Read this ‘blog or the author gets it!
August 4th, 2009
In Mel Brooks’ comedy film Blazing Saddles (1974), there is a scene where Bart (played by Cleavon Little), the newly appointed black sheriff of Rock Ridge, is surrounded by a lynch mob. Seeing no way out, he points his pistol to his own head and shouts “Hold it! Next man makes a move, the n****r gets it!” After a few moments of quiet confusion, one of the mob leaders says, “Hold it, men. He’s not bluffing.” and lowers his rifle. Classic comedy, but not so funny when, as so often happens, life imitates art.
A few days ago, I had a commenter who made an essentially identical threat. She stated that if “mainstream science” wants to get the “huge and growing group” of “vaccine doubters” behind it, it needs to let the anti-autism advocacy groups like SafeMinds and Autism Speaks “design and control” a study comparing autism prevalence between vaccinated and unvaccinated children.
Frankly, I don’t think that “mainstream science” (i.e. science that relies on data rather than belief) needs or even wants to have these people “behind” it. The safest place to keep people like this is in front of you – where you can keep an eye on them. However, the real question here – as it was in Blazing Saddles – is exactly who is being threatened by this threat.
Clearly, the autism researchers are not being threatened. They will either continue as before or – if their own research is “de-funded” in order to fund “vaccines-cause-autism” research – move on to other areas. Just as clearly, it is not “mainstream science” – the pursuit of knowledge about the laws governing the world around us – that will suffer, except in the short run. Eventually, the true causes of autism will be uncovered, despite the best efforts of the anti-autism advocacy groups. The detour into “vaccines-cause-autism”, if it occurs, will then be seen as yet another waste of time and effort in order to placate ignorance.
The only people who will have been hurt will be the autistic children and their families. Oh, and also the taxpayers, who will have funded this pointless research.
As for the demand that anti-autism advocacy group be allowed to “design and control” research studies, there is nothing standing in the way of SafeMinds or Autism Speaks (or any of the others) “doing” their own study of vaccines and autism. Nothing, that is, except the fact that they have nothing to gain by it - and everything to lose.
Think about it – these groups are supported by people who already firmly believe that vaccines cause autism despite an almost total lack of supporting data. Why should any of the anti-autism advocacy groups waste their time or money trying to get data when they’ve gotten this far without any? In addition, many of these people – including some of the founders and major players in the anti-autism groups – have gone on record saying that nothing will ever convince them that vaccines don’t cause autism. To actually do a legitimate study would run the risk of showing that vaccines don’t cause autism (and doing a “rigged” study couldn’t gain them any more support than they already have).
Granted, if they did a legitimate study and found data supporting their hypothesis that vaccines cause autism, it would be a boost to their cause, but they know (or should know) that one study that shows a vaccine-autism connection would have to stand against all of the studies that don’t show a connection. If you don’t think this is a concern for the anti-autism groups, think on how much time and effort – and money – they have spent trashing the reputations of researchers whose work has failed to show the “vaccine-autism connection”. They are definitely aware of the fact that their data – such as it is – is of lower quality and lower quantity than the data showing vaccines don’t cause autism.
Another concern, of course, is cost. While full-page advertisements in major newspapers aren’t cheap, a large-scale study of the type the anti-autism groups are clamoring for would be extremely difficult and expensive (see: “Let’s Put on a Study!” ). The bind here is that we already have a pretty good idea that the impact of vaccines on autism prevalence is very small – if it isn’t zero. Thus, a study that would detect any increased risk of autism caused by vaccines would have to be very large (lots of subjects) to detect this effect. As a result, it would be very expensive.
That’s not to say that a smaller study would be useless – a small-scale study looking at the autism prevalence in vaccinated vs unvaccinated children would be a useful validation of the epidemiological (ecological) studies done so far. A small study (”small” meaning a few thousand subjects) could put a “ceiling” on the portion of autism associated with vaccination, even if it showed no association. Since the groups behind the “vaccines-cause-autism” hypothesis claim that vaccines cause a large percentage of all autism cases, a small study is all that would be needed. If unvaccinated children had an autism prevalence of - for example - only 1 in 5,000 (0.02% - as opposed to the general population prevalence of 0.67%), a thousand subjects would show this difference easily. Yet the advocacy groups hesitate….
Perhaps the reason is that we’ve all become too used to the idea that ”the government” should do all the research - even though the anti-autism advocacy groups have a long history of mistrusting “the government” (you know, the CDC, the FDA, etc.). But there is a very good reason why they should “do a study” on their own.
I’d like to share a little-known (outside of scientific research circles) secret with those who want a study on the “vaccine-autism connection”. When you’re asking for funding for a new hypothesis – or if you’re asking someone else to do the work for you – it works better if you first “prime the pump”.
By that, I mean that you need to have some data supporting your hypothesis before you ask for a grant. You need to show the granting agencies that there is a better than remote chance that your research won’t be another dead end and a waste of their limited resources. So, if the anti-autism advocacy groups want “someone” to “do the study”, they’re going to have to show some real data supporting their hypothesis - not the stuff they have now. And that means that they’re going to have to actually do a legitimate study and they’ll have to pay for it themselves.
For those who still think that “the government” could simply do the study if they only had the political will to do so, let me break it to you gently – “the government” has a very limited number of researchers and facilities. The NIH and the national labs don’t have enough resources to do even 1% of the research funded by “the government”. If the advocacy groups manage to apply enough political pressure to get “the government” to direct the NIH to “do the study”, some other medical research – heart disease, cancer, etc. – will have to be put on hold while the NIH researches – yet again – the “vaccine-autism connection”. And the advocacy groups for those disorders are much more organized - and have better data - than the anti-autism advocacy groups.
This brings us to another important point. The people agitating for a study of vaccines and autism have shown – many times – that they are not going to “believe” any study results that fail to show an association. If you doubt that, see this, this or this. What is the point of “doing a study” intended to placate a “skeptical” minority if that group has repeatedly shown that they will not accept any results that disagree with their dogma? Does anybody reasonable - anybody with an open mind – want this study? If not, then why should we waste the time and money?
Let me take a few moments to recap.
The “threat” that large numbers of people - parents of autistic children - will turn their back on “mainstream science” (or even “mainstream medicine”) is not a credible threat to “mainstream science” (or “mainstream medicine”). Your belief in a fantasy doesn’t hurt the people researching reality - it just hurts you.
For all of their rhetoric, the anti-autism advocacy groups should be terrified by the threat of a legitimate study into the effect of vaccines on autism prevalence. They have indicated that they are aware of this problem in several ways:
First, the fact that the anti-autism advocacy groups haven’t done even one (legitimate) small-scale study shows a distinct lack of interest. They don’t lack the money to do a pilot study, just the will. If the money they have spent on advertising and “infommercials” had been directed to a small-scale pilot study of good quality, they would have the answer they claim to want.
Secondly, a legitimate study would entail the risk of showing that there isn’t an association between vaccines and autism. This would be a disaster for these groups, as they have already repeatedly and emphatically told parents that it is 100% certain that vaccines cause autism. Even asking for a study put this claim in a very dubious light; the results of such a study would - at best - simply confirm what they have already been claiming as fact. At worst (and, in light of present data, the most likely outcome), their claims would be revealed as false.
Finally, If the anti-autism advocacy groups had complete control over the design and execution of the study, they wouldn’t be able to later claim that the results were “flawed”, “biased” or “corrupt”. They would have to either “rig” the study - and face the inevitable criticism - or take the (very high) chance that their own study would show them to be wrong. They would have to be crazy to take the risk.
Although the clamor for “a study” of vaccines and autism is a dogmatic part of many anti-autism advocacy groups’ rhetoric, it is a hollow claim. Most of the leaders of the movement are irretrievably invested in the received wisdom of “vaccines-cause-autism” and could no more change their minds about this than the Pope could stand up and say that the Virgin Mary was just an unwed mother. No matter what any study might show, these people will not change their minds.
The question that remains is this:
How much do we want to spend, how much of our limited research resources do we want to use, to convince ourselves that the “vaccines-cause-autism” believers can’t be convinced?
Just grist for the mill…..
Prometheus
Filed under: Autism Policy, Autism Science, Critical Thinking | 27 Comments »