After the launch of Put Children First, JB was flushed with pride at the mighty accomplishments of his lovely new website. So much so that he posted the following to the EoH group:
I have been watching the web hits on PutChildrenFirst.org. The most hits are from the CDC’s router. Hey CDC, go fuck yourself!! Lots of love, JB
Woah! Pretty impressive!
Except….lets delve a little into the murky geek-ridden world of web stats for a moment. What is a hit? Why do people think they are a good thing?
There is a common misconception that ‘a hit’ means a person has visited a site. Not so. A ‘hit’ refers to one _object_ on a page being accessed once. For example, if a user visits a page that contains 14 images and nothing else then 14 hits will be registered. If we wanted to get really worked up by ‘hits’ we could all add a million images to a web page and then as soon as one person visited that page – we’d have a million hits! – cool huh?
No, not really. I hope its clear why.
What’s worth getting excited over in terms of web statistics are _unique visitors_ . This refers to the amount of unique visitors that the site has received. Obviously, this is a much better indicator of how many users have actually seen your pages. But even this does not necessarily refer to _people_ as search engines, RSS spiders and a whole host of other automated bots are counted as users too. But still, this is the best way to get a reliable approximation on how many people visited your site.
So, what have we learnt? Hits are nothing to get excited about.
But that wouldn’t make much a blog post now would it?
Two of my favourite visitors to my humble little blog are Sue M and Erik Nanstiel. Together they can be counted on to loudly trumpet anything and everything that comes from the holy apertures of a select group of people, including JB. So when the putchildrenfirst site was launched, along came Erik and Sue to mention it at every available opportunity.
Well, someone must’ve followed a link from here to there because someone from there subsequently followed a link from _there_ back to _here_. And how do I know this?
Let me introduce the concept of _referrers_ – basically, the page you are coming _from_ leaves a footprint in the page you are coming _to_ – its how web statistics packages track who links to the site they sit on.
So, my referral to putchildrenfirst.org shows up in JB’s web stats package – whomever it is monitoring these things (JB, one would assume based on the above post to EoH) – is curious and clicks the link which in turn places the referring page from putchildrenfirst.org into _my_ web stats package.
So, I login to my webstats package this morning and lo and behold – what do I find but a link straight into the heart of putchildrenfirst.org’s web stats package. Cool :o)
Let’s see how well its doing shall we?
I could point you to the relevant page if you like: It’s right here and you can see for yourself. But, I also took the precaution of making a copy and uploading it to this site – just in case ‘someone’ decides to finally get smart and apply some basic security to their web stats.
I also thought it would be polite to offer an explanation of what’s going on for the less techy amongst you.
OK, the first line to note is the average visits per day. PCF got an average of 444 unique visits per day through April. For a site that was advertised all over the press, apparently seen on TV and was heavily promoted at a rally, that’s pretty crap. My own site, by comparison, gets an average of 3140 unique visits per day.
But lets also look at the section entitled _Daily Statistics for April 2006_ as this gives us a very clear picture of the popularity of the site. Remember that ‘visits’ – the yellow column in that table – is the key indicator. Using that we can see that on only 3 occasions did PCF get more than 1000 visitors per day – the 5th, 6th and 7th. After that, the visitor stats take on the appearance of a slowly deflating balloon. By the end of the month, PCF is barely scraping in 100 visitors a day.
Like a lot of single issue group websites, PCF suffers from the fact that it never has anything new to say. To have a successful site the absolute _biggest_ point to address is that of fresh, engaging content. I don’t know who the copywriter was for PCF but the breathless, barely concealed hysterical conspiracy theory-esque edge really does the site no favours. To put it simply – PCF was a novelty site who’s novelty value lasted 3 days and who reached the wrong audience.
What do I mean the wrong audience? Well, as JB says, one of the most popular visitor IP’s referred back to the CDC. Scroll down to the section headed _Top 30 of 10917 Total Sites_ for evidence of that.
One of the largest amount of visitors (please note this table is *not* sorted on amount of visitors) came from WilliamsBailey.com….a firm of lawyers…guess what one of their specialties is….can you guess?
I have to admit I’m very confused by this as JB recently wrote an open letter to Paul Offit on EoH which stated amongst other things:
No one who paid for the Ad is a vaccine litigant. No one who paid for the Ad is involved with trial lawyers.
I guess it must just be one of those strange coincidences that the joint 10th most popular visitors was a firm of thiomersal/autism lawyers.
However, the most popular group of visitors indeed came from the CDC – 38 visits. The second most popular was the MSN Search Engine bot. This is not the MSN search engine referring people to PCF, this is a visit from the automated script that ‘collects’ sites. Another notable visitor seems to be the AAP. The rest I don’t recognise so I would assume are ordinary visitors.
Now, if I was pushing a website in a national newspaper ad, and splashing the URL all over the TV and on placards at a rally, then I’d really want the ordinary folk of the country to be my visitors. That’s who need to hear my message. However, its clear that the main people who heard PCF’s message were the CDC, the AAP and thiomersal/autism lawyers – oh yeah, and an automated script or two.
Isn’t that kind of a waste of time? Don’t they already know how you feel?
So, lets move on to the referrers list – the section entitled _Top 30 of 1121 Total Referrers_ is the one you want. This lists the top 30 sites who have provided links to PCF – sorted by ‘hits’ unfortunately, which as we’ve already discussed is a meaningless statistic.
The most popular links to PCF is…..PCF. Not surprising – Webalizer (the stats package PCF uses) can (I think) be configured to ignore its own domain but nobody did I guess.
However, the next referrer is a _doozy_ – David Icke, shellsuit wearing, self-professed ‘son-of-god’ who believes we are ruled over by a race of lizards.
The rest of the referrers are other anti-vaccine groups. The only two of any note are ‘The Hill’ and a Press Release site. Neither generated a lot of traffic for PCF.
So, in closing, I think its fair to say that PCF was about as successful as a Thames whale rescue. I’d like to thank Erik and Sue M, without whom, whomever clicked through from PCF would never have been able to do so and I would never have been able to access PCF’s web stats.
JB – if you’d like a decent web developer to handle your sites from now on, I’d be happy to provide a quote. I promise not to leave your bare arse hanging out for the world to see either.
UPDATE: Looks like JB’s up to his old tricks again.
Left Brain Right Brain 
Next you are going to try to say that you knew all along that NSS stood for No Shit Sherlock. The point is… you couldn’t control yourself from telling the rest who I was. I knew that. So, I signed my Kev’s Moron posts with NSS. At some point, knowing full well that I could say No shit, Sherlock and it would again be clear that you are a hypocrite. It was fun and childish.
Kev wrote:
“I tried repeatedly to get it through your head that the science I was talking about was a matter of public record. It existed independently of EoH – one didn’t have to read EoH to read or process the science. Seriously – what don’t you get about that”?
– Do we need to go back through all your old blog posts Kev. You know and I know that I gave you very legitamate reasons for why it would be a good idea for you to read EoH. Of course you can get the “science” elsewhere. That was never and will never be the point. A clear minded (non irrational) person would understand that.
Oh boy… spelling mistake alert. So sorry, legitamate should be legitimate. Thankfully, the brains, pancreas’ and digestive systems of babies is not on the line here.
I still don’t understand why EoH think Burbacher’s paper supports their position. When I first looked into this matter in 2002, there was a legitimate question if some children were receiving mercury above recomended levels BASED ON ME MERCURY as a standard. Because Burbacher and Magos have both shown the thiomersal clears 3x faster than MeHg, these levels will not be reached.
If you were to look at Bakir’s paper on the Iraqi children exposed to Methyl Hg, Sue, you will see symptoms did not a;ppear until a body burden of 40000 micrograms was reached. The old vaccine doses gave 188 micrograms of ethylmercury, which is slightly less than 40,000. And yes, dose does make a difference. All fruit juice will have traces of ethanol in it naturally, that doesn’t mean it will have the same effect as a shot of neat whiskey. Which is what I really need after reading Sue’s comments.
Ruth: I still don’t understand why EoH think Burbacher’s paper supports their position.
The thinking is that since EtHg degrades to inorganic Hg more rapidly than MeHg, and some believe that inorganic Hg induces neuroglial activation/neuroinflammation, more inorganic Hg means more neuroglial activation, ROS generation, GSH depletion, neurodegeneration, demyelination, etc.
Great thread. Got one disingenuous altie all riled up it seems. Did she just go off of the heroin, or is she working down the vitamin C? I’ll take ‘Psychos with a lot of time on their hands’ for 300, Alex.
And now it seems a Mr. Thomas Burbacher is on the scene. Is this for real? Can our illustrious host verify? In the meantime, lets find out for ourselves. Mr. Burbacher, did you try freezing the tissue prior to homogenization? If yes, how did it turn out, if not, why not? I’ve got a few others but I’ll start there. I feel another Jeopardy category coming up but I’ll be patient and wait for a bit.
Tell us what you think it shows Sue….er….Thomas.
But the total Hg getting into the brain is smaller! I just feel we are reading 2 totally different papers-each sees what they want to see. And of course, children exposed to ethyl mercury in Romania exhibited typical symptoms of organo mercury poisoning, not autism.
Lots of things induce neuroinflammation, including the childhood diseases these vaccines are meant to prevent. My older brother cracked 3 ribs when he had whooping cough, a disease I am glad I avoided. Helen Keller became blind and deaf as the result of a fever. I fear the anti-vaccination group will be responsible for more neurological harm if rubella becomes common again.
Yes, lots of things do cause neuroinflammation but mercury causes distinct patterns of neuroinflammation not observed in PM autistic brain tissue, it’s not clear if neuroinflammation is even involved in autism, and no one has observed neuroinflammation at anywhere near the levels achieved in Burbacher’s monkeys let alone achievable through vaccine exposure from thimerosal.
“it’s not clear if neuroinflammation is even involved in autism”
Ssshh Clone, you’ll spoil the pseudo-HBOT party. It’s obivious that neuroinflammation is caused by pseudo-HBOT therapy deficiency.
“– That took you a few minutes to crank out? I would have guessed at least a day…”
Sue M. is nothing if not consistent. She still hasn’t looked at my takedown of the Geiers and hides behind ad hominem attacks.
Very dull.
Large amounts of inorganic mercury are not good for your brain, but there is still not a correlation between damage seen in autopsies of mercury poisoning victims and autopsies of autistic brains. It still comes down to proving a unique pattern of mercury poisoning=autism.
Mr. Burbacher-
I threw out a red herring about your paper to annoy Sue, as she invokes your name like a saintly relic ( childish I know). Of course, you clearly stated you obtained twice the inorganic Hg in the brains of thiomersal vs MeHg treated animals. You also noted much higher total Hg in the kidneys from thiomersal-treated animals (95.1 vs 5.8). Did you look at the histological changes in the kidneys? Wouldn’t we be seeing more kidney disease in kids treated with TCVs?
My other point is still valid-you did see more rapid clearance and lower total brain Hg with thiomersal vs Me Hg. Isn’t that a good thing?
The long delay time between known methyl Hg exposure (Dartmouth case) and observed symptoms is consistent with metabolism to another Hg species. That still does not provide evidence that chelation months or even years after exposure to ethyl mercury can undo any alleged neuronal damage. Your paper cannot support the position that thiomeral causes autism and that chelation (or HBOT or MeB12 or the miracle de jour) will cure autism.
_”Next you are going to try to say that you knew all along that NSS stood for No Shit Sherlock.”_
I am? I guess if you say so that that must be right ;o)
_”The point is… you couldn’t control yourself from telling the rest who I was. I knew that. So, I signed my Kev’s Moron posts with NSS. At some point, knowing full well that I could say No shit, Sherlock and it would again be clear that you are a hypocrite. It was fun and childish.”_
Whatever makes you happy Sue – you get another pat on the head for effort :o) – small style note however: when explaining dastardly schemes, try to end with ‘and I would’ve gotten away with it too if it weren’t for you damned kids!’ to further enhance the credibility of your argument.
_”Do we need to go back through all your old blog posts Kev. You know and I know that I gave you very legitamate reasons for why it would be a good idea for you to read EoH.”_
Feel free – the archives are right there. Your ‘legitimate reasons’ were that I hadn’t read EoH cover to cover. I tried to get you to understand that the subjects EoH covers were largely a matter of public record and it therefore wasn’t necessary to read EoH to read about them.
_”Of course you can get the “science†elsewhere. That was never and will never be the point. A clear minded (non irrational) person would understand that.”_
If you like Sue :o) How about you explain to my non-clear, irrational mind exactly what the point was? Even if I don’t agree with you, the novelty of seeing you explain something would be interesting.
By the way – make up as many ‘fake’ alt personalities as you like Sue, no problem. But refrain from posting under the name of people who _do_ exist. Such comments will be deleted.
Oh and when are you going to stop dodging the direct question I asked you in response to your direct question?
Sue-
If you are pretending to be Burbacher, can you answer my questions?
Okay…. SueM’s approach to knowledge development:
*Phase One*
David N. Andrews BA-status, PgCertSpEd (pending) : 9 hours, 56 minutes ago
SueM: “Should I go to the placenta eating blogger, Orac?â€
Are you saying that Orac eats placenta?
*endphase*
…and then…
*Phase Two*
Sue M. : 9 hours, 54 minutes ago
David wrote:
“Are you saying that Orac eats placenta�
– Hee hee. I don’t know. I would be surprised if this were the case, I imagine he just likes to blog about it.
*endphase*
Um… this is about as scientific as SueM can get. This is the approach of person of limited intelligence who believes that s/he ihas somethingimportant to say but has not the mental capacity to figure out what it is. The same person has to pick people up on spellings/typos in order to have something to post here since she has nothing of any relevance to the discussion under way.
It’s basically this approach: “If I say something as a fact, even if it isn’t one, I can justify it by stating that I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true, and that will make it a fact, and that’s good enough for me because I’m too stupid to understand the science!”
And she wonders why people don’t believe what her friends in the mercury mafia are saying! They all do this on that side!
Siis niinku – Dah!
Kev: “Oh and when are you going to stop dodging the direct question I asked you in response to your direct question?”
Ah, come on, Kev…. you know that’s not fair… asking for SueM to stop dodging stuff… she’s been doing that all her life! (Well, I dunno if she has, really… but it wouldn’t surprise me if she has!)….
Ah… interesting approach to use.
But the scientist that I am would really want more evidence…. ah, yeh… just about every other post from SueM on this entire blog shows a propensity to dodge stuff!
And that’s the difference, innit, Kev? SueM prefers, like the rest of her lot, to invent “facts” and dodge the real issues whilst we look for evidence to support inferences which then become facts if and only if the evidence supports that transition!
So the part of Thomas Burbacher this evening was played by Sue M? Did she also play the part of Brian Hooker? Who played the part of the nitwit? Oh, yeah. That would be Sue M. who doesn’t have an autistic child and has “no dog in this fight”, as that other nitwit, Don Imus would say.
So…. someone tell me. If the MIND institute did an HBOT study with a real hyperbaric oxygen chamber (not a toy) does that mean that they have ruled out oxidative stress as any kind of issue in autism?
Orac: “Very dull.”
She is.
Ruth wrote:
“Mr. Burbacher-
I threw out a red herring about your paper to annoy Sue”
– Right. Just as Diane Simpson misspelled thimerosal to have a little fun with spelling.
Kev wrote:
“By the way – make up as many ‘fake’ alt personalities as you like Sue, no problem. But refrain from posting under the name of people who do exist. Such comments will be deleted”.
– Good point, Kev. I will refrain from this in the future. I agree.
Diva wrote:
“Did she also play the part of Brian Hooker? Who played the part of the nitwit? Oh, yeah. That would be Sue M”.
– Of course I didn’t play the part of Brian Hooker. Clearly he is more intelligent than I. I understand now why you guys change your names and use nicknames all the times. It’s a trip. Yipeeeee!
Ruth wrote:
“If you are pretending to be Burbacher, can you answer my questions”?
– No, sorry. I am not goint to pretend to be Burbacher any longer. Go directly to Burbacher to have your questions answered. Do you need help with that?
Congratulations Sue. You are officially a complete asshole troll. Way to help your kids and your cause.
Not that it’s my blog or anything, but I think this thread has run its course.
“Congratulations Sue”.
– The number of bogus “nicknames”, absurd comments and the like that I see regularly on this site is ridiculous. The fact that it hasn’t bothered you in the past shows your hipocracy. Have a nice day!
Brian Hooker said: “For the genius who searched my name on PubMed, perhaps you should search other citation indices, since my area of research is not medicine… ”
Could someone please remind Andrew Cutler that being a chemical _engineer_ does not make him a medical researcher. Or at least remind his followers.
Brian,
my area of research is not medicine
Then perhaps you should stop implying expertise in said area.
Discussing biochemistry and molecular genetics is NOT implying an expertise in medicine.
Brian Hooker (aka Sue), I thought you’d stop pretending to be scientists. You’re making Hooker look bad. Look, Sue, PubMed, despite the Med in its name, has quite a vast collection of biochemical and molecular genetics-oriented journals under it’s wings. Many of the guy’s papers are in pubmed just for that reason.
As far as pretending to be an expert in medicine and the relation with discussing biochemistry and mol genetics – it’s all in the context, Sue. You see, when Brian Hooker was posting to EoH and other extremist listserves, bragging about harassing other doctors, he used his PNL.GOV email address and spoke from a position of authority, authority via knowledge. You can try to get the guy off the hook all day long, Sue, but the bottom line is that despite your semantical efforts, the guy has tried to come across as an expert in various aspects of the science behind autism. Further, he has acted in a manner that does not befit a government scientist, even one that is interested in simply overexpressing proteins in plants.
So what’s the problem with him coming off like an expert? Nothing, if one can back it up. Too bad cut/pasting names of papers doesn’t go very far to convince the masses that one knows what s/he is talking about. That is the point, Sue – the guy hasn’t proven to anyone here that he knows what he’s talking about. And no, Sue, I won’t email him at wet-dreams.com – I have not interest in playing who-can-cutandpaste-the-most-abstracts.
Which abstracts are you referring to? Perhaps we can discuss them scientifically…
Zeus
It sounded like you were making a “play” to discuss science… What would you like to discuss? SNPs? Metal toxicity? immune dysregulation? There is quite a huge literature base regarding the biochemistry of autism and no one study is going to say, “oh look, vaccines are/are not causal in autism.” This is compounded by the apparently huge number of endophenotypes within the disorder…
What would you like to discuss? SNPs? Metal toxicity? immune dysregulation?
Pick one – I’m in. Tell us which of those three things has anything to do with autism and explain why, in your own words if possible.
There is quite a huge literature base regarding the biochemistry of autism
If by “huge”, you mean tangential, poorly designed, poorly executed, poorly written, and submitted to low-tier journals, then we agree.
I see you and clone3g both like SNPs. That’s fine.
PS – I’ll continue like you’re real, but in case I am dealing with Sue, you would have sounded a bit more authentic if you would have kept the pious veneer and used the “Best!” salutation.
Dr. Hooker,
1) Make a wild estimate of how many of these mulititudinous endophenotypes can be normal or nearly normal kids and then be transformed to diagnosably ASD with vaccines?
Let’s look at the Generation Rescue claim of a 6000% increase in autism since the beginning of the 1990’s. Of all the autistics in that bolus of autistics that suddenly overwhelmed the system blah blah, how many of them were made into autistics by vaccines… or just with thimerosal containing vaccines…?? All of them? so like of the 2 million autitic kids we have now (according to Dr Jackie I’m-a-sex-therapist McCandless) or 1.5 million according to various sources, or 300,000 according to the CDC…?
2)Tell us how many autistic kids there are now in the US, roughly and
3) then tell us how many were made atuistic by vaccines.
OK? Just a rough guess. We’ll wait here while you construct the 3 answers.
SueM (in one of her many “let’-try-to-piss-folk-off” idiocy trips): “The fact that it hasn’t bothered you in the past shows your hipocracy. Have a nice day!”
It’s been annoying ever since you started doing it, SueM. But that’s okay, really… since that is your only purpose for existing, isn’t it? You’re not here to discuss science (because you are too dull for that), and you’re not here to tell your own experiences of dealing with an autistic child (since you do’t have one yourself), and you’re not here to learn anything from those of use who either have the scientific backgrounds or the autistic children (or, in many cases here, both of these; and you certainly wouldn’t be interested in learning from those few of us who are autistic ourselves *and* have autistic children *and* have the science background) since you are really too stupid to use whatever natural wit you may have been born with to actually accommodate new ideas into your preset schemata (or, if you want it as Kelly would have said it, you are too hostile towards the evidence that your personal hypothesis-testing throws back at you because your existing contructs are too important to you than the world they are supposed to represent… to the point of having become psychological disorder: that is to say, a state of affairs where your constructs no longer respresent accurately the world outside of you).
I really do pity your kids.
SueM: “Which abstracts are you referring to? Perhaps we can discuss them scientifically…”
That smacks of SueM.
David wrote:
“SueM: “Which abstracts are you referring to? Perhaps we can discuss them scientifically…â€
That smacks of SueM”
– Can it be possible that you really think that I am Brian Hooker? Can you be that foolish? It’s quite funny actually. Kev will obviously be able to tell you otherwise (clearly he would have “outed” me WAY before this). Clearly I don’t have the scientific background that Brian Hooker has… but you guys know that… don’t you? It’s difficult to tell with this crew.
Sue – I don’t think anybody really cared what name you post under until you assumed the identity of Burbacher.
That’s when you went from being a diversion to being a fool.
I’m closing this thread.