If you are not a scientist you have probably never read a scientific paper in its original form.
Reason for this is simple. An average paper is about 15 pages long with the core information contained in several sentences scattered in several sections.
Of course, as the curious person, you will read about new discoveries in newspapers but unfortunately, most of the journalist also never read the original paper.
The results can be interpreted completely wrong in that game of whispering that distorts the reality
Twenty years passed from the publishing of the paper that links the MMR vaccine and autism and the storm is still strong.
Let’s read that paper together and discover – How pointless it is.
I will take the screenshots of the original text, but if you don’t trust me, here is the source.
Alarms are buzzing
it's about the chronic enterocolitis and the developmental disorders. Where are the vaccines?
they took 12? children with the disorders they want to put into the context? Very odd claim, because it’s normal to have a larger group for some reasonable statistics
they took the children with the enterocolitis and the developmental disorders. Normally there would be 4 groups. Enterocolitis + disorders. No enterocolitis + disorders, Enterocolitis + no disorders and Totally healthy children.
Why MRI and EEG? MRI could reveal some morphological changes – which are not expected here. fMRI would at least make some sense and the EEG (electroencephalogram) also seems irrelevant.
Plus, people, there were 12 children and you haven’t examined all of them in a standardized way? Why?
So, you are telling us that there were 9 autistic children, from 12? Plus 2 more disorders? How this makes any sense?
Logical error counter : 6
They have done MRI and EEG for no good reason and found – nothing. Wow, what a result.
They could also measure the length of their ears – it would be equally pointless, but at least not expensive
From the parents, seriously?
Are the parents trained how to keep the records? Did they have standardized form? Those children weren’t even inspected by the same standards. Why?
False logic pile is growing
If my M.Sc. student would present me this workflow he/ she would walk home crying.
So they took the urine samples from 8 children, out of 12, that have 3 different disorders. This is word salad
.
And the control consisted of 14 children. Incredibly, but this is ok…
Ok, but – why? What is the purpose of this? What they wanted to compare with what? What is the topic of this paper?
In 8 of 12 children?
This is even not significant in the terms of math/ statistics. Let’s say that the answer can be randomly Yes or No (50% vs. 50 %).
The probability to have 12 of 12 is very solid (if proven by specialists, not parents, but ok…) is 2 ^ 12 = 1 in 4.000. Very good, I could believe that.
But 8 from 12 means this: 12 % to be exactly 8 from 12 which is not convincing at all and we have 19 % of probability for 8 or more from 12.
Their finding is less solid than to throw the dice and magically get number 1. Wow, what a significant discovery (sarcasm).
What a finding, if you take 8 children from 12 and do some lab test, you will find that 3 of them are perfectly fine!
Let’s do the same math again: exactly 3 of 8, probability = 21% and 3 or less, probability = 36%
My dear God, where is the logic here?
It's dificult to logicaly explain something irational
Plain stupidity... They took the children with disorders.
Totally with autism 7 + 3 maybe.
And from those 7, 2 cases have absolutely no connection with the vaccine, and the other 5 were linked by the untrained? parents or a doctor? (what doctor?).
If there is? So you haven’t proved it?
Twenty years after we are talking about the If?
Let’s summarize the worst scientific paper I've ever read
They took 12 ill children with chronic enterocolitis and the developmental disorders.
Between 7 and 10 of those 12 children had the autism, diagnosed by different specialists.
In 5 of those 7 there was the link between the vaccine and autism diagnosed by untrained parents.
The urine test was conducted on 8 children and 3 of them looked just like the control.
Their MRI and EEG were normal.
Vaccines cause autism, because – exactly…
I’m reading scientific papers since 2010, every day, but this one is the most absurd word salad I have ever seen in my life.