Left Brain Right Brain

As I’ve noted a few times already, the taped conversations between William Thompson at the CDC and Brian Hooker, proponent of the failed autism/vaccine notion, are very telling. There are certainly aspects of these conversations which I doubt Mr. Hooker’s team would like to be made public (and, as we will see, may be keeping out of the public eye). For example, when Hooker pressed Thompson to state that the CDC team worked to dilute an apparent association between the MMR vaccine and autism, Mr. Thompson declined (discussed here).

Here’s another statement by Mr. Thompson. This time it is in relation to Mark and David Geier, a father/son team that has written a great deal of junk science trying to promote the idea that thimerosal in vaccines and autism are linked. The Geiers have been criticized in many venues, being called “intellectually dishonest” as one of the more polite ways of characterizing their work. Brian Hooker relies upon the Geiers for his own beliefs about autism and thimerosal and even calls the Geiers his friends.

Dr. Thompson: But it’s a marketing thing. It’s a marketing thing. You have to figure out how to market this. And this has to come from other voices, it can’t just come from you because you…they made you the poster boy of, they want to portray you as crazy and you know um, and honestly I think, you’ve been persistent. You have been right most of the time. I will say the Geiers were not right and the Geiers…you know the Geiers; I do not know them personally. But, I know the things they did. They took exact copies of papers we wrote and published them under their own names. Word for word and I just thought that [UI].

Want to bet this quote doesn’t end up in the “documentary” Andrew Wakefield is making on Thompson?

[UI] likely means unintelligible. As in, “we can’t provide the transcript here because we can’t understand the recording.” I really have to wonder if [UI] means, “Thompson harshed on the Geiers even more and we decided to edit here.”

Who knows. We have enough to see that Thompson clearly thought the Geiers were wrong. And calls them out for their unethical attempt at getting a paper by copying the CDC’s team’s work.

There’s a list of papers out there that people claim shows there’s a link between vaccines and autism. I bet a lot of papers on that list are authored by the Geiers. And even their own hero, the “CDC Whistleblower” calls those papers out as junk.

The Geiers–the team that claimed that chemical castration was an autism treatment–criticized by Mark Blaxill* (another vocal proponent of the idea that vaccines cause autism) and now by the new hero to the movement.

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By Matt Carey

*Although it must be said that Mr. Blaxill never showed the courage to make his opinion public.

I (and many others) have recently reviewed Steve Silberman’s book, Neurotribes. Not taking any credit for this accomplishment–that’s all Steve’s. It’s on the New York Times best seller list. #8 in hard back nonfiction.

Congratulations Steve! Glad to see this effort recognized.

Here are a few reviews of the book–

Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism: How We Autistics Got to Here: Reviewing Steve Silberman’s NeuroTribes and also as NeuroTribes Is Finally Here: Celebrating With a Review, and a Giveaway

Here’s a review an interview on AutismShow.org 50: The forgotten history of autism: NeuroTribes with Steve Silberman

Emily Willingham with an interview and review at Forbes as ‘NeuroTribes’ Will Change What You Think About Autism And Here’s Why

And, yeah, you can find reviews at the New York Times, Atlantic and many other large media outlets too 🙂

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By Matt Carey

For those who know the story of William Thompson–he’s the CDC researcher who decided it was a good idea to coach vaccine-antagonist advocate Brian Hooker in how to scare people from using vaccines–you know that he’s become a favorite sock puppet for the people who claim vaccines cause autism. I’ve seen many discussions where people say Thompson said this, or Thompson said that–all without any evidence.

Here’s a quote from Robert Kennedy Jr. in the book

“Dr. Thompsom told Dr. Hooker that whenever the CDC finds an adverse effect from vaccines, the agency supervisors assemble CDC scientists in a room and order them to massage the data until they have devised a gimmick for eliminating the unwanted signal.”

One does wonder if Kennedy actually read the transcripts. Because that isn’t in there anywhere. I don’t expect accuracy from Kennedy. Politics. Misguided politics. That’s what I expect. And he came through with his introduction to the book.

One more claim made by Mr. Hooker’s team is that the CDC abandoned their initial research plan (which, now that we’ve seen the plan, we know isn’t true) and that they did so in order to dilute an effect they saw in the African American Cohort. And this is all somehow backed up by William Thompson’s statements in the phone conversations.

Well, now we have transcripts of some of the calls. And here we can see Brian Hooker trying to get Thompson to say that and Thompson, well, not saying it.

Dr. Hooker: And then you basically deviated from that particular plan in order to reduce the statistical significance that you saw in the African American Cohort.

Dr. Thompson: Well, we, um, we didn’t report findings that, um…All I will say is we didn’t report those findings. I can tell you what the other coauthors will say.

Recall that Brian Hooker knew he was recording. He wanted this on tape. And that it appears Thompson didn’t know he was being recorded, but he still wouldn’t say what Hooker wanted him to say.

As I said–don’t expect this exchange to be widely discussed. It doesn’t fit the story they want to tell.

edit to add–here’s a screenshot of this exchange (click to enlarge):

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By Matt Carey

Below is an email from Greg deGiere The Arc & United Cerebral Palsy California Collaboration. As many of you will recall, there’s been a big effort to restore funding for disability related services here in California. We were pushing for a 10% increase, got a 5% increase only to lose even that in a budget deal. But there’s still time and need to be heard. Three rallies are being held here in California and we need people to attend and make themselves heard.

Here are the details.

LA, San Diego, and Sacramento rallies this week!

Dear Friends,

Believe it or not, the Legislature is planning to adjourn for the year in two weeks – and it shows no sign to taking action to save our developmental services by then.

Our community service system is crumbling now. We need to tell them forcefully, in person that we can’t wait until 2016.

Please come to one of the three Lanterman Coalition rallies this week to tell the Legislature’s leaders and members to get the job done before they go home. Their words of support aren’t enough – we need their action now!

The rallies will be:

· 11 a.m. TOMORROW (Tuesday, September 1) at the office of Senate leader Kevin de Leon, 1808 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles. Click here for details.

· 11 a.m. TOMORROW (Tuesday, September 1) at the office of Assembly leader Toni Atkins, 1350 Front Street, San Diego. Click here for details.

· 10 a.m. THURSDAY (September 3) at the beautiful, historic Crest Theater, 1013 K Street, two blocks from the Capitol, Sacramento. At 12 noon (note time change), we’ll march to the Capitol to deliver the message in person. (Bay Area friends – we especially need you here Thursday).

Please come to at least one of the rallies – and bring some friends. If you can’t get to any of them on your own, ask your community service provider to arrange transportation.

As one of your professional advocates here in Sacramento, it’s amazing to me that the legislative leaders would even consider breaking for the year without acting. I can hardly imagine how infuriating it must be to people with developmental disabilities and their families, friends, and service providers like you.

Thanks to the coordinated advocacy of you throughout the state and us in Sacramento, every legislator now knows about our system’s crisis, and most of them have given us strong words of support. Now they need to hear from you that you need them to match their strong words with strong action.

Thank you for your advocacy.

Greg

Greg deGiere
Public Policy Director
The Arc & United Cerebral Palsy California Collaboration
1225 Eighth Street, Suite 350, Sacramento, CA 95814
916-552-6619 x4

As a few people have written about recently, a book was recently published in which we get to read transcripts of conversations between Brian Hooker (a vocal advocate of the idea that vaccines cause autism) and William Thompson (a researcher at the CDC).

The basic story we have been told is that supposedly the CDC team (of which Thompson was a member) saw a “statistically significant” association between MMR vaccination and autism in African American boys. Specifically for boys who got the vaccine late, but before age 3. The story then goes on to claim that he CDC team worked furiously to bury this association. William Thompson, wracked with guilt over this, finally reached out to Brian Hooker to guide him towards this result.

This story is full of holes, as has been discussed here and elsewhere. Rather than go through that again, just take this backstory and ask yourself: given this claim that significant results were omitted by the CDC, wouldn’t Brian Hooker make damned sure that nothing important was left out of the “reanalysis” paper? After all, the main criticism Hooker levied against the CDC team was omission.

You’d think so, wouldn’t you. But you’d also guess that I wouldn’t go through this long introduction if that was the case.

Brian Hooker sold his reanalysis as strong because he took a simple approach. I.e. he didn’t control for any confounding factors. Epidemiologists will tell you the opposite–a raw data analysis is suspect.

In the conversations, we hear that Brian Hooker was well aware that he would get criticism for not making corrections:

Dr. Hooker: Right. Right. Well, what would happen…Okay, so let me play this out … My paper gets published; my MMR paper gets published. They…I get heavily criticized, because I haven’t corrected for scioeconomic factors or maternal education. Yeah. I’ll take my hits, and then eventually it gets published. And then there’s a piece of information that I receive from the CDC, but I don’t source. Is that going to be a red flag?

OK, he knows that a “simple” approach is not considered strong. This begs the question: how important are socioeconomic factors and maternal education he’s worried about? I could tell you that they are huge factors for the conclusion he’s trying to make. But don’t take my word for it, because Hooker and Thompson did discuss the importance of maternal education in the recorded calls. And this discussion is very telling. Consider this exchange:

Dr. Hooker: Right. Right. Well, it does…You know, it does kind of play backwards.

Plays backwards–as in this goes against the story they are trying to tell. Going on:

Dr. Thompson: yeah.

Dr. Hooker:… in terms of: Will those kids that got vaccinated later; then you would expect less healthcare-seeking behavior; so they would be less likely to get an autism diagnosis.

Dr. Thompson: yep.

Yep?!? That’s all he can say? This is KEY to the entire argument that there is an increased risk in African American boys.

Let’s step back a moment and look at this issue. Brian Hooker’s reanalysis is based on very few subjects (seven–African American autistic boys who got their MMR vaccine late). Implicit in his “simple” analysis is the assumption that these boys were in every way similar to the other boys in the study, aside from autism and when they got their MMR vaccine. Let’s say that there’s a reason why these autistic kids were vaccinated late–like their parents didn’t have insurance so they didn’t go to well baby checks. This would correlate with the education of the mother and, thus, this variable could help control for this “health-care seeking behavior”.

This leaves us with a HUGE potentially confounding variable in Hooker’s analysis, and in precisely the population they are most interested in–the kids who got vaccinated later. But he don’t address it in the “reanalysis”. He sweeps it under the rug.

Which is to say, this is a very ironic conversation Hooker and Thompson are having. Hooker appears to be doing exactly what he claimes the CDC was doing: crafting a story around the results he wants to report and omitting important information to make that point.

The conversation goes on.

Dr. Hooker: But if you had maternal education, then you could correct for that.

Dr. Thompson: Right. But …

Dr. Hooker: So, I don’t think I have it.

Dr. Thompson: You could argue the most important confounder was not included in that study. So, why would you even consider the results valid?

Dr. Hooker:Valid.Right. Right, you can’t say either way.

Dr. Thompson: Exactly.

Dr. Hooker: Essentially.

Dr. Thompson: Yep.

Dr. Hooker: You can’t…

Let’s repeat one line for emphasis: You could argue the most important confounder was not included in that study. So, why would you even consider the results valid?

The most important confounder being maternal education. They know this is a big deal.

And this wasn’t just a passing thought in that conversation. Later in that same call, Hooker asked again about how strong an effect one could see from maternal education. In this case, from Thompson’s experience from his 2007 thimerosal paper. And again Thompson tells him that maternal education is a strong factor that should be included in an analysis.

Given this repeated discussion of the need to adjust your results for external variables, you’d expect Hooker to explore maternal education in his own paper, wouldn’t you? As in, do the math and see how much this factor affects his calculated relative risk for MMR in African American boys, right? At the very least, you’d expect a discussion similar to the one above–how this is a potential confounding variable and how exactly it could affect his results (it could go “backwards”).

You’d expect that of an ethical researcher. I would.

Here’s the thing: Brian Hooker did not include maternal education in his re-analysis. the closest he gets in in the final paragraph of his reanalysis paper. This is where he focuses on the weaknesses of his study. He goes into detail about age of diagnosis and how that might affect his results, for example. When it comes to maternal education the closest he says:

In addition, socioeconomic factors were not assessed in the current analysis. Thus, any differences in “healthcare seeking behavior” among individuals vaccinated ontime versus late could not be assessed.

Sorry to be so repetitive, but no word about how important maternal education or other socioeconomic factors are to precisely the conclusion he’s trying to draw. Just a statement that amounts to “controlling for socioeconomic factors can’t be done because I didn’t do it.” The data were available to Hooker in the birth certificates. Hooker even used the birth certificate data elsewhere in his paper (from the paper: “Georgia state birth certificate information was used to further obtain each child’s birthweight”). So he can’t say he didn’t have it.

This is ironic in the extreme: after complaining that the CDC left out a “statistically signficant” result, Brian Hooker doesn’t include a factor which he knows is a major without which one can’t consider the results valid.

I’ll go beyond ironic. This is in my opinion scientifically unethical. And, since his study is really more political than scientific, I consider this politically unethical. Frankly, if someone working for me did something like this as part of his work, he’d be fired.

But, wait, the story is even more strange. Recall how Thompson was bashing the original study (DeStefano, et al.) for being invalid due to not controlling for maternal education (“You could argue the most important confounder was not included in that study. So, why would you even consider the results valid?”). DeStefano et. al did control for maternal education. And not only should William Thompson and Brian Hooker have known this if they were reanalyzing the paper, William Thompson was a coauthor on the DeStefano paper!

One does have to wonder if Hooker did the analysis using maternal education and chose to not report it. Given the discussions he had with Thompson, my opinion is that either Hooker did the analysis or he’s incompetent.

Bottom line, though, if you are going to make some public relations/political hay claiming some group omitted a result, you shouldn’t be omitting important analyses yourself.

Were significant analyses omitted from Hooker’s paper? In my opinion, yes. And from his conversations with William Thompson, we see that Hooker was aware of the importance of factoring in maternal education.

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By Matt Carey