the other users. Our host has the ability to see commenters IPs, and to block them, but the board software won't let us, the minions, see each other's IPs.

I hope Orac either bans him or insists he sticks to a ‘nym.

Or stops approving them in the first place, whatever.

His blog, his rules.

““The herd immunity in Australia is already safe. Australia is over 90% vaccinated.” Narad

I see that the newly lowercased Sporter of the Essex Muff still can't figure out how quotations work. And that Tutu has also played the change-the-pseudonym game yet again ("Toto," "Toto 'the Rock'," Toto 'The Rock'," and "Herr Toto," at least).

So little time, so many killfile entries.

The (only) problem with banning someone like phil/pheel/false johnny is that such an act will inflate an already swollen ego and lead to delusions of relevance lead to ever more patheticaly desperate attempts to evade the block.

FTFY (although I don't think WP's stock moderation panel understands CIDR).

This is too amusing for me to ignore even as I begin to doze: The Dachelbot is excited.

Ignoring the cut-and-paste blob, check out the actual site:

The Legal Edition – Host & Producer, Attorney-Policy Analyst, Mary Kay Elloian, M.B.A., J.D., Esq.

Yah.

Speaking of herd immunity.

I assume the DOD is very concerned about herd immunity -- any infectious disease, from pinkeye on up, runs through a barracks like a gasoline fire.

Narad -- that's a real balanced panel Ms. Elloian has set up, isn't it?

And that Tutu has also played the change-the-pseudonym game yet again

The dude's desperate craving for attention does not impose a need for me to supply it.

@Johnny #74.

I have seen a message board that posted the IP's of each poster, so some software packages do allow it. The one I saw was a pretty strange little corner of the interwebs (and IIRC there was a way to post anonymously to the board at least for some folks).

@phlldo - tell us the one about germ theory requiring spontaneous generation. That always makes me laugh.

#80 Shay:

"I assume the DOD is very concerned about herd immunity — any infectious disease, from pinkeye on up, runs through a barracks like a gasoline fire."

Been there - seen that! Long ago in an ancient age when I was in army boot camp at Fort Lewis, we were sequestered to our individual barracks - Not supposed to even walk over to talk with other "trainees" in the next barracks! It was a time of meningitis in a couple of boot camps - Notably Ft. Lewis, Ft. Ord and Ft. Dix. Later, following advanced (91C) medic training, I cared for of the meningitis patients at Walson Army Hospital at Ft Dix! That's where I learned to draw blood cultures directly into culture bottles.

I must have had pinkeye four times when I was stationed on Okinawa. At Quantico, for some reason, it was strep throat.. *Everybody* caught strep throat.

^ I tend to agree with Patrick Non-White that "it is a hallmark of pomposity and pretension in a lawyer when one refers to herself as 'Esquire'."

RobRN: "Notably Ft. Lewis, Ft. Ord and Ft. Dix."

Wow, that was a while ago. I know that two of those names don't really exist anymore. The first is "Joint Base Lewis-McChord" and the second does not exist other than the Navy Postgraduate School with lots of foreign language instruction, A Google street map tour shows me that the building I went to 2nd and 3rd grade is now part of a defense language school. It used to be Stillwell Elementary school, and it was very interesting having military police as crossing guards (usually very young men who were glad they weren't in Vietnam).

"@phlldo – tell us the one about germ theory requiring spontaneous generation. That always makes me laugh." mistybrain

Yes I often titter at the thought of doctors wondering why the 'germs just appear' as if by magik - but that is the lot of the spontiseparatist, all disease is bad luck or bad ether, or some kind of mystical inheritance.

One wonders why the 'proper doctor' claiims any scientific lineage at all.

And Pasteur rolls in his grave.

"The (only) problem with banning someone like phil/pheel/false johnny is that such an act will inflate an already swollen ego and lead to delusions of relevance lead to ever more patheticaly desperate attempts to evade the block." the nob

Well not really, it just reinforces the fact that this site is full of winging wallys, broken med students who scrape fake news into bull. When it is pointed out that a) this woman didn't die of measles or Australia has failed herd immunity with regard to measles, Disney outbreaks of measles had more to do with advertising flawed measles vaccine than any attempt to provide protection - you ban me!

That is why you come across as a bunch of Catholics - rather amusing and fun to play with. I suppose it is cruel really, winding up the disadvantaged and the deceased but you get what you dish out.

I am not Johnny or Phil either, but it will suffice for now.

"Does anyone know of a good killfile for Firefox that works on IP addresses rather than names? With both toto/Toto and Phildo/johnny/phlido/pheeldo playing “change that ‘nym” I’d like to be able to block them more permanently." myopic Dawn

Dawn, has it occurred to you that if you ban all the people that are pointing out the holes in your posting, you are going to have a very boring site. On top of that you are going to have a lot of blog that is full of vaccine rhetoric, which doesn't look very scientific. Narad is the one with the tissue and self abuse problem, let's not have a girly playing that game too - please

#62
Here's how you handle those that you don't have the intellectual capacity to debate with:
https://www.rudebaguette.com/2012/01/12/bouygues-led-balloon/
It's MUCH easier.

Narad if you are going to post self flagellating claims of Australia reaching herd immunity safety, have the balls to accept that it is failing when reports tell us of multiple measles outbreak in Oz.

It comes across like you are in some kind of vaccine failure denial and is bringing the tone of the blog down somewhat.

"Dawn, has it occurred to you that if you ban all the people that are pointing out the holes in your posting"

Reading comprehension is not your strong suit. A killfile is just a way of ignoring you, not a banning. I only read your brain droppings for the laughs.

Reading comprehension is not your strong suit.

I'd say his continuing inability to correctly attribute quotations makes that obvious.

It's a very long time since I read anything even slightly amusing from phildo. He's staying in my killfile.

Okay, I have a warped notion of the absurd. It is kind of like watching the theater of the macabre, but with less sense. I just generally glance over his posts, and once in a while something form of idiocy just jumps out.

Chris...I will "unhide" his comments to glance at them, but he usually doesn't have anything worthwhile to say. And I got tired of his masturbatory fantasies about Narad a long time ago. Though I suppose I should feel honored that I bothered him enough that he added me to the pile.

As far as phildo saying he's not johnny or anyone else...strange how they all write the same sort of comments, and all change 'nyms of people they are annoyed with. It's like watching a 2 year old stamp their feet and call everyone a poopyhead. I'm just bored with him.

Oh, right, he also doesn't understand that people who have killfiled him don't even see his comments, so he keeps "replying" to them:

“Dawn, has it occurred to you that if you ban all the people that are pointing out the holes in your posting”

Well, that is just hilarious.

#100
"Oh, right, he also doesn’t understand that people who have killfiled him don’t even see his comments, so he keeps “replying” to them:"

Narad is under STRONG DELUSION that anti-vaxxers post here for the benefit of the PAID PROVAX LOYALISTS.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you suggesting that ORAC has no other readers beyond the 10 that post here?????????????????

ORAC, you need to put in a HIT counter. That way we know if someone actually READS your blog! LOL!

Chris,

Okay, I have a warped notion of the absurd.

Me too, I just got bored with this particular buffoon.

I only glance at his inanity when I am bored or need something to laugh at. At lunch time dear hubby went to help his mother with some things at her house, only to find out she spent five thousand dollars on some device to make her kitchen water alkaline. Then to top it off she had some kind of self declared "computer expert" come to her house and removed all the security settings done my her son. Apparently this self-taught guy has more authority than a computer scientist with over thirty years experience (her son), so her wifi signal is no longer "hidden", and both its name and password are variations of her own name. To top it off he told her not to turn off her computer when she wasn't use it.

We have a feeling something very bad is going to happen to her computer. Fortunately she does not do any banking on it.

Laughing at Pheebo was what I needed after listening to dear hubby rant for twenty minutes.

Sorry about the typos and total grammar fail. Needless to say we are not terribly happy with dear hubby's mother.

Yeah, that's the stuff. The living embodiment of James Edmondson.

Then to top it off she had some kind of self declared “computer expert” come to her house and removed all the security settings done my her son.

As someone who plays "computer expert" (I'm no expert, but some people sure think I am, which is perhaps relatively true), I feel your husband's pain. The best is when people accuse you of "messing things up" and it's clear they have no clue what they're talking about.

Chris: I feel your hubby's pain. I'm not a computer expert (though I could play one on TV). But my ex killed 2 computers by opening files "sent by friends". He also nearly wiped out our bank account by opening, clicking on, and starting to fill out a "dear person who banks at our bank" email. I happened to walk in and saw what he was doing. I YANKED the power cord out of the wall and ripped him a new one. He was clueless about phishing emails. Sigh...

OH, and then there was the time he clicked on the "is your computer running slowly? Run our virus scan"...I could go on and on. He was one reason we finally bought a Mac. But I took that with me when I left him. Just hope he has learned in the years since.

As far as phildo saying he’s not johnny or anyone else…strange how they all write the same sort of comments, and all change ‘nyms of people they are annoyed with. It’s like watching a 2 year old stamp their feet and call everyone a poopyhead. I’m just bored with him.

Honestly I think phildo is looking for "suicide by mod" just to triumphantly exclaim we are all askeered of his awesomeness.

Honestly I think phildo is looking for “suicide by mod” just to triumphantly exclaim we are all askeered of his awesomeness.

To whom?

To whom?

Surely this is not the only blog blessed with his dribbles.

If he wants Respectful Insolence threads to dominate the results of Goofle searches for "Philip Hills, Hope Osteopathic Clinic Essex", that is his concern.

MI Dawn: "But my ex killed 2 computers by opening files “sent by friends”. "

Yikes! I see the reason for the "ex" bit.

We had to flat line and reload a computer once a very long time ago. It was the one I shared with my then eight year old daughter. She apparently loaded a game that came with some malware. It was the type to flash porn on the screen, and then attempt to sell you their malware remover. It was caused by a flaw in Java. People were convicted.

Daughter is now 21, and has been clued in on computer security since that incident. Also, she does not have her full real name anywhere online. She quit Facebook after they would not let keep her identity as secure as she wished.

She quit Facebook after they would not let keep her identity as secure as she wished.

A friend of mine is on FB using her first and middle names; she even managed to switch, I think, when she went on the job market. (She is something of a "radical leftist," which she thought she needed to hide or something, which I found slightly amusing, but I dunno, maybe universities do look a FB profiles and sift out radical leftists or something.)

I mean, people switch last names when they get married and so on.

DEAR READERS:

I want you to NOTICE that the REGULAR pro-vax posters are CRICKETS regarding my campaign to RESTORE THE SAFE AND COST EFFECTIVE THIMEROSAL CONTAINING MULTI-DOSE VIALS. They have said NOTHING in the way of SUPPORTING my efforts. AMAZING. And it appears that the posts about "killfiling" appeared right after I started my CAMPAIGN!

Please follow the posts of these known PRO-VAXXERS and see if they SUPPORT MY PRO-THIMEROSAL CAMPAIGN I posted at #53 and #64.
I also posted earlier on Orac's "Woman Dies of measles" rant. They have seen my posts on this MOST IMPORTANT TOPIC. WHY AREN'T THEY HELPING ME??????????? I'm clueless.

herr doktor bimler, Narad, Science Mom, MI Dawn, Mephistopheles O'Brien, JP, Krebiozen, Chris, Roger Kulp, LIz Ditz of the Great State of California

Don't Forget:
AN EXTRA $.50/ JAB TO TAKE OUT A HARMLESS SUBSTANCE THAT KEEPS VACCINES SAFE. AN INCREASED COST OF UP TO $18.4 MILLION!
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=CALIFORNIA+POPULAT…

IF IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR AFRICA
IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR CALIFORNIA!

The exemption also stemmed from a widely shared economic judgment that the cost to make and distribute thimerosal-free vaccines would be steep and couldn’t be justified by the uncertain benefits.

“Senator Elizabeth Warren: Vaccines are safe, effective & protect our children”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79UlXgoQwGk

CONTINUING THE THIMEROSAL BAN MAKES CALIFORNIA LOOK RACIST AND IT MAKES IT APPEAR THAT ANTI-VAXXERS ARE TELLING THE TRUTH: THIMEROSAL CAUSES VACCINE INJURY.

CAN I COUNT ON YOU TO CALL THE CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLY MEMBERS AND PUSH FOR THIS BILL?

DOES ANYONE REMEMBER THIS?
http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/clintonbodycount.htm
I do. It was started at the time the World Wide Web was up and running. The then new, web news site "World Net Daily" also covered the story:
http://www.wnd.com/1998/09/3342/
"Dr. Fahmy Malek was the Arkansas medical examiner under then-Gov.
Bill Clinton." Please read the details of this case. Notice the WND article is dated 1998.
http://www.wnd.com/1998/09/3342/#O1l0V7gZ0PEiOYHJ.99

So many CAPS, so little sense. A little boy in Spain died from diphtheria. You must be so proud you had a hand in that death.

LIZ DITZ:
I guess the citizens of THE GREAT STATE OF CALIFORNIA will have to take down the flags from their garage back wall:

"The Latest Restaurant in Trouble for Flying a Confederate Flag ... Is in California?"
"Woytak assures the paper she has no affinity for the flag, although it doesn't appear she's taking any proactive steps to remove it yet, either.

The hotel is 160 years old and sits in Benicia's historic district, meaning the flag is "not likely to be going anywhere soon," the Chronicle informs readers, since any changes have to go through a laborious review process with the town's historic preservation commission."
http://www.grubstreet.com/2015/06/san-francisco-confederate-flag.html
HERITAGE. ISN'T THAT WHAT THE SOUTHERNERS SAY?

Well, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT from a state that supports a RACIST Thimerosal ban?

At least CHARLESTON SOUTH CAROLINA took it down.
http://news10.com/2015/07/10/confederate-flag-is-removed-in-south-carol…

Chris: " I only glance at his inanity when I am bored or need something to laugh at"

I do similarly: I usually skim the comments and zoom in if I should alight upon something salient or awful- or if it's someone I want to read. When it is a well known troll/ altie I may go past the first several lines. Unfortunately all CAPS diverts our attention to particular phrases but it makes skimming easier. I sporadically cap certain words myself for emphasis and de-cap others so they don't stick out too much.

I find that I need to skim places like AoA or Jake's cesspit - TMR is rather quiet these days. Their comments are getting even worse- if that's possible,

@ JP:

I know two excellent women ( my cousin's widow and daughter) who have been aggravated and harassed through facebook- thus they -actually, she, the younger- got rid of her page.

I limit my internet exposure to places like RI and use two of my four names. I have only a few business related connections under my full name which I had/ have no control over at all.

Unfortunately, well after choosing my 'nym,, I learned that there is a fine woman in Tasmania who uses the same as it is her full name. Oh well. I hope no one harasses her because of my activities because she seems to be a nice person, helping scouts, doing Highland Dance and surviving cancer.

Perhaps I should have gone with 'Walter Howard' - or whatever my second last name is.

I know two excellent women ( my cousin’s widow and daughter) who have been aggravated and harassed through facebook- thus they -actually, she, the younger- got rid of her page.

Yeah, I have considered getting rid of my own on several occasions, usually because of stupid, aggravating posts on the part of relatives or people I grew up with, and ensuing arguments. I wouldn't say I've been harassed much online, though, but that's probably because I keep a fairly low profile. Or maybe it's the crazy look in my eyes, I dunno, I don't get harassed much "IRL" these days either.

Ultimately, though, I have a lot of contacts through FB, people whose email addresses or phone numbers I might not have, including friends in other countries, etc. It's also useful for things like saying, "Hey friends, I am going through a really bad patch right now and sort of losing it, please invite me out for coffee or beer or movies or whatever if you are in town."

SPEAKING OF CHARLESTON, S.C......

Guess who one of its PROMINENT citizens is?
None other than ANTONY MERCK. Yes, he is the son of George W. Merck, former vice president of Merck & Co., the pharmaceutical manufacturer.
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/30/obituaries/george-w-merck-65-retired-…

His $4 Million + home is a PRIME HISTORIC CHARLESTON residence:
http://www.preservationsociety.org/program_award_detail.asp?caID=89
"George Eveleigh was a prosperous deerskin trader in Charles Town when he purchased a lot lying across Vanderhorst Creek just outside the former city wall line. The creek was filled and is known today as Water Street, and with this filling Church Street was extended to White Point. Eveleigh sold the property about ten years later to John Bull, a wealthy planter in Prince William Parish. The Bull family later subdivided the rear of the lot facing Meeting Street, where they subsequently constructed 34 Meeting Street. A later purchaser of 39 Church Street was the 18th-century chemist and naturalist Jean Louis Polony, a Santo Domingan refugee."
http://charleston.pastperfect-online.com/33491cgi/mweb.exe?request=reco…
The Bull family mentioned happen to be some of Toto's ancestors!
"Santo Domingan refugee" refers to the whites who fled what is now HAITI after the African slaves
revolted and took it over.

I have six brothers and sisters; the spousal unit has six brothers and sisters.

This is the main reason I am not on Facebook.

Denise: "Unfortunately all CAPS diverts our attention to particular phrases but it makes skimming easier."

Ah, that is why Toto's screed read like a disjointed stream of consciousness. Though I think it would read like that without the CAPS.

"I know two excellent women ( my cousin’s widow and daughter) who have been aggravated and harassed through facebook- thus they -actually, she, the younger- got rid of her page."

My younger son used is actual last name on Facebook. There are two people on this planet with his first name and odd last name, him and a computer guy/sheep farmer in New Zealand. My son was easy to find.

Because of his Facebook page he was stalked in high school by a young lady living in a near by town. She did actually call to apologize, realizing that her behavior facilitated by social media was not cool.

Though he was also stalked by teenage girls in high school in real life. One young lady took a liking to my tall skinny son and actually created a Facebook page dedicated to his skinny chest (which was often covered in a vest). Which at one time included a picture of the stairs to our front door.

I did not know that when I answered that front door and encountered three giggling teenage girls asking for my son. I don't remember if he was home that time, but at least one time he was home and they took a picture of his cat. Apparently they saw what bus he took to get home and got on the next one. They took to where they thought it was close to our home. Then by total coincidence they found one of his friends working in a nearby food establishment, and he explained exactly where we lived.

It was a weird time. (and I save the pages of that Facebook page to my computer just for chuckles and pictures.. of course since they have all graduated from college it no longer exists)

And yet with all the stalking of my smart fairly handsome tall skinny blond son (I am biased, by the way), he has never had a girlfriend for more than a year. Apparently being an uber nerd is a turn off. Yet, they all adore him and even old girlfriends have tried to set him up with dates. They adore him, but he is just not "the one."

shay, one of the reasons I am not on Facebook is to avoid the acrimony from my sisters. Or more accurately my sister and stepsister, who are just one year apart in age. One is very conservative, and the other is very liberal. I prefer to avoid those fireworks.

@Chris
"Toto’s screed read like a disjointed stream of consciousness."

Is this what you refer to?

IF IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR AFRICA
IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR CALIFORNIA!

The exemption also stemmed from a widely shared economic judgment that the cost to make and distribute thimerosal-free vaccines would be steep and couldn’t be justified by the uncertain benefits.

“Senator Elizabeth Warren: Vaccines are safe, effective & protect our children”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79UlXgoQwGk

DO YOU SUPPORT THE CALIFORNIA THIMEROSAL BAN?

ONLY IN THE ENGLISH SPEAKING WORLD
would ignorants post to a BLOG called "Respectful Insolence" about FACEBOOK.
HA HA HA HA HA!
Try getting some REAL friends.

#123
SPEAKING OF CHARLESTON, S.C……
Have you ever heard of Charles Cotesworth PINCKNEY?
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_founding_fathers…
BTW, all three of the white guys on the page are Toto's ancestor relatives...
Here's his portrait:
http://www.history.army.mil/books/revwar/ss/pinckneycc.htm
Here's his wife's portrait:
https://americangallery.wordpress.com/2010/04/17/henry-benbridge-1743-1…
Here's his wife's brother
http://www.geni.com/people/Arthur-Middleton-Signer-of-the-Declaration-o…
The Pinckney family owned slaves. After the Civil War it was not unusual for the freed African enslaved to take the name of their former enslavers as their own last name.

"One of nine people killed in Charleston, South Carolina was an African American paster Reverend Clementa Pinckney. When I saw his last name, I wondered whether his relatives were African slaves who grew indigo for Eliza Lucas Pinckney."
https://underthebreadfruittree.wordpress.com/2015/06/23/south-carolina-…
LET'S NOT FORGET THAT REV. PINCKNEY WAS A SOUTH CAROLINA STATE SENATOR.

#123
Looks like he was in Charleston that fateful day - the same day Nation of Islam leaders joined with Kennedy and anti-SB277 leaders.
https://www.facebook.com/antony.merck
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mike-Seekings/170408565760

#123

It looks like he was in Charleston on that fateful day...the same day that Nation of Islam publicly supported Kennedy and antivaxxers against SB277.
https://www.facebook.com/antony.merck
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mike-Seekings/170408565760

#117

Wow! Hillary was there on that day as well. In fact, according to the Washington Post, Pinckney left a Senate Finance Committee meeting early in order to attend a speech given by Clinton in North Charleston. She even canceled a fundraiser and stayed to attend the funeral.
http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150625/PC16/150629546

Within the same week, this story broke, but the murder story overshadowed it:
http://www.abcnews4.com/story/29501296/officials-release-more-details-o…

"The jet crashed into woods around the privately owned Lewisfield Plantation, an estate dating to 1750."
http://south-carolina-plantations.com/berkeley/lewisfield.html
The last owner of the plantation was from a well-known political family, State Senator Rembert C. Dennis. Like Pinkney, Senator Dennis was a member (Chairman) of the "powerful Senate Finance Committee."
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r102:S02JY2-0053:
"[From the Charleston Post & Courier, June 23, 1992]
Dennis' Death ``End of Era''

This state has had a handful of legislators who have wielded more power than most governors. Rembert Coney Dennis, the man who for so long was known as the senator from Berkeley, was one of them. Indeed, he was the last of them.

When the young lawyer from Moncks Corner first went to the Legislature in 1939, each of the 46 counties had one senator, regardless of its size. In those days, county government was weak and run by the local Legislative Delegation. At that point, the senator and House members were elected countywide.

But with rare exception it was the senator who was the dominant political figure in his county, particularly in the rural areas that some said resembled baronies. No local legislation passed nor any key appointment was made without the senator's blessing. The goal was to become virtually unbeatable in one's county in order to build up seniority in the Statehouse, and rural senators generally were more successful at that than their urban counterparts.

Rembert Dennis knew very well how the system worked before he entered the Statehouse. His father and grandfather had been in the Senate before him. It's been noted that had his father not been shot on Moncks Corner's Main Street and had an elder brother not died a year later, young Rembert might have become a doctor rather than a lawyer-legislator. But it's hard to imagine that anything would have suited him better.

Within five years of being elected to the House, he was occupying his father's old seat in the Senate. And he learned well from such masters as the senator from Marion, L. Marion Gressette, the long-time chairman of the Judiciary Committee; and Barnwell's legendary powerhouses, House Speaker Solomon Blatt and President Pro Tempore of the Senate Edgar Brown.

For 50 years, Sen. Dennis traveled from Moncks Corner to Columbia, working his way up to become chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee and the acknowledged budget expert. In those days governors couldn't succeed themselves. If they were to be at all successful, they had to have the cooperation of a few key, veteran legislators. Many factors have diffused that power in recent years, including changes in the method of election."

SIGNERS OF THE U.S CONSTITUTION

South Carolina

John Rutledge
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
Charles Pinckney
Pierce Butler

All Toto's ancestors.
Fictional "Rhett Butler" are both Toto's ancestor's names.

THE TRUE HISTORY OF THIS COUNTRY HAS BEEN HIDDEN.

Liz Ditz!
Here's a documentary you won't want to miss on THE GREAT STATE OF CALIFORNIA!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=929&v=bwgopN9lFpg
OOPS! I forgot. Not supposed to use the "H" word......

#117

In 1999 President Bill Clinton nominated Antony Merck to serve as commissioner of the Federal Maritime Commission (which he accepted). The FMC “regulates water born foreign and domestic offshore commerce, and assumes fair, equitable and open international seaborne trade between the U.S. and other nations” (including China).
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/WCPD-1999-11-15/pdf/WCPD-1999-11-15-Pg2368…
https://www.dpiusa.com/archives/signals/991203.html
"Mr. Merck is a trustee and Treasurer of the Merck Family Fund, a private foundation based in Milton, Massachusetts that supports non-profit organizations dedicated to environmental and urban community issues. In 1998, the Merck Family Fund awarded a total of more than USD 2 million in grants."

#117
I think Charleston could use some of this now.....
"Transforming Our Communities is a grant-making program designed “to empower low-income young people of color” to become “social justice leaders” who can effectively use “community organizing” techniques to bring about “systemic change in urban communities.”"
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/funderprofile.asp?fndid=5386&categor…

4 comments in a row by babbling Toto. All nicely blocked. So, based on previous history, I'm going to guess what they contain:

at least 1 has pharma shill comments. At least 1 babbles about thimerasol. At least one mentions someone either early settler or famous or rich and claims to be related to that person. (one day I'm going to play "who's got more famous/important people in our family" with Toto...I'm pretty sure I'll win.). And at least one accuses the minions of being for forced vaccination.

So, fellow minions...I won't look and I'm logging off. Let me know how I did!

I couldn't be bothered to read it. From what I did see you did not miss much, just a bunch of all CAPS nonsense.

Oh Toto, Toto, Toto. But repeal of thimerosal ban is a GOOD THING.

Since it was banned vaccines did not stop causing autism. Well at least your ilk still blathers about autism being a vaccine injury. But if there is no thimerosal in them you guys can't cry about evil mercury. Not that this stopped anyone from doing so, but still the logic is sound.

You guys should be all for adding thimerosal to vaccines, since then you'll have something to cry about!

And now we can wait for Toto to ignore anything I said past the first sentence and repost his stupid screed about GREAT STATE OF CALIFORNIA and WHAT IS GOOD FOR AFRICA IS GOOD FOR CALIFORNIA.

Actually it now occured to me that Toto is being pretty racist about the whole thing. Implication that he does not care about "savages" in Africa being shot with thimerosal as long as California is free is as disgusting as it is divorced from reality. Antivaxxer being an appaling human being, who'd guess.

MI Dawn batted 500 -- these two were correct: "At least 1 babbles about thimerasol. At least one mentions someone either early settler or famous or rich and claims to be related to that person." If a pharma shill mention was there it was subtle, and I didn't see any mandatory vaccination, just the latest drivel on bringing back thimerasol.

Chris, JP and shay:

I have totally avoided facebook myself for many reasons, amongst them...

I keep in touch with my dozens of cousins who stretch in a great white band across oceans and continents ( at one point from LA to Russia and occasionally, Japan- now, only to Belgium and Germany) via cousins.net a/k/a the telephone, mail service, a little e-mail. Most of them are hilarious and often have interesting jobs and spouses/ partners/ children.

I do no business on facebook

I mentioned my relatives, P and K, who were probably bothered by maladapts because they live in a wealthy town and said maladapts knew that my cousin/ uncle left them with money- they both have careers and little time or tolerance of nonsense.

One of my gentlemen (wrongly) went on facebook to link up with men he attended school with but has had to deal with many people- most of whom he doesn't know- wanting to friend him. In addition, he does contact a relative, who lives far away, whose entire life is on facebook- including RL friends from 50 years ago who maintain the 'current' gossip about people from those en-darkened times. I have been so privileged to read their ...um... material and am amazed at its pedestrian, parochial, run-of-the-mill banality and lack of reality testing and insight. But that's just me.

AND obviously, I read anti-vax propaganda/ girltalk/ self-aggrandising BS which is enough for me to blow a gasket in my PFC- if PFCs indeed have gaskets.

I have a Facebook account to check other agencies' accounts (whence I occasionally swipe and send things to our PIO with recommendations that they go on OUR Facebook account)* but the thought of having to read what my families are up to holds no appeal.

If you want me to know what you're doing, email me or pick up the phone.

*(our fiscal officer, however, is still not convinced that the popularity of KDHE's Fred the Emergency Preparedness Dog is enough reason to let me buy a German Shepherd for my program).

If you want me to know what you’re doing, email me or pick up the phone.

Email is for Olds though, or at least that's what my students tell me. Hardly anybody I know my age (or younger) uses email much for correspondence, although it's my preferred method.

I'm weird about the phone; I have a pretty small list of "contacts" in my phone, and phone calls, as far as I'm concerned, should be at least an hour long, take place in the evening or at night, and involve alcohol. Possibly this is to mimic being in person as much as possible.

I like the phone but limit its usage.
HOWEVER I enjoy sending various cohorts postcards that I make up myself from photos I take. They LOVE it.

-btw-
My most admired postcards recently
- extreme close up of the inside of an orange lily
- fog moving in over water
- tribute plaque in memory of Oscar Wilde
- tile depicting a tropical fish found in a ladies' room

y mucho mas!
-

As I've said in previous comments on other topics, arguing with a antivaxx person is so difficult because the denial borders on (or is fully within the realm of) delusion in the clinical sense of the term. Any contrary fact is simply turned into part of the delusion itself. If you are an agency that has produced a study showing the unequivocal safety of vaccines, then...they must have gotten to you too! Look no further than the comments from Toto "the Rock". Anything even remotely resembling reasonable discourse there?

JP -I'm 60. I think that counts as olds.

JP -I’m 60. I think that counts as olds.

60 isn't that old; I used to think it was, but now I'm pushing 30 myself and the years go by faster all the time, of course.

I meant that most of my cousins are my age or younger (some are older), so they aren't likely to use email. Ditto a lot of my friends in Europe.

Another nice thing about Facebook is that I usually just get a "burner" phone when I'm in Europe, so it's nice to land in Krakow (or wherever) and just send out a FB announcement asking for people to send an "SMSka" so I have their numbers.

Actually it now occured to me that Toto is being pretty racist about the whole thing. Implication that he does not care about “savages” in Africa being shot with thimerosal as long as California is free is as disgusting as it is divorced from reality. Antivaxxer being an appaling human being, who’d guess.

Yes. God save the state of California. The precious snowflakes, they are very, very speshul. Way more speshul than the browns who go ooga booga and jump out from behind bushes, that's for sure.

(you have no idea how much this transparent racism and classism makes me RAGE)

– tile depicting a tropical fish found in a ladies’ room

Denice, where does one tend to find tropical fish visiting a ladies' room? How do they know which room is the ladies'?

@ Bill Price:

Ha. I wrote one of those sentences that leads one down the garden path to error...

At any rate, the fish was DEPICTED on the tile on the wall of the ladies' room.
AND it was about 10 inches square
the tile that is, not the fish.

– tile depicting a tropical fish found in a ladies’ room

Oooo Denice, you gave me an excellent idea...I have some lovely photos of the really interesting loos in Southern France I happened to have visited.

Okay, my children think they're really cool.

Well, this is FASCINATING.
.Antony is on the College of Charleston Board of Directors for Friends of the Library. Many of the original business records and correspondence of the original plantation/slave owner families and slave/opium trader families, including the Middletons and DeWolfs, are deposited here.
https://blogs.cofc.edu/rosenthall/files/2015/03/Spring2010_Discovery-1x…
Antony earned his law degree from the University of South Carolina law school.
http://beta.worldcat.org/archivegrid/collection/data/6642466
James De Wolf had family "agents" based in Charleston. Anna Elizabeth de Wolf was the daughter of one of the family "business" members.
Here is the descendant who "outed" James De Wolf:
http://masshumanities.org/about/news/s08-tot/
These two books give many MORE details. THEY SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING!
http://www.amazon.com/James-Dewolf-Rhode-Island-Slave/dp/1626194793
http://www.amazon.com/Complicity-Promoted-Prolonged-Profited-Slavery/dp…

#139
The Smith of Lie
"Since it was banned vaccines did not stop causing autism."

Could you please post your source of data for this? I'd like to include it in my lobby to OVERTURN THE CALIFORNIA THIMEROSAL BAN. Please include data showing the added thimerosal dose in the yearly flu vaccines which were mandated about the same time the thimerosal was "diminished" in the other vaccines. Also, is it true that aluminum replaced thimerosal? What are the safety studies on that? I WANT VERY CONVINCING, WELL DOCUMENTED DATA. That is what persuades politicians.
THANKS!

1860 Charleston SC Slaveholders Listed Alphabetically
freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ajac/sccharlestonalpha.htm
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=h.p.+russell+charl…
This family name was on the list:
"Pinckney, B. G., 5, Charleston Ward 6, page 479A
Pinckney, C. C., 9, Charleston Ward 4, page 440B
Pinckney, C. C., 85, St. James Santee 299B
Pinckney, E., 7, Charleston Ward 2, page 413A
Pinckney, Est. Thos., 97, St. James Santee 291B
Pinckney, H. L. Jr., 6, Charleston Ward 2, page 417A
Pinckney, H. L., 7, Charleston Ward 2, page 417A
Pinckney, Harriett, 11, Charleston Ward 3, page 435B
Pinckney, R. G. Jr., 2, Charleston Ward 5, page 466A
Pinckney, Robert G., 8, Charleston Ward 5, page 466A
Pinckney, Thomas, 2, St. James Santee 299A
Pinkney, Robert, 8, St. Phillip, 271A"
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ajac/sccharlestonalph…

In case you missed it, Toto posted this information right after the Charleston murders were publicized:
http://www.ibtimes.com/what-drugs-was-dylann-roof-suboxone-powerful-nar…
And
https://www.rb.com/reckittbenckiserbuysbackremainingrightstosuboxonesub…
I wonder why the MSM hasn't mentioned it since?
It's all about the FLAG........

Do you think people are beginning to worry about the economy?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vine-Grapevine-by-Tiffany-Asparagus-Serving-For…

Well, this is an interesting COINCIDENCE. Both Antony Merck and U.S South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy received their J.D. degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law. Have you been following the Bengazi hearings, featuring Representative Gowdy? I don't think HILLARY CLINTON is too fond of him. He has certainly put her in the hot seat!

"Gowdy is questioning people in Hillary’s inner circle right now – behind closed doors – while quietly building up a case against Clinton. He knows the law and has no cheap, politically driven timeline. This is why Hillary Clinton has to be beyond scared of Trey Gowdy."
Read more: http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/hillary-clinton-scared-trey-gowdy-be…
https://sharylattkisson.com/benghazi-committee-hillary-clinton-made-fal…

Provaxxers:
Just in case you missed this...
"Pro-HPV Vaccine Doc Omits Financial Ties in Medical Journal"
https://sharylattkisson.com/pro-hpv-vaccine-doc-omits-financial-ties-in…

Two weeks without a Weekly Fishwrap from Ohlmsted since the screw-NOI item, yes?

^ Ah, I dropped the "D'" but failed to do the same with the 'h'.

"Two weeks without a Weekly Fishwrap from Ohlmsted since the screw-NOI item, yes?"

Well, NO. It was more like THREE WEEKS. LOL!
I can't believe you brought THAT up. HA!

#161
YOU ARE BUSTED NARAD. Or is it ORAC????????
Your above post was referring to a post by Toto THAT HASN'T BEEN MADE PUBLIC YET. Which alphabet soup org do you and Orac (or Orac and Orac) work for?
So Orac's game is to have a fake blog that all the pharma-shills are hooked up to (data sharing) and he gives them a cheat sheet of my post so they can scurry and try to come up with some sort of answer.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ! All that fuss for silly little TOTO?

BTW, did you see the news story that someone STOLE Dorothy's RUBY slippers?
http://time.com/3954667/ruby-slippers-reward/
For Real! It's probably just as well....HOLLYWOOD MOGULS KNEW THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE SILVER. Gold road, silver shoes. The SILVERITES would fight the banksters with U.S. minted SILVER COIN. Here's more:
http://www.thepowerhour.com/news4/wizard_of_oz_what_it_means.htm

Um, isn't this a little LATE?
"The oldest rescuer was 100 and others were in their 80s and 90s, some in wheelchairs or on crutches."
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150712/eu--poland-holocaust_heroes-c0…
If your ancestors married conversos, does that count?

Here's another COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON "Friends of the Library" member, David J. Cohen:

"Cohen is past-president and current member of the South Carolina Library Association and has served on the advisory board of the Gale Corporation and as chairperson of the Southeastern Library Network’s board of directors, treasurer for the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, executive committee member for the Library Directors Forum and chair of the Council on Library and Information Resources’ College Library Committee. He is a longstanding member of the American Library Association and currently serves as a board member for the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston."
http://president.cofc.edu/documents/bio-cohen.pdf

I wonder if he is related to Toto's ancestors' plantation owner neighbor on the Ashly River?

"Cohen set up his own sons on nearby plantations that rivaled some of the greatest in the South. Right around Lafayette’s visit in 1824, Mordecai Cohen bought Soldier’s Retreat, a large estate of over 1,000 acres overlooking the Ashley River for his son David. By the 1830s, David or “Davy” Cohen had taken over the estate in his own name and held slaves who worked his fields, emptied his slops and raised his children."
Read more: http://forward.com/culture/205455/slaves-of-charleston/#ixzz3fj9O2Sku

#166
Scroll down to "THE ASHLEY RIVER 23"
http://archive.org/stream/jstor-27569475/27569475_djvu.txt

WELL THIS WAS UNEXPECTED:
The 16th United States Attorney General (from Charleston), Hugh Swinton Legaré, was VACCINE INJURED! He also earned a law degree from the University of South Carolina!

"Partly due to his inability to share in the amusements of his fellows as a result of a DEFORMITY due to a VACCINE POISIONING suffered before he was five (the poison permanently arresting the growth and development of his legs), Legaré was an eager student and was president of the Clariosophic Society at the College of South Carolina (now University of South Carolina at Columbia), from which he graduated in 1814 with the highest rank in his class and with a reputation for scholarship and eloquence."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_S._Legaré

#168
AMAZING!
It turns out that Toto's ancestor, Martha Caroline Swinton, was his AUNT! She made waves back in her day. SLAVES IN THE FAMILY author Edward Ball devotes an entire chapter to her.
See ch. 14, page 295....
http://www.amazon.com/Slaves-Family-Edward-Ball/dp/0374265828/ref=sr_1_…

One of my "snowflakes" told me a great JOKE:

"I like slaves the way I like my coffee............FREE"

North marries South...2 slave trading/plantation owning families.
The Middleton-DeWolf mansion, aka "Hey Bonnie Hall" located in BRISTOL, RHODE ISLAND:
https://books.google.com/books?id=xcQ7AQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA3&lpg=RA1-PA3&d…
Nathaniel Russell Middleton was a former President of the COLLEGE OF CHARLESTON. Arthur Middleton, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, was Nathaniel's great uncle. His wife was the great niece of James DeWolf.
http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/41690493-james-dewolf-and-the-rhod…