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 
Waiting, do you think he’s trying? I think he’s simply listing off gene names from abstracts of papers he hasn’t read or doesn’t understand. I think that he’s used to posting to lists where that nonsense will actually impress.
My fear is that my continued posting is keeping you folks away from more important stuff – like your children…
If what I mention in passing is taken with cynicism, my response will be “go to pubmed and figure it out yourself” as I did.
If you are interested in more febrile, open dialogue (above ad hominem attack, oneupmanship and tomfoolery), email me…
One shall find all the details in Bettelheim’s early writings and Kanner’s interview in Time magazine (U.S.). Run over to your phonograph, play “My Sweet Lord†from All Things Must Pass by George Harrison and check them out…
Brian wrote:
“If you are interested in more febrile, open dialogue (above ad hominem attack, oneupmanship and tomfoolery), email me…”
– Hey good job folks. Way to run another intelligent person off this blog site. Anyone comes on here with a brain cell and you cause enough silliness to run them off. That really helps your cause. Don’t complain when you are left with only nitwits like me from my side. You have only yourselves to blame.
Apologies. I will remain from further comment altogether.
Sue,
You ARE a nitwit. And a hypocrite who thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to harass your opposition. Hey, it’s ok to call someone at work, send them unsolicited email, throw personal pictures of them on a website or out them on a message board. Fair game, huh?
Brian Hooker rambles on about some (at best) tangential science, mixes in a few religious references and a dash of conspiracy theory, and you call him “intelligent”? Well, then again, you think the Geiers and Bradstreet are legitimate researchers, so I’m not shocked by this.
And yeah, Brian, that was a slam.
Mouse wrote:
“You ARE a nitwit”.
– No kidding. Didn’t I just state that above?
Mouse wrote:
“Hey, it’s ok to call someone at work, send them unsolicited email, throw personal pictures of them on a website or out them on a message board. Fair game, huh”?
– Crap, it’s not ok to call someone at work? I’ve been doing that for years. Boy, I am a nitwit. As for the other stuff… get off your high horse, Mouse. That sort of stuff happens with both sides. Ask Kathleen Seidel, ask Kev about reporting to VAERS that his daughter turned into Wonder Woman (or some other character) as a result of a vaccine reaction.
Mouse wrote:
“And yeah, Brian, that was a slam”.
– Coming from you Mouse, I’m sure that Brian is pretty broken up about that “slam”. Here’s what we hear all the time here… Give me science… Give me peer reviewed… Give me PubMed studies, etc. You get it… None of you know what to do with yourselves. You run around going now what? Holy crap, who’s got a response to that one? So the response then becomes, “I don’t know what the hell you are talking about and I can’t contradict you so…. boy are you a dummy”! You guys are so predictable. Any comment on that Madsen e-mail ??
If you are interested in more febrile, open dialogue (above ad hominem attack, oneupmanship and tomfoolery), email me…
Oh yeah, did you want my phone number and social too? Reminds me of a particular anti-govt extremist (no not JBJr), at his Harvard class reunion: “Oh, you’re an industrialist? Oh that’s great, why don’t you send me your address and I’ll keep in touch!”
Does tomfoolery extend to home and office harassment?
SueM, STFU… you have yet to contribute to ANY debate on this blog ANYthing of significance….
Got it?
Like, SueM doesn’t like this “Give me science… Give me peer reviewed…”… why?
Answer…. because peer reviewed and science blows her and her idiot pals out of the water.
Siis niinku, DAH!
Brian of God wrote: _If you are interested in more febrile, open dialogue (above ad hominem attack, oneupmanship and tomfoolery), email me…_
Can someone explain to me why anyone would want a more fevered or feverish, dialogue, open or not…
Is there another meaning to “febrile” that I haven’t heard of?
Sorry if I’m being dense, did he mean “favorable” or something?
When they were discussing the fact that Dr. Brian Hooker had called Dr. Parker to accuse her of being an idiot or a pharmco shill or something… he was saying something like she didn’t have a right to display her credentials… which is rich considering the way the mercury quacks treat credentials… anyway, one of the other mercury parents compared Brian Hooker to “Benito Musselini,” which was some reference to a Seinfeld episode about George going all psycho acting when he hadn’t intended to.
Dr. Hooker didn’t think it was a very fair comparison.
Dr. Hooker’s calls to Dr. Parker were apparently far from professional. Just as was Dr. Deth’s calling Kathleen at her home and offering to drive to her home to educate her about stuff that she already was quite informed.
I have issues with stuff that MIND scientists have done and are doing, I don’t call them up and tell them what I’m thinking, and I keep my emails respectful if blunt. They haven’t asked me to stop emailing them… I don’t e-mail them very often. I do speak to them in person, too, if I happen to see the and they have time.
Camille
Were you on the line when I was leaving the message for Dr. Parker? How did you know what I said?
I don’t recall anything regarding Parker’s credentials. There were some issues with her analysis, but I am not sure that those issues are salicious enough for any of you to care about. The truth of the matter would be too boring.
Febrile also means “active” or “lively”
Oh – and Dr. Parker I believe was frightened not because of the tone of my call but because of prior legal action that resulted from the publication that I had the question about.
Her actions of notifying the police were rather unprecedented and the UCHSC police never followed up with me.
“Kerbob” called me Benito Moussilinni and I thought it was hilarious. I still address my correspondences to him, “Sincerely, Benito…”
Sue – This is a group of angry, bitter people. You hanging around just gives an object to their hatred… There are lots of better places to gain support, regardless of your position on vacines and neurodevelopmental disorders.
brian@dream-big.us
Angry and bitter? You mean compared to parents who are convinced their children were poisoned by some vast government conspiracy and cover-up? Please….
So Brian, when are you going to offer up some sort of science to back up your assertions? So far all I’ve seen is vague hand waving and abstracts about oxidative stress and polymorphisms. Am I supposed to connect the dots and arrive at the same conclusions you have? Help me out here.
You said: “go to pubmed and figure it out yourself†as I did.
I went to Pubmed and there is an awful lot of research there. Do I need the secret decoder ring or an Ouija board? Where’s the stuff to support a thimerosal autism connection?
David wrote:
“SueM, STFU… you have yet to contribute to ANY debate on this blog ANYthing of significance….
Got it”?
– This is because I am a nitwit David. From one nitwit to another, what’s your commentary on the Madsen e-mail?
Brian wrote:
“Sue – This is a group of angry, bitter people. You hanging around just gives an object to their hatred…”
– Very true, Brian. I keep fooling myself into believing that some of them will be able to get past the bitterness to use their common sense.
Dr Hooker,
You may address me as Ms Clark, thank you. If you want revenge you can call me “Ms. Clark of God” …
🙂
This is what I was referring to where you posted what appears to be a copy of an email which mentions Dr. Parker’s credentials.
Thanks for the extended definition of “febrile.” That’s fascinating. I did a cursory web search for definitions of febrile and only found references to the one I was familiar with.
Isn’t the word you meant to use, “salacious”?
When some of us have discussed your anger at Dr. Parker we were shocked at your lack of professionalism and the fact that you seemed to be emailing from a governtment e-mail account (SEEMED to be we couldn’t confirm that). We all kind of went, “dude! I hope he never goes for my throat that way,” but no one really was interested in any sexy details. So salaciousness wasn’t a concern…
—-
Subject: Sarah Parker on the show “To The Point”
From:
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 16:27:18 -0700
Dear Colleagues
I am deeply disturbed by your choice of Ms. Sarah Parker on the 4/15/05 show with author David Kirby. Ms. Parker fraudulently charged Dr. Mark and Mr. David Geier with scientific malfeasance in a review publication she and the CDC NIP published in the Sept. 2004 edition of Pediatrics. I take very serious the slanderous comments made by Ms. Parker. Although a tacet retraction was made by Ms. Parker in the Jan 2005 edition of Pediatrics, the fact remains that Parker was about the business of manufacturing salacious stories about folks who would caution the use of thimerosal and its causal association with autism. This would bring into severe scrutiny any comment she would make against the book “Evidence of Harm,” or its author David Kirby or researchers in general.
With that type of agenda, Ms. Parker should release her case load and consider other career choices in which malicious mischief would have less dire consequences.
Please issue a proviso on your website concerning the credentials of Ms. Parker.
Sincerely
Brian S. Hooker, Ph.D., P.E.
—-
Sue will rejoice over your spelling of thimerosal… 🙂
SueM: “what’s your commentary on the Madsen e-mail?”
What about this e-mail? You’re obsessed!
You mean this:
*quote*
“Dr. Simpson: “Did they [autism rates] increase after 1993??â€
Dr. Madsen: “Yes but not very dramatically and there could be more reasons for that. First of all we had a change from ICD8 to ICD10 in 1994 and furthermore our outpatient clinics were registered in our surveillance from 1995.â€
*endquote*
Okay. My comment…
Given that ICD 10 has more inclusive criteria (for the autism diagnosis) than ICD 8, there would be an expected increase in the number of people fitting the criteria. Also, given that knowledge about autism had increased to the point where autistic children were being diagnosed as *autistic* instead of *mentally retarded/learning-disabled/etc*, one might expect an increase in numbers because of this too.
I don’t see anything remotely worth getting paranoid about in that e-mail exchange and I’m pretty concerned that you and the other idiots in the mercury-poisoned-my-normal-kid-and-turned-him/her-into-a-train-wreck crowd are pushing this paranoia.
You’re doing way more damage than good.
That is my commentary.
Satisfied? I doubt it, but tough… that’s all I see to say on that matter.
Now you come up with some peer-reviewed science to back up your side of the debate. Oh, I forgot… you don’t like to examine the science… it shows how poorly you construct your lies on that side of the “debate”.
Brian wrote: “That being said, I do believe proper treatment of Denmark, Sweden, California and VSD data shows a correlation between thimerosal exposure and NDDs. Additionally, a lot of the sleight of hand by some of the investigators is at a minimum suspect.”
That isn’t science… that’s paranoia. He provided no evidence to back up his claims! He a *doctor*???
Sue M wrote:
Well of course it matters a hoot that they added outpatients in 1995. Forget about what I think for a minute. Let’s take a look at what the author of this fabulous Danish study had to say in a 2001 e-mail exchange to the all-knowing Diane Simpson:
“Dr. Simpson: “Did they [autism rates] increase after 1993??â€
Dr. Madsen: “Yes but not very dramatically and there could be more reasons for that. First of all we had a change from ICD8 to ICD10 in 1994 and furthermore our outpatient clinics were registered in our surveillance from 1995.â€
Can the conspiracy think for a moment. Take a longer look at that graph. So they broadened the criteria (if that’s what they did – I’m less familiar with ICD 10). This doesn’t help the mercury mafia one bit – because after the add-in of all those outpatients the blasted graph still looks like a rocket launch and continues it’s meteoric rise all the way to 2000. This is the incidence, i.e. new cases in 2-4 year olds. After all. according to the legendary Handley all developmental disorders are mercury poisoning, so who cares about how you detect it. Bottom line -this stuff is going up in the absence of your causative agent QED no relationship – elementary my dear.
_”Ok, Kev. You are perfect and we are pond scum.”_
I am far from perfect and have never claimed to be. However, my opinion on the behaviour of a growing percentage of the people you consider allies is not good.
It doesn’t matter how Brian dresses it up – calling and emailing someone to the point they feel sufficiently harassed enough to report the matter to the Police is not acceptable. It’s going too far.
Likewise, calling someone at home to harass them in the way Tim whatever did is unacceptable. JB Jr’s recent encouragement to repeat that action is equally reprehensible.
This patterns of _men_ harassing _women_ is something of a common theme from your allies Sue. Deth phoning Kathleen at home, JB emailing some poor woman at the CDC telling her she’s a baby poisoner.
I’m sufficiently old-fashioned enough to believe that men attempting to intimidate women in this way is simply _wrong_ . I don’t see anywhere where these men are attempting to go after other men – its always women.
There is a line Sue. Shouting at each other on a blog is one thing. It is quite another to go after some _personally_.
_”As for your wife sobbing over a nasty comment from someone. That sucks. I’m not going to lie. It’s terrible that this debate has turned so incredibly nasty.”_
You’re not wrong but this goes beyond ‘nasty’ – telling someone to hang themselves with the corpse of their children goes way, way beyond simply ‘nasty’. Its pathological. Telling someone that their child is no better than a trained monkey apparently because they are unable to accept that that child is progressing just as well, if not better, than their own is beyond ‘nasty’.
Their is a line here too Sue. If people want to attack me – go for it. I’m an adult male with big shoulders and a very thick skin. However, attacking _children_ is something else. These people claim to be autism advocates. They claim to be doing this ‘for the kids’. For a worrying amount of your allies Sue that is patently bullshit. What they want is a fight.
_”These “attacks†are less personal but equally as hurtful.”_
If that’s your belief system then I’m sure they are. However Sue, I would yet again suggest that there’s a difference between a medical professional voicing their professional opinion and someone telling you your daughters a ‘fucking retard’ who should be ‘put down’.
Brian – I commend you for attempting to discuss the science. Its something I’d like to see more of. However, we are a group of people who take absolutely _nothing_ on face value, whether its supports our position or not. We look for the holes as they are an indicator of the overall strength of the case. In a matter such as this, ‘maybe’ and ‘might be’ and ‘seems like’ is simply not good enough. The debate we’re having now will essentially decide the future direction of autism research. We need to be absolutely 100% positive – or as near as possible.
You also have to be aware that your initial contribution to this thread was little more than an ignorant rebuke. You do not know the history between JB and myself. Its also patently clear that your methods of chasing up people you disagree with sometimes cross a very worrying line. If people want to debate you I think that’s something they need to know about.
“Dr. Madsen: “Yes but not very dramatically and there could be more reasons for that. First of all we had a change from ICD8 to ICD10 in 1994 and furthermore our outpatient clinics were registered in our surveillance from 1995.â€
That should be the DSM-IV that came out in 1994. The ICD-10 came out in 1990.
Hi Jonathan….
“The ICD-10 came out in 1990”
Yes. The English version… but other versions in different languages took longer, and the WHO-member-states adopted it formally in 1994, nearly half a decade after the English version came out.
“ICD-10 was endorsed by the Forty-third World Health Assembly in May 1990 and came into use in WHO Member States as from 1994. The classification is the latest in a series which has its origins in the 1850s. The first edition, known as the International List of Causes of Death, was adopted by the International Statistical Institute in 1893. WHO took over the responsibility for the ICD at its creation in 1948 when the Sixth Revision, which included causes of morbidity for the first time, was published.”
http://www.who.int/classifications/icd/en/
“Ok, Kev. You are perfect and we are pond scum.â€
Sue immediately loses, simply for using the same bloody annoying tactic that my mum uses when she’s losing an argument.
M – you’re famous ;o)
Any chance you can mail me too – GMail seems to have ‘dropped’ a whole load of my contacts, including yours :o(
See? We do scientific collaboration and proving of hypotheses. Including those that involve vampire hobbit porn.
I’m unsure as to why you many of you are rejoicing over the numbers of hits/unique visitors that putchildrenfirst.org has each day/month or whatever. We all know that there are a lot of sickos/weirdos out there. The fact that Bonnie’s Star Trek site, Orac’s Tom Cruise eats placenta posts and Gay Vampire hobbit porn stories get more attention is ok with me. The weirdos can stay there… The same people who are not reading the information from Put Children First are the same people who won’t be spending money on your kids (in any way). The people who aren’t reading it are also the people who continue to shortchange autism research. They are the same people who are injecting your pregnant cousin with a thimerosal containing flu vaccine. They are the same people who keep injecting the poor children all over the world with full dose thimerosal containing vaccinations. I suppose that’s a good thing? Ok. You say so.
As for me, the site has allowed me to show Alyric what a non critical thinker she is by showing her how the author of one of the Danish studies believes the results of the study are skewed if not bogus. It shows the complete incompetence of the CDC. Spelling errors aside, two years after supposedly “banning” thimerosal from vaccines they are just now getting around to asking other countries “experts” about thimeerosel. What do the other countries “experts” say? We look pretty pathetic. The people who choose to look at the information can get a good sense of the incompetence that we are talking about. If they are more interested in hobbit porn… keep them there…
Hi David,
Ah, thanks for the clarification, didn;t know that.
Isn’t it pretty interesting that Sue et al do believe that changes in criteria and so on can result in rises of administrative prevalence? But I guess this only applies to prevalence rises reported by particular studies.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20060501/norwaydino_din.html?source=rss
Just wanted to make an Ivar Lovaas joke…
Norwegian Dinosaur discovered.
if it was in LA it would be a perfect joke.
Sorry. Off topic.
Sue immediately loses, simply for using the same bloody annoying tactic that my mum uses when she’s losing an argument.
My mother uses that one, too. And many other common logical fallacies. This one is a variation of the straw man argument.
I’ve also seen various other logical fallacies trotted out by various members of the Toxic Parents Coalition. They can’t see and won’t understand the basics of logic and reasoning, mostly because their arguments are faith-based (including faith in random anecdotes and faith in infallable or specially “blessed” leaders). Trying to argue logic against faith is an absolutely no-win situation. “It’s this way because I believe it is” will never be conquered by “But I can show you a great deal of scientific evidence and present plausible other explanations”.
And lest anyone thing I’ve got anything against faith, quite the contrary. Faith is a wonderful, sustaining, even life-giving phenomenon in the lives of people who have it. But faith is best left to matters spiritual, rather than in matters medical or scientific.
Science is not based on faith, and faith is not based on science, and the straw man did it, I saw it myself, and anyone who says he didn’t is a trailor dwelling coo coo.
Oh, I should have put the phrase “trailor dwelling coo coo” in quotes. It’s actually a quotation. Apologies and let it be known that I’ve never in my life called anyone anything like that and I know how to spell both “trailer” and “cuckoo”.
_”I’m unsure as to why you many of you are rejoicing over the numbers of hits/unique visitors that putchildrenfirst.org has each day/month or whatever. We all know that there are a lot of sickos/weirdos out there. “_
You almost became human there Sue – then you blew it again.
First: no one is rejoicing. It’s simply interesting and a little amusing.
Second: Your inference is that anyone who doesn’t visit pcf.org and/or find it informative and profound is a sicko and weirdo. I thought you didn’t approve of nasty name-calling?
Would you say, by the way, that an interest in porn is more or less ‘sick’ or ‘weird’ than wishing death on an autistic child?
_”The same people who are not reading the information from Put Children First are the same people who won’t be spending money on your kids (in any way). The people who aren’t reading it are also the people who continue to shortchange autism research”_
Yet again – wrong. Anyone who pays taxes has a stake in autism research. I’d wager not a few of those people might have such diverse interests as the blog posts from Orac you don’t talk about like WWII revisionism, holocaust denial, general scepticism etc.
People are diverse Sue. I’m amazed you’ve been hanging around here as long as you have and failed to pick up on that fact.
bonni: “Trying to argue logic against faith is an absolutely no-win situation. ‘It’s this way because I believe it is’ will never be conquered by ‘But I can show you a great deal of scientific evidence and present plausible other explanations’.”
Correct. And this is not because the scientific evidence is of poor quality; it’s because the thinking which rejects it is poor quality. The person rejecting the science is attempting to reduce some sort of cognitive dissonance but – instead of taking an evidence based approach (which is the best approach going) – the person takes an approach which reduces dissonance by engaging in (what Kelly calls) “hostility” towards the evidence obtained. In the same way in which Procrustes would alter the size of his guests to fit the bed he had for them, such people alter the evidence to fit a preconceived notion.
Ultimately, this is poor quality thinking; protect the ego at all costs, including at the cost of one’s rational thinking ability.
“Faith is a fine Invention
When Gentleman can See..
But Microscopes are Prudent
In an Emergency..”
Emily Dickenson
Ruth, thanks for the Emily Dickenson rhyme! It’s PERFECT. 🙂
My typo-should be
When Gentlemen can See…
Pardon the lateness of my commenst, but I have been in a self-imposed Internet exile in order to get some work done.
I was particularly taken by the comments – unsolicited, BTW – of Brian Hooker, who starts out his particpation in the discussion with the following:
“I am deeply grieved regarding your comments.” and “No parent, regardless of their viewpoint, deserves the vitriol that has been put forth in this string.”
He finishes that post with:
“Please refrain from personal attacks. It is one thing to discuss concepts. It is quite another to stoop to the level of name calling and insults. It belies deep hatred – the last thing any parent needs.
God bless us all…”
He seems to have forgotten the vitriol he has put forth himself. Fortunately, Brian Hooker appears to be a member of the “No-Fault” denomination of Christianity – the type that believes that being forgiven by God removes all responsibility for their actions.
I can’t claim to be a Biblical scholar, but I don’t think that is written anywhere in the Bible. Maybe I have an older edition.
Apparently, Dr. Hooker feels that getting right with God has absolved him from the need to apologize to those he has wronged (Dr. Parker, for starters).
Not content to rely completely on God’s forgiveness, Dr. Hooker adds the justification:
“I have been an “angry parent†in the past.”
This carries about as much moral weight as “I was pretty drunk at the time.” The fact that he was in an altered mental state during the commission of his offenses is neither justification or excuse. Being angry is not a state of mind exclusive to Dr. Hooker – sad to say – and so does not qualify as a mitigating factor.
I have no problem with Dr. Hooker dropping by and giving us a summary of the science that he feels supports his position – in fact, I welcome it. However, I feel that his (and JB Handley’s, for that matter) record of personally abusing people who disagree (impersonally) with their position makes him incompetent to morally judge others on that score.
So, Dr. Hooker, bring on the science, but don’t get “huffy” if some of us don’t find it convincing.
Also, don’t lecture us on having specks in our eyes while you still have that beam in yours.
Prometheus
Sue,
You said you’d look at my Geier posts, but you still seem unduly obsessed with in the small number of fluff posts. Also, I’ve never posted about “Gay Vampire hobbit porn stories,” which you seem to be implying was also my post.
Oops. The “with in” is a typo. It should read just “with”
A voice of reason from the AAP. It’s about time. May the flood gates open.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/eletters/117/4/1028
If by “voice of reason” you mean “some random no-name doctor from the International Hyperbaric Medical Association spouting the same (at best) tangential evidence which we’ve already established doesn’t prove a lick of anything”, then you are absolutely correct.
Hey Kev:
Glad to see I’m a headliner in 2 of your recent blogs, thanks for all the PR.
While your at it, make sure you apply your analytical gifts to the GR webstats, too:
http://www.generationrescue.org/webstats
I’ve long since concluded that the parents who blog here and folks who share my view have no chance of finding common ground, which is too bad, because in the end we are all parents who are sharing a common challenge, and we all love our children first and foremost.
I’ve become convinced that the only way this issue gets resolved is by a large-scale study on neurodevelopmental outcomes of unvaccinated children. Wouldn’t you agree? Especially now that CDC has released up-to-date numbers on autism prevalence.
Of course, if we sponsor such a study, we’ll be subject to the same accusations of conflict that we subject CDC to, so it makes it tricky for how to get a study like this off the ground.
If any of you scientists or psuedo-scientists want to recommend a scientist of unimpeachable integrity and no conflicts on either side, we are all ears and eager to help fund.
Kev, the only thing that really bugs me that you wrote was the inference (and it was a strong inference) that we are somehow linked with tort lawyers or vaccine litigants.
We are categorically in no way associated with vaccine litigants or tort lawyers and the pcf ad was exclusively paid for by parents who are not vaccine litigants, no law firm had anything to do with the ad nor did they have previous knowledge it was running. Is that clear enough? I think a retraction or clarification would be the British thing to do.
“Idiot” is fine, just quit implying I’m in this for the money, which I am certainly not.
Very best,
JB
“and the pcf ad was exclusively paid for by parents who are not vaccine litigants”
And you know this how? You do background checks on everyone who send GR money?
Mouse wrote:
“If by “voice of reason†you mean “some random no-name doctor from the International Hyperbaric Medical Association spouting the same (at best) tangential evidence which we’ve already established doesn’t prove a lick of anythingâ€, then you are absolutely correct”.
– More interesting than “who” actually wrote the letter is the fact that Pediatrics actually printed it. As I said above… may the flood gates open. I love this “we’ve already established…” blah, blah, blah. Who’s we? Mouse? Kev? the obsessed placenta eating blogger? Clone? Too funny.
Sue M. A voice of reason from the AAP. It’s about time. May the flood gates open.
If this is the kind of logic stuck in the flood gates, someone needs to open the chamber and let this guy out for air.
No more secrets or truth-spinning. This is not a faux epidemiological epidemic, nor an infectious epidemic, nor a genetic epidemic (as there are no genetic epidemics). That leaves an epidemic linked to some sort of exposure.
JBH: I’ve become convinced that the only way this issue gets resolved is by a large-scale study on neurodevelopmental outcomes of unvaccinated children. Wouldn’t you agree?
Unvaccinated JB or unvaccinated with thimerosal? Why do we need a large-scale study when we already know there are plenty of newly diagnosed kids who never saw a thimerosal containing vaccine?
Thimerosal gone. Autism still here. ’nuff said.
Sue, did you actually read the opinion piece by that guy?
A classic: “Conflict of interest: none declared”
The guy actually called himself a scientist! Did the Lupron “boys” help him write that or did some kid pull out his tandy plug-into-the-tv model and him out?
TRS-80 crunches numbers better than the Vulture culture