Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. accepts the scientific consensus on climate change but rejects the conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism. Why? He has been fooled by fraud
I take no position on vaccination safety because I do not have enough information to take one. And I do not think anyone else has either. As far as I know, all the ''information'' available comes from official government sources and the orthodox medical establishment, neither of which is unbiased and reliable and neither of vwhich should be trusted any more than their opponants. I know of no independent sources of information.
All I know is that some people are saying vaccination is safe and some others are saying it is not. If one disregards the official position of the ones who happen to be employed by the government or the orthodox medical / scientific industry, there is no way short of conducting one's own study to decide between them.
Lacking any sources of reliable and unbiased information, I would advise anyone who asked me not to allow themselves to be pushed or coerced into being vaccinated or allowing their children to be vaccinated. As soon as any form of presure is applied by employers, schools, business, or governments, the whole matter ceases to be a medical or scientific issue and becomes a civil liberties issue.
The right of an individual to decide on hiis or her own medical matters is an absolute one and takes precidence over any claims of potential public harm. It is my responsibility to look after my own health and the responsibility of other people to take care of theirs.
I do not accept responsibility for other people's health. My current policy is to refuse vaccination on civil libertiies grounds regardless of if it is safe or not. The imposition of a medical dictatorship is a far worse menace than any disease could ever be. To fight it, I am willing to take my chances with any disease.
The unprecidented presure in recent years to coerce unwilling people into accepting vaccination against covid, regardless of if covid is a serious menace or not, is an intolerable attack on civil liberties and must be fought on all fronts.
I agree with you on the civil liberties point but your comments on the sources of information and the reliability of the information concerning medical research demonstrates profound illiteracy on the topic and on scientific research in general.
You, and your “thinking” is a muddled mess of misunderstanding immunization, vaccines/immunity, and the Constitution. Please, don’t show up to my hospital-Take care of yourself when you get sick… let your disease run it’s natural course, you civil liberties intact.
My understanding is that RFK, Jr. does not only cite Wakefield. Supposedly he cites hundreds of papers that allegedly show a connection between childhood vaccines and autism. I believe all of the citations are in his book _Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak_. Please let me know if I'm misunderstanding, or if you've somehow addressed this point and I missed it.
I'm sure he cites beyond Wakefield. The problem Michael faces (and anyone debating this subject) is you face the "Gish Gallop" - being buried in countless individually weak studies which as a whole are too time consuming to individually refute. Named after Duane Gish, a young earth creationist who loved to drown his interlocutors in dozens of studies showing the earth was 6,000 years old. It's an application of Brandolini's Law.
The problem is that this technique cuts both ways. Covid Science employed an identical technique during the pandemic - uncritically producing hundreds of weak papers to support whichever theory was popular at the time - never applying careful skepticism to the individual claims, instead relying on the sum-of-the-parts to argue "the science was settled".
Consider for a moment how rapidly the premise that wearing cloth masks could end the pandemic, with studies immediately appearing showing 50%, 70%, and 100% reductions in Covid cases merely by the adoption of cloth masks.
No one stopped to ask the obvious "how could cloth masks so easily stop the common cold and we never thought to use them before?". "How did we do ~70 studies pre 2020 and failed to find efficacy of mask but now everyone seems to find massive effect?"
Then, experts, seeing so many studies showing masks worked argued the Science was Settled, and would promote the totality of mask evidence without ever having taken the time to actually read and pick through the terrible individual studies this claim rested upon.
Same thing happens to most (traditional) antivaxxers - they hand you 50 studies showing the Vaccine Autism connection and claim victory while you spend months going through the individual papers.
Yes but RFK, Jr. cited 2 or 3 other studies besides Wakefield (one of them allegedly from the CDC) in his recent Rogan and Weiss interviews. If Michael were to respond what has been happening recently, I would expect a counter argument to at least acknowledge those studies, if not to refute them. But instead it seems to me that Michael has cherry picked the most cited study from the pro-vax side due to all the fraud around it. The other studies get ignored. So it comes across as a straw man piece. I understand there can be weak studies but unfortunately one cannot say any particular study is weak without looking at it. So it seems there is just an assumption that the hundreds of other studies are all weak and Michael can rest his case with one study.
My thoughts on this piece by Michael, and I could be completely wrong - he isn't offering a complete refutation of the vaccine-autism link in this piece, rather, he is highlighting that the primary source of this claim was the result of deliberate and repeated fraud. (Highly recommend Deer's book "The Doctor who Fooled the World").
Michael has been a vocal supporter of debate, and I am sure would be happy to go through a detailed point-by-point rebuttal with RFK if the offer was extended to him instead of Peter Hotez (more likely, Shermer might work with someone like Paul Offit and organize the debate). This puts Michael at contrast with practitioners of "scientism" like David Gorski who believe their ideas are beyond reproach.
In the case of the additional 2 or 3 studies RFK pointed to, do you have them on hand?
I don't but I'm pretty sure he referenced them in the Bari Weiss interview if not also the Rogan one. I don't think he cited exactly by title, journal, month, year, etc. though.
If I get time I will look through the transcript and post them here too.
I've followed the Vaccine-Autism story for decades, prior to reading Deer's book I granted Wakefield more charity/benefit of the doubt. I assumed that because he was also working on a competitor to the MMR vaccine, he unintentionally was seeing a link that wasn't there - which could be as simple as not apply the "no holds barred skepticism" that Sagan called for when he was gathering data.
I had no idea the level of intentional fraud he employed in making his claims. I have also not seen a rebuttal from him confronting the evidence Deer presents over his decade+ long investigation.
The other book Michael referenced - Stuart Ritchie's "Science Fictions" (not to be confused with Shermers own book "Science Friction") is a great read if interested in The Replication Crisis and want some background into how bad papers go mainstream and how to spot them.
It's interesting though, because Stuart Ritchie himself appears to have been duped by bad papers almost immediately after publishing his book - he has repeatedly cited poor studies on cloth masks as evidence they work [1].
I guess that just shows the challenges all of us face confronting pseudoscience and making our skepticism is applied dispassionately.
__________
[1] Note he is only skeptical of an RCT, while citing much poorer studies by "Masks4all"s Jeremy Howard, and two studies which failed replication by Leffler and Lyu et al.
There is ample undeniable evidence to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that vaccination and clean water have been the greatest medical/scientific boon to the human race. The problem is that not sufficient of our numbers are well educated, or intelligent enough appreciate that, although even Kennedy is perhaps just about smart enough to drink clean water.
Regardless of Wakefield’s actions, there has been an astounding increase in the number of children with autism… From something like one in 10,000 to a current one in 34 in the US… This understandably leads to people looking for a culprits, and it explains the strength of the anti-VAX movement, and that there are correlations Which appear to be quite powerful. Diagnostic changes to the definition of autism do not explain this profound increase, and other than some thoughts about neonicotinoids and other herbicides there does not seem to be any other explanation as powerful as vaccines.
For a different perspective on the possible link between vaccines and autism, see articles by Sharyl Attkinsson [1] in which she briefly reviews some of the studies [2-4] that Shermer and the mainstream media ignore or censor.
Shermer and the media reflexively try to smear and silence people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [5], calling him a kooky "conspiracy theorist" and "anti-vaxxer" who is spreading "dangerous misinformation." Actually, like Sharyl Attkinsson, RFK Jr. is pro-vaccine [6] but believes that people should be free to question vaccine safety without being bullied, smeared, or censored.
Good reading , only one thing to say. The difference between the MMR vaccine and the covid vaccine is that the MMR vaccine stopped the spread of the diseases and prevented one from getting infected, can we say that about the the vaccination for covid?
You have been fooled by fraud. Go take a look at my substack and you will see laid out before you step by step How the Case Against Andrew Wakefield Was Fixed - In Eight Steps. After you have seen it all you need to apologise to the world for being fooled.
Kennedy seems like a very trustworthy, honest, open-minded, and patriotic person. I think his personal virtues—more than his dubious arguments—are what convince people that vaccines are "dangerous." It's amazing what people will believe if they hear it from trusted sources.
You write, "The evidence for the link is not only nonexistent, it never existed". Leat you believe RFK Jr is accepting anecdotes wholesale as scientific proof, I daresay you have not examined the "ecvdence" he cites.
Likewise, the evidence of anthropogenic global warming skeptics I believe has gone unexamined by you. I hope, at minimum, you have examined the fraud perpetuated by the world leading climate scientist in "Climategate"* and "Climategate 2" to, as Mann wrote, that they needed to find a way to "hide the decline" in temperatures, declines that poked holes in his theories and models - and that they did indeed find a way to do so. Even the current outlandish claims recently labeled "global boiling"* are resultant from largely non-measured data but hypothetical estimates for weather stations; stations that have been taken down rn-masse by NOAA, but somehow are still providing temperatures**.
And contrary to what you seem to be claiming,,l the evidence for the latter is far more compelling than the evidence for vaccine induced autism. I would request that you watch Tony Heller's (of realclimateacience dot com notoriety) recent "Climate Fakery" Youtubr & Rumble series (and not just one or two videos, but all 22 - as some are quite cursory).
So before expressing certainty that no exists for these topics, that consensus exists, or that consensus is anyway related to truth, that you actually review the data and evidence put forth by the claimants of these theories you readily dismiss.
Before attributing RFK Jr's belief in in vaccine-induced Autism to susceptibility to fraud, and his belief in Anthropogenic climate change to alleged "consesnus" (a consensus which objectively does not exist - again I beg that you watch Tony Hellers's latest entries in his recent "climate fakery" series, in one of which he goes over the a subject that he (and sites such as wattsupwiththat dot com) frequently debunk.
And I would note that "consensus" is irrelevant to the scientific method, and oft its results directly contradicts with what turns out to be truth.
Please read/watch the evidence, particularly on Anthropogenic climate-change, that those who do not follow the orthodoxy.
RFK and the like, who are critics of "the consensus" are not unintelligent, nor suggestible people who have had the wool pulled over their eyes - but rather those who are willing to peak through the gaps in then wool.
Please humor me, at least on the climate change front, and watch/read the counter-narrative.
In 1971 we were told of impending ice age.
In 1989 we were told of imlendong disaster by 2000 of sea level rise.
In 2000 we were told of impending disaster of sea level rise that would affect our shores by 2023.
Most people don't even know how the climate models have been "adjusted" to claim the it was actually cooler than recorded in early 20th century...
**Most don't know that we are using less than half of number of actual NOAA/NASA thermometers for ocean temrpatures than we used 40 years ago, and that instead of removing those from the data set, they instead estimate what that data should be. Conveniently the estimates prop up the new "global boiling" claims.
And mark the their claims well that this would be the worst Hurricane/Tropical-Storm season on record, when the reality is that it will another typical year.
*Most don't know that the heat wave of the early 1930's was removed from climate models. Most are unaware of Climategate, where Mann intentionally found a way "hide the decline" in temperatures in the historical record that would hurt his now famous / infamous "hockey stock" graph.
Most don't know that all historical measures of thermometer-recorded temperatures in the USA were decreased in the record prior to the year 1940 (the year could be wrong), woth the ludicrous claim that there was some kind of universal reason that all of those recorded temperatures were recorded as too warm.
Anyways I the above is a scratch, on a scratch, on the surface of the massive failuea and fraud involved in the climate modeling.
Not one climate model has been accurate 10 years later - nor even close. Unless you consider models made by mathematicians/statisticians/engineers who have made their own models that do not exclude inconvenient data or include data that was not actually measured aliterally the current climate models are models based largely upon already moddeled-data, and exclude any data that hurts their desired outcome for their models.
Be it from the UN's IPCC or The USA's NOAA/NASA, you will only get the BILLIONS of dollars in funding if you predict scenarios that support the doomsday belief/religion of Anthropogenic-climate-cuange's acolytes, and provide rationale for the expansion of Governmental powers and tje expansion if Tran-National bodies' powers'.
He’s uneducated on a number of topics he holds forth on.. like Rogan. In his case, virtually no one would bother listening to him, about anything, but for his namesake. It is telling, and depressing, that know-nothings like he, Rogan, and more importantly Trump, have such a ‘following’.
I totally agree with you and am 100 % pro vaccine. Now that RFK is running for president and people are "liking" him, I have a big problem: I can't reconcile his long standing position on vaccines and then believe he could be president. If he is unable to change his mind on vaccines after talking to so many experts (who should have more credibility than the average Joe or discredited scientists or Jenny McCarthy), then how could anyone think of him as Presidential material??
Ah, another shill talking head. We will remember all of you fraud pushers who are breaking the law. The science linking autism to vaccines is far more compelling than the clearly corrupt few studies saying the opposite. Suggesting the same companies that have paid 10 billion in criminal fines in the last decade are not going to be corrupt for vaccines where they have complete legal immunity is something only a complete moron would accept
It is estimated that 1 in 100 people in Australia have Autism. In 2018 there were 205,200 Australians with Autism, a 25.1% increase from the 164,000 in 2015 (Source: ABS SDAC 2018– Autism in Australia). What is the problem with the US? Okay I could answer that, but really, there are lots of reasons that autism might exist in a population, vaccinations are but one of them.
Thanks for this. I know several people who are gravitating to Kennedy and away from Trump. That's hard to figure, The only similarity I can perceive is that they both peddle conspiracy theories.
Question: have you looked into Kennedy's allegations against Tony Fauci and the administration of the COVID response? I believe he accuses Fauci of funding research for the virus and maintains that COVID was all a plot by the US military.
Hey Shermer - why dont you round up Deer and any other so-called vaxx professional and have them debate RFK directly; you know why they wont....ego, cowardice, embarrassment and they are paid not to debate. Im for medical freedom NOT medical dictatorship - if the vaxx was healthy and safe it would sell itself...........BUT instead they had to lock down the entire globe for the f..king FLU and force people to take an experimental jab that rolled out in 18 months and if they didnt they risked losing their job (newsflash Mike - There is high probability they had the C-shot already made before the pandemic rolled out) - There has never been a safe and effective vaxx for the purposes of preventing anything plus why do Pharma manufacturers receive FULL INDEMNITY against vaxx health damages while raking in billions!! Why dont you look into Ed Dowd's research - better yet read "The Truth About Vaccines" by Dr Richard Halvorsen, Thomas Cowan, Sayer Ji's Green Med Info research, or Andrew Kaufmann?? instead Wakefield is a fraud because the a**hole health czar Bill Gates & MSM said so??.......... or you can just keep lining up like a good docile servant taking the shot / boosters and see how you do......herd immunity is a joke, germ theory is a joke ALL Fear mongering by those in power who want total control. Divide and conquer is the game right down to every cell in your body; we live in a war-based economy; war on everything from agriculture, climate, energy, race, sex, gender, economy, health, the sun, you name it, there is war for everything......even debating is a war because its deductive NOT inductive.............I practice holistic / orthomolecular therapy / medicine on myself and I didnt get COVID, never got the shot and never took a PCR test and Im doing better than everyone that took the shot(s) - Have fun boosting up Mike - Yours truly - Anti-Vaxxer
I think you should consider what sources of information you use to make choices. We all do, for everyday issues, such as what food to buy, what clothes to wear etc. What scientists do, irrespective of their political persuasion, is analyse data. In the short-term mistakes are definitely made. Wakefield had his article in one of the top medical journals of its day, for example. However, soon thereafter, more data came in which showed he was a petty crook and his data was false. That rebuttal has stayed the course of time - simply because there was no evidence to support Wakefield's claims, but plenty to show that they were patently false. Vast studies in Sweden and Japan, already showed that there was no link between the use of MMR and Autism. Moreover, there is a wealth of data showing that 98% of autistic traits are genetic. Feel free to Google. Over 60 alleles for autistic traits have been found. There is no link between vaccination and autism - as Michael's article states.
That you didn't get COVID is a blessing. However, if we consider massive pandemics, such as the 1346 Black Death, 25% of the population died. Of the 75% that survived, some had lucky genetics, but most avoided contact - and in Europe, the 75% pretty much inherited the Earth. That you didn't get COVID - well you may have done but had no symptoms - or you may have been one of the many who were never infected. If you never tested, how do you know you weren't infected? Most children, for example, were asymptomatic.
While "Big Pharma for example, makes a lot of money and it's definitely in their interests to do so - pay workers, sell product, etc, in the longer term, is it in their interests to kill people? I'm always reminded of a Bill Hicks sketch from 1991 about rock bands planting Satanic messages in their listener's heads that would get them to kill themselves. As Bill shouted, "What band wants their audience dead?" If you want to keep making a pretty Dollar or two, don't kill the market.
Im a fan of Bill Hicks......Show me Autism and a genetic relationship before 1980, 1970, 1900?? nowadays the numbers are staggering in terms of children who get autism thats not genetic?? People also like to cite "polio" when in fact the polio vaxx contributed more to polio than polio itself......genetics is always used a scapegoat, same with cancer, our bodies don't naturally produce autism or cancer that doesn't mean the parents dont transfer genes but your lifestyle, diet / poor nutrition, environmental toxic load, lack of proper sanitary infrastructure etc will dictate (in most cases) what happens to your body BUT no one wants to be accountable for their choices - they just want to go to their doctor and get a shot / prescription for the symptom and resort right back to dysfunctional lifestyles because all they are forced to care about is making money, paying the bills and going vacation (if they can)........what's next Transgenderism is genetic?? Amongst many other medical scams is statin drugs for cholesterol - your body naturally makes and needs cholesterol - there is no such thing as good or bad; you either have too much or too little and it can be corrected with the right diet and water intake NOT synthetic crap the medical establishments pushes. So, as I stated I practice preventive medicine to prop my immune system (everything the gov't tells you not to do - I do) and I'm healthy, no I wasn't "asymptomatic" during COVID another farce - explain the sudden deaths during & after the pandemic (Ed Dowd's research)?? This idea that life is better thru CDC approved chemistry is nonsense - how many people have holistic, naturopathic, functional doctors killed?? answer is 0 - how many deaths can be attributed to people themselves for poor choices and the Rockefeller created AMA medical establishments; a shit ton!! Why did Pfizer withhold clinical data related COVID shot effects; people are still buying the nonsense of mask wearing; tell me why big PHARM has FULL INDEMNITY against vaccine damages if their shots are safe and effective? Are you aware of what a virus actually is - its basically wave frequency that all living species are encoded with.........(listen to Tom Cowan and Zach Bush) - Why are we supposed to only listen to CDC / AMA medical establishments, that is the antithesis of the scientific method?? My life is 1000 times better based on my holistic / naturopathic practices not allopathic medicine - Im not saying the medical establishment at large has not done any good in many areas - but if everyone was walking around healthy, how much money would the establishment lose? So, its in their best interest to keep everyone run down, sick, misguided and reliant on them and death is collateral damage; Psychopathic Bill Gates who controls the WHO and wants everyone on the c-shot has come right out and said we need to lower the global population (Georgia Guidestones). Im also not a registered voter, Im 50yrs old and haven't voted for a president since I was 18 because that too is a charade - people need to start waking up to hard truths of Totalitarianism as it relates to the central banking system, paying taxes, geopolitics, toxic chemicals, the BS climate scare narrative and much more - these aren't random; its all orchestrated - the only thing that remains constant is the enormous gap between wealth and poverty which is growing wider by the day where the few control the many - did you ever ask yourself why media outlets across the globe say exactly the same thing - I mean how did they get the entire globe on lockdown for the FLU; please don't tell me that every country completely agreed (that has never happened in history - the only explanation is Global Imperialism); if you want to keep buying the Gov't propaganda feel free but maybe you should re-think your sources and understand the pyramid of power! - I dont want any of what our gov't is selling; also beware of another pandemic rolling out this decade (they are not done yet - they want everyone boosted up on big pharma needle poison not to mention they are using CRISPR technology to genetically modify food, living things etc) - And if they get the WHO Pandemic Treaty signed (and US joins) more restrictions are to follow because the Treaty will give them global medical power which will supersede all govts (NWO) hence, digital health ID / vaxx passports, social credit scoring, not allowed to eat meat blah blah - This is the largest attack on humanity in the last 5000 years
Just a quick point about seeing the role of genetics in the 1980s or 1990s: there was no way of testing/genetically-identifying these conditions at a population level until relatively recently. The technology didn't exist and the cost was prohibitively high. Remember the first human genome sequence took almost a decade to do and cost over $1 billion. Nowadays, it takes a few weeks to sequence an entire human genome and costs a few hundred bucks. You can screen a population for multiple conditions at (relatively) low cost. Autistic traits are one of those conditions for which the genetics is pretty sound - albeit incomplete.
With regard to vaccines and autism, there is no evidence to support that at all.
I take no position on vaccination safety because I do not have enough information to take one. And I do not think anyone else has either. As far as I know, all the ''information'' available comes from official government sources and the orthodox medical establishment, neither of which is unbiased and reliable and neither of vwhich should be trusted any more than their opponants. I know of no independent sources of information.
All I know is that some people are saying vaccination is safe and some others are saying it is not. If one disregards the official position of the ones who happen to be employed by the government or the orthodox medical / scientific industry, there is no way short of conducting one's own study to decide between them.
Lacking any sources of reliable and unbiased information, I would advise anyone who asked me not to allow themselves to be pushed or coerced into being vaccinated or allowing their children to be vaccinated. As soon as any form of presure is applied by employers, schools, business, or governments, the whole matter ceases to be a medical or scientific issue and becomes a civil liberties issue.
The right of an individual to decide on hiis or her own medical matters is an absolute one and takes precidence over any claims of potential public harm. It is my responsibility to look after my own health and the responsibility of other people to take care of theirs.
I do not accept responsibility for other people's health. My current policy is to refuse vaccination on civil libertiies grounds regardless of if it is safe or not. The imposition of a medical dictatorship is a far worse menace than any disease could ever be. To fight it, I am willing to take my chances with any disease.
The unprecidented presure in recent years to coerce unwilling people into accepting vaccination against covid, regardless of if covid is a serious menace or not, is an intolerable attack on civil liberties and must be fought on all fronts.
I agree with you on the civil liberties point but your comments on the sources of information and the reliability of the information concerning medical research demonstrates profound illiteracy on the topic and on scientific research in general.
You, and your “thinking” is a muddled mess of misunderstanding immunization, vaccines/immunity, and the Constitution. Please, don’t show up to my hospital-Take care of yourself when you get sick… let your disease run it’s natural course, you civil liberties intact.
My understanding is that RFK, Jr. does not only cite Wakefield. Supposedly he cites hundreds of papers that allegedly show a connection between childhood vaccines and autism. I believe all of the citations are in his book _Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak_. Please let me know if I'm misunderstanding, or if you've somehow addressed this point and I missed it.
I'm sure he cites beyond Wakefield. The problem Michael faces (and anyone debating this subject) is you face the "Gish Gallop" - being buried in countless individually weak studies which as a whole are too time consuming to individually refute. Named after Duane Gish, a young earth creationist who loved to drown his interlocutors in dozens of studies showing the earth was 6,000 years old. It's an application of Brandolini's Law.
The problem is that this technique cuts both ways. Covid Science employed an identical technique during the pandemic - uncritically producing hundreds of weak papers to support whichever theory was popular at the time - never applying careful skepticism to the individual claims, instead relying on the sum-of-the-parts to argue "the science was settled".
Consider for a moment how rapidly the premise that wearing cloth masks could end the pandemic, with studies immediately appearing showing 50%, 70%, and 100% reductions in Covid cases merely by the adoption of cloth masks.
No one stopped to ask the obvious "how could cloth masks so easily stop the common cold and we never thought to use them before?". "How did we do ~70 studies pre 2020 and failed to find efficacy of mask but now everyone seems to find massive effect?"
Then, experts, seeing so many studies showing masks worked argued the Science was Settled, and would promote the totality of mask evidence without ever having taken the time to actually read and pick through the terrible individual studies this claim rested upon.
See for example, Your Local Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina 2020 post https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=202002698114314&id=101805971467321
Same thing happens to most (traditional) antivaxxers - they hand you 50 studies showing the Vaccine Autism connection and claim victory while you spend months going through the individual papers.
Yes but RFK, Jr. cited 2 or 3 other studies besides Wakefield (one of them allegedly from the CDC) in his recent Rogan and Weiss interviews. If Michael were to respond what has been happening recently, I would expect a counter argument to at least acknowledge those studies, if not to refute them. But instead it seems to me that Michael has cherry picked the most cited study from the pro-vax side due to all the fraud around it. The other studies get ignored. So it comes across as a straw man piece. I understand there can be weak studies but unfortunately one cannot say any particular study is weak without looking at it. So it seems there is just an assumption that the hundreds of other studies are all weak and Michael can rest his case with one study.
My thoughts on this piece by Michael, and I could be completely wrong - he isn't offering a complete refutation of the vaccine-autism link in this piece, rather, he is highlighting that the primary source of this claim was the result of deliberate and repeated fraud. (Highly recommend Deer's book "The Doctor who Fooled the World").
Michael has been a vocal supporter of debate, and I am sure would be happy to go through a detailed point-by-point rebuttal with RFK if the offer was extended to him instead of Peter Hotez (more likely, Shermer might work with someone like Paul Offit and organize the debate). This puts Michael at contrast with practitioners of "scientism" like David Gorski who believe their ideas are beyond reproach.
In the case of the additional 2 or 3 studies RFK pointed to, do you have them on hand?
This is a great response. Thank you.
I don't but I'm pretty sure he referenced them in the Bari Weiss interview if not also the Rogan one. I don't think he cited exactly by title, journal, month, year, etc. though.
And I've ordered Deer's book!
If I get time I will look through the transcript and post them here too.
I've followed the Vaccine-Autism story for decades, prior to reading Deer's book I granted Wakefield more charity/benefit of the doubt. I assumed that because he was also working on a competitor to the MMR vaccine, he unintentionally was seeing a link that wasn't there - which could be as simple as not apply the "no holds barred skepticism" that Sagan called for when he was gathering data.
I had no idea the level of intentional fraud he employed in making his claims. I have also not seen a rebuttal from him confronting the evidence Deer presents over his decade+ long investigation.
The other book Michael referenced - Stuart Ritchie's "Science Fictions" (not to be confused with Shermers own book "Science Friction") is a great read if interested in The Replication Crisis and want some background into how bad papers go mainstream and how to spot them.
It's interesting though, because Stuart Ritchie himself appears to have been duped by bad papers almost immediately after publishing his book - he has repeatedly cited poor studies on cloth masks as evidence they work [1].
I guess that just shows the challenges all of us face confronting pseudoscience and making our skepticism is applied dispassionately.
__________
[1] Note he is only skeptical of an RCT, while citing much poorer studies by "Masks4all"s Jeremy Howard, and two studies which failed replication by Leffler and Lyu et al.
https://www.covidfaq.co/Claim-A-Danish-study-shows-masks-don-t-work-e2bb579390ea4fed9802d8b2106ad7cd
There is ample undeniable evidence to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that vaccination and clean water have been the greatest medical/scientific boon to the human race. The problem is that not sufficient of our numbers are well educated, or intelligent enough appreciate that, although even Kennedy is perhaps just about smart enough to drink clean water.
Regardless of Wakefield’s actions, there has been an astounding increase in the number of children with autism… From something like one in 10,000 to a current one in 34 in the US… This understandably leads to people looking for a culprits, and it explains the strength of the anti-VAX movement, and that there are correlations Which appear to be quite powerful. Diagnostic changes to the definition of autism do not explain this profound increase, and other than some thoughts about neonicotinoids and other herbicides there does not seem to be any other explanation as powerful as vaccines.
For a different perspective on the possible link between vaccines and autism, see articles by Sharyl Attkinsson [1] in which she briefly reviews some of the studies [2-4] that Shermer and the mainstream media ignore or censor.
Shermer and the media reflexively try to smear and silence people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [5], calling him a kooky "conspiracy theorist" and "anti-vaxxer" who is spreading "dangerous misinformation." Actually, like Sharyl Attkinsson, RFK Jr. is pro-vaccine [6] but believes that people should be free to question vaccine safety without being bullied, smeared, or censored.
1. http://sharylattkisson.com/medical-vaccine-links/#Other
2. https://sharylattkisson.com/2016/11/what-the-news-isnt-saying-about-vaccine-autism-studies/
3. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vaccines-and-autism-a-new-scientific-review/
4. https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/425061-how-a-pro-vaccine-doctor-reopened-debate-about-link-to-autism/
5. https://twitter.com/i/status/1672014260480901120
6. https://www.foxnews.com/video/5405669524001
Good reading , only one thing to say. The difference between the MMR vaccine and the covid vaccine is that the MMR vaccine stopped the spread of the diseases and prevented one from getting infected, can we say that about the the vaccination for covid?
Very interesting article. Clearly, the culture around some scientific disciplines and their publishers need their head examined.
You have been fooled by fraud. Go take a look at my substack and you will see laid out before you step by step How the Case Against Andrew Wakefield Was Fixed - In Eight Steps. After you have seen it all you need to apologise to the world for being fooled.
Kennedy seems like a very trustworthy, honest, open-minded, and patriotic person. I think his personal virtues—more than his dubious arguments—are what convince people that vaccines are "dangerous." It's amazing what people will believe if they hear it from trusted sources.
You write, "The evidence for the link is not only nonexistent, it never existed". Leat you believe RFK Jr is accepting anecdotes wholesale as scientific proof, I daresay you have not examined the "ecvdence" he cites.
Likewise, the evidence of anthropogenic global warming skeptics I believe has gone unexamined by you. I hope, at minimum, you have examined the fraud perpetuated by the world leading climate scientist in "Climategate"* and "Climategate 2" to, as Mann wrote, that they needed to find a way to "hide the decline" in temperatures, declines that poked holes in his theories and models - and that they did indeed find a way to do so. Even the current outlandish claims recently labeled "global boiling"* are resultant from largely non-measured data but hypothetical estimates for weather stations; stations that have been taken down rn-masse by NOAA, but somehow are still providing temperatures**.
And contrary to what you seem to be claiming,,l the evidence for the latter is far more compelling than the evidence for vaccine induced autism. I would request that you watch Tony Heller's (of realclimateacience dot com notoriety) recent "Climate Fakery" Youtubr & Rumble series (and not just one or two videos, but all 22 - as some are quite cursory).
So before expressing certainty that no exists for these topics, that consensus exists, or that consensus is anyway related to truth, that you actually review the data and evidence put forth by the claimants of these theories you readily dismiss.
Before attributing RFK Jr's belief in in vaccine-induced Autism to susceptibility to fraud, and his belief in Anthropogenic climate change to alleged "consesnus" (a consensus which objectively does not exist - again I beg that you watch Tony Hellers's latest entries in his recent "climate fakery" series, in one of which he goes over the a subject that he (and sites such as wattsupwiththat dot com) frequently debunk.
And I would note that "consensus" is irrelevant to the scientific method, and oft its results directly contradicts with what turns out to be truth.
Please read/watch the evidence, particularly on Anthropogenic climate-change, that those who do not follow the orthodoxy.
RFK and the like, who are critics of "the consensus" are not unintelligent, nor suggestible people who have had the wool pulled over their eyes - but rather those who are willing to peak through the gaps in then wool.
Please humor me, at least on the climate change front, and watch/read the counter-narrative.
In 1971 we were told of impending ice age.
In 1989 we were told of imlendong disaster by 2000 of sea level rise.
In 2000 we were told of impending disaster of sea level rise that would affect our shores by 2023.
Most people don't even know how the climate models have been "adjusted" to claim the it was actually cooler than recorded in early 20th century...
**Most don't know that we are using less than half of number of actual NOAA/NASA thermometers for ocean temrpatures than we used 40 years ago, and that instead of removing those from the data set, they instead estimate what that data should be. Conveniently the estimates prop up the new "global boiling" claims.
And mark the their claims well that this would be the worst Hurricane/Tropical-Storm season on record, when the reality is that it will another typical year.
*Most don't know that the heat wave of the early 1930's was removed from climate models. Most are unaware of Climategate, where Mann intentionally found a way "hide the decline" in temperatures in the historical record that would hurt his now famous / infamous "hockey stock" graph.
Most don't know that all historical measures of thermometer-recorded temperatures in the USA were decreased in the record prior to the year 1940 (the year could be wrong), woth the ludicrous claim that there was some kind of universal reason that all of those recorded temperatures were recorded as too warm.
Anyways I the above is a scratch, on a scratch, on the surface of the massive failuea and fraud involved in the climate modeling.
Not one climate model has been accurate 10 years later - nor even close. Unless you consider models made by mathematicians/statisticians/engineers who have made their own models that do not exclude inconvenient data or include data that was not actually measured aliterally the current climate models are models based largely upon already moddeled-data, and exclude any data that hurts their desired outcome for their models.
Be it from the UN's IPCC or The USA's NOAA/NASA, you will only get the BILLIONS of dollars in funding if you predict scenarios that support the doomsday belief/religion of Anthropogenic-climate-cuange's acolytes, and provide rationale for the expansion of Governmental powers and tje expansion if Tran-National bodies' powers'.
He’s uneducated on a number of topics he holds forth on.. like Rogan. In his case, virtually no one would bother listening to him, about anything, but for his namesake. It is telling, and depressing, that know-nothings like he, Rogan, and more importantly Trump, have such a ‘following’.
I totally agree with you and am 100 % pro vaccine. Now that RFK is running for president and people are "liking" him, I have a big problem: I can't reconcile his long standing position on vaccines and then believe he could be president. If he is unable to change his mind on vaccines after talking to so many experts (who should have more credibility than the average Joe or discredited scientists or Jenny McCarthy), then how could anyone think of him as Presidential material??
Ah, another shill talking head. We will remember all of you fraud pushers who are breaking the law. The science linking autism to vaccines is far more compelling than the clearly corrupt few studies saying the opposite. Suggesting the same companies that have paid 10 billion in criminal fines in the last decade are not going to be corrupt for vaccines where they have complete legal immunity is something only a complete moron would accept
It is estimated that 1 in 100 people in Australia have Autism. In 2018 there were 205,200 Australians with Autism, a 25.1% increase from the 164,000 in 2015 (Source: ABS SDAC 2018– Autism in Australia). What is the problem with the US? Okay I could answer that, but really, there are lots of reasons that autism might exist in a population, vaccinations are but one of them.
Thanks for this. I know several people who are gravitating to Kennedy and away from Trump. That's hard to figure, The only similarity I can perceive is that they both peddle conspiracy theories.
Question: have you looked into Kennedy's allegations against Tony Fauci and the administration of the COVID response? I believe he accuses Fauci of funding research for the virus and maintains that COVID was all a plot by the US military.
Hey Shermer - why dont you round up Deer and any other so-called vaxx professional and have them debate RFK directly; you know why they wont....ego, cowardice, embarrassment and they are paid not to debate. Im for medical freedom NOT medical dictatorship - if the vaxx was healthy and safe it would sell itself...........BUT instead they had to lock down the entire globe for the f..king FLU and force people to take an experimental jab that rolled out in 18 months and if they didnt they risked losing their job (newsflash Mike - There is high probability they had the C-shot already made before the pandemic rolled out) - There has never been a safe and effective vaxx for the purposes of preventing anything plus why do Pharma manufacturers receive FULL INDEMNITY against vaxx health damages while raking in billions!! Why dont you look into Ed Dowd's research - better yet read "The Truth About Vaccines" by Dr Richard Halvorsen, Thomas Cowan, Sayer Ji's Green Med Info research, or Andrew Kaufmann?? instead Wakefield is a fraud because the a**hole health czar Bill Gates & MSM said so??.......... or you can just keep lining up like a good docile servant taking the shot / boosters and see how you do......herd immunity is a joke, germ theory is a joke ALL Fear mongering by those in power who want total control. Divide and conquer is the game right down to every cell in your body; we live in a war-based economy; war on everything from agriculture, climate, energy, race, sex, gender, economy, health, the sun, you name it, there is war for everything......even debating is a war because its deductive NOT inductive.............I practice holistic / orthomolecular therapy / medicine on myself and I didnt get COVID, never got the shot and never took a PCR test and Im doing better than everyone that took the shot(s) - Have fun boosting up Mike - Yours truly - Anti-Vaxxer
I think you should consider what sources of information you use to make choices. We all do, for everyday issues, such as what food to buy, what clothes to wear etc. What scientists do, irrespective of their political persuasion, is analyse data. In the short-term mistakes are definitely made. Wakefield had his article in one of the top medical journals of its day, for example. However, soon thereafter, more data came in which showed he was a petty crook and his data was false. That rebuttal has stayed the course of time - simply because there was no evidence to support Wakefield's claims, but plenty to show that they were patently false. Vast studies in Sweden and Japan, already showed that there was no link between the use of MMR and Autism. Moreover, there is a wealth of data showing that 98% of autistic traits are genetic. Feel free to Google. Over 60 alleles for autistic traits have been found. There is no link between vaccination and autism - as Michael's article states.
That you didn't get COVID is a blessing. However, if we consider massive pandemics, such as the 1346 Black Death, 25% of the population died. Of the 75% that survived, some had lucky genetics, but most avoided contact - and in Europe, the 75% pretty much inherited the Earth. That you didn't get COVID - well you may have done but had no symptoms - or you may have been one of the many who were never infected. If you never tested, how do you know you weren't infected? Most children, for example, were asymptomatic.
While "Big Pharma for example, makes a lot of money and it's definitely in their interests to do so - pay workers, sell product, etc, in the longer term, is it in their interests to kill people? I'm always reminded of a Bill Hicks sketch from 1991 about rock bands planting Satanic messages in their listener's heads that would get them to kill themselves. As Bill shouted, "What band wants their audience dead?" If you want to keep making a pretty Dollar or two, don't kill the market.
Im a fan of Bill Hicks......Show me Autism and a genetic relationship before 1980, 1970, 1900?? nowadays the numbers are staggering in terms of children who get autism thats not genetic?? People also like to cite "polio" when in fact the polio vaxx contributed more to polio than polio itself......genetics is always used a scapegoat, same with cancer, our bodies don't naturally produce autism or cancer that doesn't mean the parents dont transfer genes but your lifestyle, diet / poor nutrition, environmental toxic load, lack of proper sanitary infrastructure etc will dictate (in most cases) what happens to your body BUT no one wants to be accountable for their choices - they just want to go to their doctor and get a shot / prescription for the symptom and resort right back to dysfunctional lifestyles because all they are forced to care about is making money, paying the bills and going vacation (if they can)........what's next Transgenderism is genetic?? Amongst many other medical scams is statin drugs for cholesterol - your body naturally makes and needs cholesterol - there is no such thing as good or bad; you either have too much or too little and it can be corrected with the right diet and water intake NOT synthetic crap the medical establishments pushes. So, as I stated I practice preventive medicine to prop my immune system (everything the gov't tells you not to do - I do) and I'm healthy, no I wasn't "asymptomatic" during COVID another farce - explain the sudden deaths during & after the pandemic (Ed Dowd's research)?? This idea that life is better thru CDC approved chemistry is nonsense - how many people have holistic, naturopathic, functional doctors killed?? answer is 0 - how many deaths can be attributed to people themselves for poor choices and the Rockefeller created AMA medical establishments; a shit ton!! Why did Pfizer withhold clinical data related COVID shot effects; people are still buying the nonsense of mask wearing; tell me why big PHARM has FULL INDEMNITY against vaccine damages if their shots are safe and effective? Are you aware of what a virus actually is - its basically wave frequency that all living species are encoded with.........(listen to Tom Cowan and Zach Bush) - Why are we supposed to only listen to CDC / AMA medical establishments, that is the antithesis of the scientific method?? My life is 1000 times better based on my holistic / naturopathic practices not allopathic medicine - Im not saying the medical establishment at large has not done any good in many areas - but if everyone was walking around healthy, how much money would the establishment lose? So, its in their best interest to keep everyone run down, sick, misguided and reliant on them and death is collateral damage; Psychopathic Bill Gates who controls the WHO and wants everyone on the c-shot has come right out and said we need to lower the global population (Georgia Guidestones). Im also not a registered voter, Im 50yrs old and haven't voted for a president since I was 18 because that too is a charade - people need to start waking up to hard truths of Totalitarianism as it relates to the central banking system, paying taxes, geopolitics, toxic chemicals, the BS climate scare narrative and much more - these aren't random; its all orchestrated - the only thing that remains constant is the enormous gap between wealth and poverty which is growing wider by the day where the few control the many - did you ever ask yourself why media outlets across the globe say exactly the same thing - I mean how did they get the entire globe on lockdown for the FLU; please don't tell me that every country completely agreed (that has never happened in history - the only explanation is Global Imperialism); if you want to keep buying the Gov't propaganda feel free but maybe you should re-think your sources and understand the pyramid of power! - I dont want any of what our gov't is selling; also beware of another pandemic rolling out this decade (they are not done yet - they want everyone boosted up on big pharma needle poison not to mention they are using CRISPR technology to genetically modify food, living things etc) - And if they get the WHO Pandemic Treaty signed (and US joins) more restrictions are to follow because the Treaty will give them global medical power which will supersede all govts (NWO) hence, digital health ID / vaxx passports, social credit scoring, not allowed to eat meat blah blah - This is the largest attack on humanity in the last 5000 years
Just a quick point about seeing the role of genetics in the 1980s or 1990s: there was no way of testing/genetically-identifying these conditions at a population level until relatively recently. The technology didn't exist and the cost was prohibitively high. Remember the first human genome sequence took almost a decade to do and cost over $1 billion. Nowadays, it takes a few weeks to sequence an entire human genome and costs a few hundred bucks. You can screen a population for multiple conditions at (relatively) low cost. Autistic traits are one of those conditions for which the genetics is pretty sound - albeit incomplete.
With regard to vaccines and autism, there is no evidence to support that at all.
Oh dear.