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RE: Does Aluminum as an adjuvant in vaccines cause Autism? New article provides solid evidence it does! (Spoiler: No, it doesn’t)

in #science7 years ago

@kafkanarchy84:

"Anti-vaxxer" here. Upvoted to prove this is not about "us vs. them." It's not very scientific to begin with a clickbait title that misrepresents the study's conclusions, is it?

Thanks, as I said to @reggaemuffin above, I didn't write this article with the intention of making people feel dumb or to brag about being right, but did so in an attempt to dispel some misinformation that could have been spread as a result of this article making the rounds.

The title, while provocative, is not misrepresenting the studies conclusions; the study was being regarded as an important piece of evidence supporting the claim that Aluminum as an adjuvant in vaccines causes Autism.
I showed in my breakdown why this was not the case.

I would like to know your credentials for making said analysis, as such an obvious grey block and clearly duplicated images would be pretty hard to enter into a professional medical journal if they were fraudulent attempts. Maybe you don't understand the intent?

While I have no intentions of making scans of my master's and bachelor's titles and submit my publications and manuscripts just to gain some credibility from strangers on the internet, I can say that, as I mentioned in my article, I have 5-7 years of experience designing, conducting and analyzing the same kind of experiments that were used in this article (PCR, Western blotting). I could have included many other reasons why the methods they chose were not adequate in the first place, why the way they made the graphs and analysed the data was flawed, etc. but I figured it would bee too comprehensive and technical for the non-scientific reader and honestly, the MS Paint cut and paste job was outrageous enough to get the point across.

Their intention in that experiment was to show that after adding aluminum the protein of interest (which is part of the inflammation response) became more abundant than in conditions without the aluminium dose. Apparently, since such difference was not reflected by their results, they decided to just cover up the inconvenient band of protein (in the sample without the aluminium treatment) and then make the statistical analysis based on that. You cannot work like this, just discarding the results that you don't like!

If it truly is fallacious I am glad to denounce it and still maintain that more research is warranted regarding vaccine safety based on hundreds of studies, reports, and documented side effects. This isn't about "anti-vax" vs. "vax" but about being scientific. I find the laughing face with the tears emoji to be indicative of this type of puerile attitude, and sadly that is what the "conversation" has become in so many ways.

What laughing face in the verge of tears? I didn't use such a thing anywhere in my article.

I agree with you in this point, and I certainly wish that more people had such an open and reasonable attitude as you have shown here towards discussing this issue. I think both sides have attitudes that are not helpful for the debate: the antivaxxers seem to have a recalcitrant attitude against scientific evidence as they seem to be convinced that everyone is out to get them mobilized by harmful intent, and the pro-vaccine people tend to fall into easy sarcastic comments and cynicism that only make the other side feel more resentful and unwilling to listen–as it's obvious that you won't convince anyone if you open your discussion by stating that everyone who doesn't agree with you is automatically an idiot.

You may want to reconsider mocking people who have had their children damaged by adverse reactions to vaccines

Again, where did I do such a thing? In any case, you can read my stance about people who might have actually gotten some life-altering condition as a result of a vaccine in my reply to @clumsysilverdad at the very top of the comment section. I am not denying this could actually happen, I am saying that simply this is not the case for the big majority of people that gets vaccinated. However, it is very important that these exceptional cases in which a person developed a life-altering condition as a result of vaccination should be thoroughly documented and researched in order to get some insight as to what went wrong; the negative consequences of vaccination in these cases are so severe that it is crucial to find a way to stop it.

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Thanks for this in-depth reply. I was not doubting your credentials, per se, or asking for scans of your degrees ;)

I appreciate it more than you know. The references you were confused about (regarding the mockery, etc) were directed at another commenter here, and not you.

I still have my doubts as to how--if what you assume the researchers did is really true--the study could have ever been published in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry in the first place. I mean, to just chop/copy/paste in such an obvious fashion and then submit one's study to a reputable (as far as I know) journal... Something doesn't add up there, to me.

I really appreciate your open stance. Many "anti-vaxxers" are extremely recalcitrant, I agree. Most, however, care about children and the health of their fellow humans as much as anyone else. Indeed, that is why so they are so vocal.

I have seen too much to blindly trust laughably unscientific organizations like the CDC, etc, and have done my best to make an informed decision regarding vaccination. What I really want in the medical industry and published science is transparency. Sadly, even according to former and current editors of such prestigious medical journals as the NEJM and The Lancet, that is simply not what we are getting.

I look forward to following you on here, and hope maybe we can dialogue on this further, at some point. Recalcitrance is not a goal state of being of mine, and I am always willing to change in light of new information and evidence.

Cheers.

Graham

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