Kristina, you’re thinking of Steve Walker. I think I mention that poster in the ‘monkeying around’ post.

Ms. Davies reminded me of something interesting in the Omnibus—
Dr. Mumper looked at the videos of one of her patients. She ‘blinded’ herself to the timeing of the vaccinations that are suggested to have caused the regression.

It’s as good as she could do, admittedly, but it was a strange thing to hear someone say about a patient one has obviously spent a lot of time studying.

I think he must have been a good lecturer. When on the subjects he knows, he did well. You could feel his momentum increase when he would take a question and go into his comfortable areas.

It is a big stress having 5,000 kid’s lives (plus more) on the line. I’m sure he was being really careful with the cross.

All other things aside, I wish him well with his family. While I disagree with his science, I appreciate that he took the time out to support autistic kids even when he has what sounds like major concerns of his own. He stressed that he has much respect for Dr. Clarkson and others he disagrees with. In that, especially, he set a very good example.

But yeah, he seemed very hesitant and unsure. He also seemed genuinely taken aback when it became obvious how threadbare his ‘six pillars’ actually were.

He did a lot of ‘don’t answer the question posed, answer the question you know the answer to’. Whether this was due to a lack of understanding or not is up to interpretation.

One big problem in the “first theory of causation” trial (Cedillo) was that Dr. Aposhian (and others) avoided making real definitive comments. They did so here as well, but to a lesser degree. By this, I mean, questions like, “so, how many of your pillars do you need for this to hold up”. Dr. Aposhian at first acted like she was asking ‘papers’ rather than ‘pillars’. Then he refused to state. Since his thesis is that ‘when taken all together’ his pillars add up to causality, the idea that even one isn’t solid would be serious damage. In reality, many of the pillars were, at best, weak.

One coming up—the Hornig study. Dr. Aposhian relied on a study where others tried to replicate it and showed it couldn’t be done. In defense, Dr. Aposhian relied on “the grape vine” which says that Dr. Hornig is working on her own replication. (as a side note: given that Dr. Hornig apparantly failed to separate animals that were damaging others, why should she be given money to do this again? That sounds to me like an ethics breach).

Not to give away Kev’s future blog posts, but Dr. Mumper also relied on Hornig. In an even more strange twist, she asked for a copy so she could read it overnight. I mean, it is one thing to consider the original paper better than the replication (it isn’t) but it is another to be ignorant of the attempted replication.