A recent press release caught my eye. Not for being good, far from it. It is yet another junk science approach to autism.
Perhaps you read it. The title was “Scientific Link to Autism Identified”. In it, a self labeled “think tank” called The Center for Modeling Optimal Outcomes, announced that “homeostasis” was the cause of autism.
The “full” press release is on their website. To the non scientist, especially on a quick read, it sounds convincing. But, in reality, it appears to be written by someone with a high-school biology education.
It has some excellent hooks to convince the casual reader. They present themselves as very successful in a separate field, and claim they stumbled upon a very important idea: that substances within the body exist in pairs. When these pairs are imbalanced, homeostasis is broken, resulting in chronic disease.
Autism, according the “The Center” is caused by an imbalance, or lack of homeostasis, in glycine and glutamate.
How does this cause the condition we know as autism? Unexplained. Somehow, glycine and glutamate “control the rate of cellular absorption”. Absorption of what? Unexplained. How does this cause autism? Unexplained.
But, it all sounds nice and official.
How do glycine and glutamate get away from “homeostasis”? Vaccines. I know, you are stunned that vaccines are implicated in causing autism. The “think tank” looked at the work of Andrew Wakefield and came away with the idea that MMR causes autism. What’s in an MMR shot? Hydrolized gelatin, which, in turn, contains glycine.
Of course, this is an important finding and controversial:
“Undoubtedly, this finding based on the application of the model for homeostasis will cause immense controversy. Our Life Sciences group is prepared to meet with members of the scientific community to explain the model as well as the variables that create the ‘perfect storm’ that results in autism.”
The controversy statement is a good one to make this appear real to many readers.
Perhaps the “think tank” could have done a bit more research into the autism alternative medical community. What are two of the most common supplements recommended by DAN!? TMG and DMG–trimethyl and dimethyl….glycine. Pure glycine is a supplement, sometimes recommended in the autism alt-med world (also here). But, somehow, we are supposed to believe that a small amount in an MMR shot causes the lifelong condition we call autism?
While it appears easy for some to sit back and point out that this press release, this homeostasis model of glycine and glutathione, is junk science, we must also recognize that it is not easy for everyone. The press release is wrapped in just enough jargon to make a convincing argument for many readers.
As Autism News Beat points out,
Health care fraud is a $100 billion a year racket in the US, and the bad guys know about autism.
Is the “The Center for Modeling Optimal Outcomes” part of the “bad guys” or are they just helping them? They don’t seem to be trying to profit from their junk science.
In the end, I don’t really care. I just wish they would take their junk science and apply it elsewhere.
Left Brain Right Brain 
You’ll want to fix the HTML; it looks like a closing “del” tag got accidentally lodged in the hyperlink of the next “a” tag.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this press release reminds me very much of S. I. Hayakawa’s observations on Dianetics: the author meant it to sound like science, and indeed may have deluded themselves that it is science, but its real model is science fiction.
Science is having a hypothesis and figuring out if your ideas are correct or not.. If this didn’t happen there would be no scientific process, the world would still be flat, the sun would revolve around us and Climategate – although I understand some of the big US newspapers refuse to cover it… would not be going on.
Science is not exact. 2+2 never equals 4….. Which means there’s nothing such as “junk” science. Although the peer review journals would tell you otherwised but instead of allowing for discussion they are simply political rags for those that have the same ideas the editors have.
People are suppose to question scientists… that’s how you learn and that’s how a scientist figures out if his hypothesis is valid or not…. To claim otherwise is refusing people their right to free speech and free thought.
You do see that this is what I am doing here, right? With the one exception that this so-called “think tank” isn’t a group of scientists.
it is unfortunate that more people didn’t question this junk.
The fact that science isn’t always correct does not allow us to claim that things that are obviously incorrect are science.
Antaeus Feldspar,
thanks for the hint! I should have checked this one before putting it in the queue.
I agree with your observations about Dianetics and similar groups. I’ve read their sort of “science”. It is a lot of verbiage with little substance. It can sound like science without being science.
Oh, my! What a bunch of….broccoli.
Just FYI – for those who might be inclined to believe this tripe – glycine and glutamate are found in just about every protein. A nice hot cup of broth has millions of times more glycine and glutamate than a vaccine dose, yet people rarely become autistic after a bowl of chicken soup – not even young children.
And if the argument is “chicken soup isn’t injected” (which is generally correct), consider the lowly mosquito. Each mosquito bite injects a small amount of saliva (which contains an anti-coagulant – and a small amount of glycine and glutamate).
At least in my part of the world, infants are favored targets of mosquitos, yet the autism diagnoses are not higher in the summer than in the winter, which you would expect, given how many times we’ve heard the anecdote of infants “turning autistic” weeks, days or even hours after a single vaccination.
Sorry, but the “gelatin-in-the-vaccines-causes-autism” will never fly until it can explain away the “mosquito question”.
Prometheus
I’ve blogged the crap out of this one; it’s horrible:
http://daisymayfattypants.blogspot.com/2009/11/hey-pseudoscientists-leave-them-kids.html
http://daisymayfattypants.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-nonsense-afoot.html
Also…note carefully the fact that glycine is a recommended component of chelation by the folks who recommend chelation. So…the stuff that’s now supposed to cause autism (scientific link! Promise!) is also used to…cure autism? Really…this gets so twisted up I’m surprised these people don’t walk around with their feet in their mouths and their hands up their…well, anyway…
Hypotheses have to be based on observations, though. If you just make stuff up out of nowhere, the “hypothesis” has very little likelihood of being correct, if any.
Homeopathy and astrology are good examples of people making stuff up out of nowhere. Successful scientific theories have provenance – an origin that can be traced back to some basic observations.
“Science is having a hypothesis and figuring out if your ideas are correct or not.. If this didn’t happen there would be no scientific process”
The next step in science is abandoning a hypothesis once you figure out it is not correct. This is the part that the pseudoscientists and quacks leave out.
The reason we don’t still think the world is flat is because once there was data that showed the world wasn’t flat, people abandoned the idea that the world was flat. Unfortunately pseudoscientists don’t abandon failed ideas, especially when they can make money by selling crap to gullible marks.
Why are the pushers of woo, the anti-vaxers, chelators, HBO2, Lupron, etc still pushing their pet ideas? Because they are making money at it. Despite a complete inability to find toxic levels of mercury associated with autism, the chelation quacks are still pushing chelation as a treatment. The only thing that will stop them is the lack of a market, no amount of evidence will.
FW2, the world was never flat, the Sun never went around the Earth. People who believed that were wrong. When they were shown to be wrong, they abandoned their wrong ideas. When the quacks are shown to be wrong, they simply change the goalposts or ignore it.
This talk of “imbalance” could almost be a recapitulation of the old “humours” theory.
I saw the press release a few days ago, upon seeing it blogged here I went ahead and went to their web site. It appears that these guys claim to have found the answer to so many problems that we need to revolutionize the way medical care is delivered. Sound familiar? I hope so. This is yet another company that has “found the answer” (to almost everything being in homeostasis), to more problems than their solution can deliver, and is willing to sell consultations about how to apply their analysis in every industry.
Imbalances and differentials are what make things work, flow, osmotize, and much more.
Computer models are Great in physics and cosmology. But these people didnt even claim to have a computer model, just a model.
Glad to see folks pointing out that I would likely be more disrupted by a bowl of Jello. (sarcastic laugh)
Emily,
thanks for those links. I just put up a post pointing people to your excellent posts.
“Science is having a hypothesis and figuring out if your ideas are correct or not.. If this didn’t happen there would be no scientific process, the world would still be flat, the sun would revolve around us and Climategate – although I understand some of the big US newspapers refuse to cover it… would not be going on.
Science is not exact. 2+2 never equals 4….. Which means there’s nothing such as “junk” science. Although the peer review journals would tell you otherwised but instead of allowing for discussion they are simply political rags for those that have the same ideas the editors have.
People are suppose to question scientists… that’s how you learn and that’s how a scientist figures out if his hypothesis is valid or not…. To claim otherwise is refusing people their right to free speech and free thought.”
I agree entirely.
I suppose that it is scientific to label people ‘quacks’ and ‘pseudoscientists’. This stereotyping and refusal to fairly examine information when questions are raised is typical of those who serve some form of vested interest, where it be their own ego, or a positive in coroporate slavery – both phyiscal and mental – dedicated not to scientific progress or discovery but self-perpetuation and profit. I mean really, what are you doing here? I saw a very small segment of what I would call science (and could easily being a ‘layman’ say it too, was ‘jargon’) and a lot of ad hominem.
I am not attacking you personally but your mentality that we should shun and ignore these claims. For one, it pretends, or seems to pretend, that this is the only such claim, that all claims on this matter are pseudoscience.
Here is an article on the Huffington post by David Kirby, an author on the subject.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/cnn-cdc-and-some-truth_b_94040.html
It is plain as day for any rational human being, the clear interest in avoiding direct answers to questions. Note the end of the article ‘Very little chance’ of links to autism, as apposed to ‘no evidence of’.It paints me to see people pontificate and preach about this subject. I doubt anyone of this stance has experiences with autism in their family or those close to them, if they were perhaps their interest would spike toward a more critical approach. ‘We don’t know anything about the causes of autism’ to me, says that they are likely to be doing something wrong.
I apologize if you are offended, but there are lives at stake, and I am fairly convinced, based on COMPELLING EVIDENCE that vaccinations are not only linked with autism, they provide barely any positive benefit, and are in fact in many cases extremely harmful, even fatal, particularly in new born babies – then again I suppose convulsions and fitting right after certain vaccinations, and an enormous leap in Sudden infant death syndrome in babies that have been vaccinated – should be swept under the carpet, not investigated, not discussed. It makes me sick. Is human life fish in a barrel to you people? We are not pseudo scientists or conspiracy theorists, we are concerned for the lives of our loved ones and humans as a whole. Please re-evaluate and attack material, not the notion of discussion and scrutiny – these are two fundamental elements of science itself.
Perhaps take a look at this, no doubt viewed as a ‘propaganda’ film, by many…
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6531447125053615129#
Alas it is a documentary. Make what you will of it.
Mike,
If there were “COMPELLING EVIDENCE” that vaccinations were linked to autism, someone would have brought it out in the recent hearings for the Omnibus Autism Proceeding.
You make a lot of assertions without any real support. Your only support being a YouTube video and David Kirby. Mr. Kirby is a man who has demonstrated time and again that he is not good with science. He has actually been caught providing false information in a presentation to the U.S. legislature. I can provide the links if you wish.
People are supposed to questions scientists. I do it all the time. I find that the ones who fail on questioning are repeatedly those who claim some sort of vaccine-induced-epidemic of autism.
I also question non-scientists. Most of those claiming this vaccine-induced epidemic are non scientists. They too come up short.