Anti-Vaxxers Accidentally Fund a Study Showing No Link Between Autism and Vaccines

[Ada Lovelace]

http://www.newsweek.com/anti-vaxxer...wing-theres-no-link-between-autism-and-379245

Excerpts:

The autism advocacy organization SafeMinds recently funded research it hoped would prove vaccines cause autism in children. But this effort appears to have backfired for the organization—whose mission is to raise awareness about how certain environmental exposures may be linked to autism—since the study SafeMinds supported showed a link between autism and vaccines does not exist.

Halladay commends SafeMinds for financially supporting the study, but she worries that some autism advocates may be asking the wrong questions. “I'm not saying that we need to stop funding research in the environment, because we know the environment does impact neurodevelopment,” she says. Halladay likens the challenge of disputing the claim that vaccines cause autism to “playing whack-a-mole.”

“First, the proposed association was between the MMR vaccines and autism,” she says. “Then that was disproven. Then it was the thimerosal components in vaccines; now that has been further disproven in a carefully designed animal model study that aimed to specifically examine that question. It has also been suggested that the association is because of vaccine timing, but that too has been disproven. The target always seems to be moving, and the expectation is that scientific resources will be diverted to address each new modification of this hypothesized link.”

 

[The Barbarian]

Perhaps it's that this isn't about facts. When people love their children very much, the unknown can be terrifying. And unscrupulous or just self-deluded people project such certainty, that they are easy to believe.

So facts aren't going to do much to change minds, once they are set.

 

[eclipsenow]

It's a great study, I love science!

 

[Blue Wren]

Lol. Of course, they would disagree, with the findings of their own study. 2+2 will always equal 5, for some of these anti-vaxxers.

 

[Nithavela]

My impression is that they don't disagree, they just move the goalposts and look for a different link.

 

[Dr GS Hurd]

http://www.newsweek.com/anti-vaxxer...wing-theres-no-link-between-autism-and-379245

Excerpts:

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