Solidarity

My apologies for the long delay in posting and the dearth of new material on this post. All I can do is assure you that I am still alive, but merely very busy with my PhD and a publication... Today sciencey and not so sciencey blogs across the web are re-publishing an article by Simon Singh about the many dubious claims of chiropractors and the British Chiropractic Association in particular. I have made reference to some of the poorly-supported claims of the BCA in a previous blog entry. I've also discussed how scientists go about refuting dubious claims. Science is an adversarial system in which our claims and the evidence upon which they are based are subjected to close scrutiny and, if they appear weak, are attacked. We debate, we refute with contradictory evidence, we put forward alternative explanations for the observable facts. We do not litigate, because litigation silences a scientific debate and transfers it into a courtroom so that some lawyers can have a financially ruinous legal debate.

But the BCA sees things differently. When last year Simon Singh pointed out how weak the evidence in support of chiropractic really is, the BCA reacted not with scientific evidence, nor logical argument. They sued him. That action is now ongoing and has been commented on by Bad Science. For science to progress, debate must be free and open and won on the basis of evidence, not legal funds. This is especially important when it comes to health, because when debate about medical science is stifled, bad practices persist and the outcome is suffering and death. Whether chiropractic is effective and safe will never be determined by a judge. If any of this bothers you sufficiently, the British organisation Sense About Science have a petition you can sign.

The original Singh article (modified to avoid the BCA's litigation bat) is reproduced below, as it has been reproduced by Sharon at The Voyage, Pharyngula and many other blogs. Feel free to refute it with scientific evidence!

Beware the spinal trap

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results - and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh.

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that "99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae". In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer's first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying - even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: "Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck."

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

Casey Luskin is The Wedge

There's a multimedia element to my post this time around. Well, an annotated YouTube video. Trust me, the stupid isn't nearly as compelling until you watch it.

Discovery Institute front-man Casey Luskin appeared on Fox News' rather conservative "Fox and Friends" show recently to warn us all that we're being hoodwinked by them mainstream science types. Biology textbooks, Luskin claims, neglect to incoproporate any scientific evidence which "contradicts Darwin". Apparently, the teaching of evolution in American schools (and perhaps elsewhere) is plagued with inaccuracies. This quite modest plague apparently consists of two items which, if you can believe it of a God-fearing institution, are total bullshit. Isn't it strange how the people raising this most important issue also happen to be peddling Intelligent Design, a crudely-disguised version of Creationism. The presenter correctly identifies that the teaching of evolution is a "white hot" issue. I guess the failure of the show to bring on someone from say, the other side of the debate, to speak on the show may have something to do with that "and Friends" bit of the show title.

First up in the non-torrent of non-issues is the apparent inclusion of the debunked "Haeckel's Embryos" illustrations in biology texts, which I have to admit I have never seen presented as factual. Of course, what Luskin does not mention is that the point that Haeckel's admittedly fabricated drawings of vertebrate embryos compared side-by-side has in fact been fully validated by genuine embryology work. This work has shown that we can find common combinations of morphological traits between the embryos of the vertebrate species. We gain an insight that we don't always get from comparing adult organisms. It is this modern and well researched take on Haeckel's work is what we typically find in biology texts. And it is that science which actually upsets Luskin and company who, it is repeated so many times as to be suspicious, do not want to teach your kids creationism. For definite. Okay?

Second, the ghost of a recent New Scientist article (which screamed Darwin Was Wrong from the front cover before going on to essentially admit that he... wasn't wrong) is summoned to frighten us. The article discussed the phenomenon of horizontal gene transfer (HGT), whereby genetic material can pass from one species to another without descent. HGT makes a mess out of the lineage of the bacteria because they make such transfers quite frequently. However, Casey Luskin would like us to believe that this has proven wrong the concept of the tree of life entirely. But HGT is quite remarkably rare amongst species bigger than the single-celled organisms that live in in the humid forests of Luskin's substantial eyebrows. The awkward truth that Luskin and other ID proponents need to explain is why when we arrange bigger, multicellular species by the combinations of common traits they posses, we get a tree shape. That's just how their traits are distributed, the tree is not a human fabrication and it is certainly not under threat. It's taught as a part of evolution because when it comes to the animals and plants we see around us, it's very much real and relevant.

Luskin's entirely unchallenged arguments are aired here, with some added annotations from yours truly.

The Jenny McCarthy Body Count

Perhaps in response to Jenny McCarthy's afore-mentioned comments on allowing killer diseases to come back so that the non-effect of vaccines on autism can be avoided, a guy called Derek Bartholomaus has decided to keep a running count of vaccine-preventable deaths. He's called it the Jenny McCarthy Body Count. Since she seems quite comfortable to accept that her views on vaccination will inevitably result in deaths, it seems appropriate that she should be given moral responsibility for what that means. Although Ms. McCarthy can not of course be held directly responsible for a full share of all such deaths, you get the general gist. She's in a position where her word has enormous influence, and in the case of opinions on vaccination, that influence extends to people who have no regard for her views or who many never have heard of her. The anti-vaccination movement is resulting in preventable deaths, and they had better accept that reality.

Jenny McCarthy image by Flikr user gamerscoreblog and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License.

As A Parent, I Just Know Chemical X Isn't Safe

I'm not sure why people should care what Jenny McCarthy thinks about autism or parenting, but they do care. I disagree with how she views autism. She talks of healing, of recovery, as though autism were in some manner analogous to a physical or mental disease rather than, as I view it, a kind of human mind that is not well accommodated for in a society in which it was once rare. If that were all she had to say, then I suppose we could consider this a strong difference of opinion. But of course there's more.

Jenny McCarthy on Autism and Vaccines

I do believe sadly it's going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe. If the vaccine companies are not listening to us, it's their f___ing fault that the diseases are coming back. They're making a product that's s___. If you give us a safe vaccine, we'll use it. It shouldn't be polio versus autism.

All I can do is sigh. Jenny McCarthy is a high-profile human being, so her views carry weight. The least she could do is honour the responsibility that carries and keep up with the scientific evidence, the expert views. But instead she continues to push the tired old vaccines = regressive autism canard, whilst suggesting that parents should be prepared to accept the resurgence of diseases which kill and maim people. McCarthy feels secure enough in her knowledge of vaccination and autism biology that she can make that undoubtedly harmful claim. She's basically making herself an expert opinion, without having to do the hard work that would really require.

I have a radical suggestion. Jenny McCarthy should present herself as an expert on things in which she is experienced. So parenting, sure. We may disagree with her, but she can certainly have that. Parenting with an autistic kid? Same deal. Virology? Vaccination? Autism biology? Cohort studies? Meta analyses? Risk factors? When she starts citing the studies, the analysing the data that back her up, rather recycling the anti-vaccination nonsense, I might start listening to her views on those.

Bacon Sandwich

I'm pretty busy writing up my work at the moment, hence the long break in posting this month. I'll try to fire out a few short but useful entries over the coming weeks rather than saving it all up for the monolithic posts I usually make.

Every week, some newspaper or another makes us frightened or happy by covering the latest risk data regarding "causes" or "cures" for cancer, stroke, heart disease and the like. Apparently they won't be happy until they've fully catalogued all Things at least once over, and preferably twice with flatly contradictory information. They present us with statements such as "Bacon Sandwiches raise cancer risk by 20%". That would probably put quite a few people off eating bacon sandwiches, but it's not a statistic you'll ever find in a peer-reviewed scientific paper. And there's a good reason for that. This sort of figure is what is called a "relative risk increase". It's calculated by taking the dividing the new risk (with bacon sanswiches) by the normal risk (sans sandwich) and multiplying by 100. We can see the weakness of that way of representing the numbers with an illustration such as this:

The risk of killing yourself with a revolver loaded with only a single bullet in a random chamber is 1 in 6. Put two bullets into two random chambers and the risk is 2 in 6 (or 1 in 3). These are absolute risks as opposed to relative risks. In percentages, the absolute risk is just over 16% with one bullet, but twice that (32%) with two bullets. Now let's do a Daily Mail on it and express this as a relative risk increase. That's a 16% increase over 16%. So by putting in the extra bullet you've just increased your risk of killing yourself when you pull the trigger by 100%. That last number is certainly the scariest, although we must admit that none of these numbers is particularly fun.

But here's where it gets interesting (stop rolling your eyes please). Imagine the risk of catching a fatal dose of the flu is 1 in 10,000,000 for each time you go to work on the train, but is 2 in 10,000,000 if you take the bus. These odds are very much lower than the absolute risks relating to the gun. In percentage terms they sound comfortingly low too (0.00001% increasing to 0.00002%). You're probably not going to base your public transport decision making on these numbers. However when we convert these numbers into a relative risk increase, we get... 100%. A headline that says "Buses Raise Flu Death Risk by 100%" is certainly going to either make you think twice about using the bus, or is going to make you think that those silly boffins are just spoofing (didn't they say buses were better for some reason last week?). You get exactly the same punch in a Daily Mail headline as the gun risk, and yet in reality they're not even vaguely similar.

This week a nice site caught my eye which puts all of that statistical wonder into a fun little web program that allows you to see the various ways in which scientific data can be made more scary. There's all sorts of ways to make a scare story out of a non story, and you can rest assured that most of the newspapers are quite prepared to use them.

Image from Wikipedia released under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Holy F**king Sh*t: Daily Mail debunks MMR autism link

This post may be unsuitable for minors or people upset by scenes of total doublethink.

Well, the day has finally come. The Daily Mail has finally joined the rest of the world in accepting that MMR is safe, and that the 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield has been "debunked" (even though the study never says that MMR causes autism, a press release did and it was debunked 10 years ago). Measles is on the rise again, and that's actually a big deal. Kids are getting sick, people have died and someone is going to hang. This isn't just Wakefield's fault of course. No, he should not be a scapegoat! There are others to blame. Us, apparently. In a remarkable display of doublethink, the Daily Mail points the finger at "middle-class MMR refuseniks". Parents who somehow bought the press-release pseudoscience presented by Wakefield (minus the et al). They must have picked it up off Reuters, the wiley middle-class (yet strangely uncritical and credulous) bastards.

Of course, the Mail don't mention the media frenzy that followed the "confirmation" of Wakefield's 1998 work (by, er.. Wakefield). The evidence-free total bullshitstorm that presented Wakefield's speculations directly to that middle-(and working-) class audience as if it were yet another scientific "breakthrough". The torrent of jargon filled trash that published everything that vaguely supported the hypothesis but ignored the dozens and dozens of studies debunking it, milking that story for every millilitre of newspaper sales it had. And how could they, since up until a month ago the Daily Mail were still doing it? Still implying that MMR was dangerous. But today they've hit the reset button. And I feel like I just fell through the looking glass. It's funny, in a totally horrifying kind of way. Well, let me just say, so that we can be clear. And you'll have to forgive me for my profanity because it just feels like that sort of moment.

THIS WAS YOUR FUCKING FAULT, YOU MORONS.

I mean, seriously. Read your own articles. People are going to hang for this, but the media are the ones judging who, so the list will doubtlessly be restricted to:

-A. J Wakefield
-The Middle Classes

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

Update 18:08: It's even crazier than I thought. A search for "MMR" on the Daily Mail reveals a similar article in 2008 blaming "mothers" for the oncoming measles epidemic. This article sits amongst yet more panic pieces calling MMR "controversial" and cagey coverage of the research that 'disproves MMR jab link to autism' (the quotes were in the headline as if incredulous). Clearly, the Mail spent 2008 being eased into a gentle but enormous u-turn.

The Streisand Effect

The Jeni Barnett MMR story really has longer legs than many of us sciencey bloggers had hoped. A week after Barnett rehashed every cliché in the anti-vaccination handbook over roughly 40 minutes of hysterical melodrama, the subsequent attempts by both Barnett and her radio station LBC to silence Ben Goldacre's perfectly appropriate criticisms have exploded hilariously in what is called The Streisand Effect. Only the Bad Science followers were paying attention up until the point when LBC's lawyers forced Ben to remove a (rather long) clip of the entire MMR segment of the show in what was a rather dubious and aggressive copyright infringement claim. The Sciencey Blogsphere Collective as not amused. The clip was rapidly copied and redistributed across the interenet, effectively becoming entirely untouchable. Blogs everywhere began to report angrily on the incident and the feeling was almost universally in favour of Ben.

In an attempt to appear open to debate, Barnett's Blog (which rather scathingly dismissed one of her most polite pro-MMR callers as "viscious") called for comments. And the comments came. 121 comments, mostly annoyed but polite attempts to explain to Jeni why MMR is safe and important for public health. A follow-on post by Barnett sneered at the "Bad Scientists" and their "sarcasm". This post prompted a further 81 comments, again the vast majority being critical of Barnett's poorly-informed and irresponsbible stance on MMR.

More blogs reported, more segments of the radio programme were posted, this time in fragments too small and too many to be silenced by questionable copyright infringment claims. Transcripts appeared. PZ Myers rallied his atheist army behind the pro-MMR standard. The Times online noticed the story, and weighed in to defend Ben Goldacre. And, in a quite stunning moment, the great Stephen Fry called for Goldacre to be supported.

Perhaps understandably, Ben's website crashed several times under the weight of visits and messages of near-universal support. Perhaps panicked, Barnett deleted all 200 or so of the critical messages from her own blog and has attempted to move on. No meaningful apology. No recognition of the continuing damage this evidence-free nonsense has done to public health in the UK and Ireland. And of course, no glimmer of having realised that everything she and LBC have done so far, including this, is just making things worse for her and her employers.

For those interested, the deleted blog comments are available at the excellent Quackometer blog.

MMR is safe. Tell your friends.

Bad Science writer Ben Goldacre recently reported on a stunningly ignorant radio broadcast by Jeni Barnett perpetuating the MMR vaccine scare. Ten years after a peer-reviewed paper didn't say there's a connection between MMR and autism but one of the authors told the media that it did, we're still going in circles. We can point fingers in all sorts of directions, including at ourselves, but the data has shown time and again that MMR is safe.

Ben posted the radio slot up to demonstrate that he was not cherrypicking the most stupid parts just to make Jeni look bad. But apparently this is legally not okay and so, because scientific debate has long ceased to matter in the MMR scare, the lawyers swooped in. Personally, I don't think any of us should allow fear to prevail when the cost is so great. The MMR scare is based on crap science and it's putting kids at risk. It has to stop.

Discuss it on Bad Science (there may even be some links to the radio programme): http://www.badscience.net/

On Jeni Barnett's blog: http://www.jenibarnett.com/2009/02/mmr_and_me.php

Update 16:52: Coincidentally, the BBC today announced that Measles cases rose yet again for the third year running. The cause is the reduction in MMR uptake and the result is going to be deaths. Not many deaths, but some.

Update 08 February 2009: And evidence has just emerged that the man behind the scare, Dr. Wakefield, falsified some of the original data showing a temporal association between MMR and autism. Far from there being even that correlation, it appears that some of the kids were showing documented autism characteristics prior to MMR vaccination and others displayed them much much later than was stated in Wakefield et al. (1998).

Accept Evolution, Eat People

During the weekend Donna Garner, a former language arts teacher in Central Texas and a conservative activist, circulated an email in response to the recent move by the Texas State Board of Education to close a long-standing loophole in their policy on the teaching of science. Previously, it was a requirement to debate the "strengths and weaknesses" of the theory of Evolution (or any scientific theory). A requirement, even if the matter was not prompted by students. In practise, this has been used as a back door to introduce creationist and intelligent design arguments into the classroom. Not actual scientific weaknesses, but religious criticisms. Science is not debated in terms of strengths and weaknesses, but in terms of evidence. But I'll return to that point.

She begins:

Dear Friends of Students:

This year, 2009, is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin (born in 1809), author of Origin of the Species. Atheist groups across America are using this anniversary to move aggressively to force all 50 million public school students to be taught that macro-evolution (life spontaneously springing from a chemical reaction with all life stemming from that common chemical reaction and becoming different species through mutations) is a fact–without allowing the teaching or discussion of the scientific “weaknesses” increasingly being discovered concerning the theory of evolution. Texas, with its 4.7 million students, was selected as the first state to conquer. And, so far, the atheists are winning in Texas.

Let's just take a look at what has been said and left unsaid in her opening statements.

Garner immediately puts a suggestion into our minds without backing it up. "Atheist groups are using this...", "the atheists are winning". Immediately the subject is not education, but religion. In her mind (and she wants us to join her there), this is not about science, but faith. No names are named, no figures cited. We are to assume that science advocacy groups such as Texas Citizens for Science, The Texas Freedom Network and countless others are atheistic in nature. The atheists are doing this, and presumably it's part of a grand plan. A war to be won at terrible cost to you the reader, a cost to be outlined later.

Next she both introduces and defines "macro-evolution" and states that everyone will be forced to learn this thing that she has defined as fact. Macro-evolution is a term not used in the scientific literature or in text books, so it is good that Garner defines it for us. But her definition does not actually match up with anything taught in US schools. Her target, Evolution, does not attempt to explain the origins of life itself (which are not conclusively known) but merely the origin of the great variety of life that we now see. That origin is indeed a common ancestor, but for now at least, Garner's "spontaneous springing [of life] from a chemical reaction" remains within the realms of hypothesis. If it is taught at all, it is taught in that context. Macro evolution then, is something of a Straw Man.

Finally, she implies that Evolution has "scientific weaknesses" that are, she says "increasingly being discovered". Well I'm quite sure that evolution does have flaws, but with what relevance to high school students? With what support within the expert community? If a fringe group of historians contend that Abraham Lincoln's murder was motivated by Wilkes-Booth's phobia of beards (or something more plausible perhaps) we're not going to open up the floor for students to specifically "debate the weaknesses" in the theory that the assassination was politically motivated. This is not an end to questions about the motive or the politics which formed it, but the dishonest notion that a meaningful debate exists in the field is not entertained. And of course, the curriculum for a given subject should reflect the consensus of the relevant experts.

As for weaknesses "increasingly being discovered", well there's certainly nothing new in the pseudoscience that Ms. Garner will shortly inflict on us.

Let's move on.

For more than 20 years, the rule in Texas has been to teach both the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution. Last week, by a margin of 1 vote, the Texas State Board of Education voted to remove the word “weaknesses” so that only the strengths of evolution could be “analyzed and evaluated” in all Texas public schools. The final vote is in March, so there is time to make a difference.

As I indicated previously, the "strengths-versus-weakness" model of debate or analysis is a curious idea, and it is not really one which applies to science, assuming we are seeking to invite serious debate in a classroom. If evolution is open to being "analysed and evaluated" (and of course it is), it stands to reason that this should be on the basis of evidence.

Some evidence will support evolution and some, if evolution is incorrect, will contradict it. The thing about scientific theories is that we do not weigh-up the "pros and cons" of a theory when deciding if it is legitimate. If one piece of evidence contradicts the predictions of a theory (and it can be shown that the evidence is real and reproducible), then the theory is dead. Totally dead. No balancing of strengths or weaknesses. The theory is in the bin and we have to build a new one. One piece of falsifying evidence automatically outweighs all the "strengths" we could care to present.

The strengths and weaknesses method of debating science is perhaps a reflection of a science curriculum that does not address how hypotheses, evidence and theories are constructed in science. Or perhaps it is a back door designed to allow spurious attack upon theories which are seen to contradict an agenda.

Garner then lists who voted on the new wording and how, providing contact details for each so that we can phone up and demand that somebody think of the children. I'll cut this on the basis of it also being really boring.

*Snip*

Garner continues with an attempt to make "the atheists" look like hypocrites. After all, everyone knows that if you're a hypocrite, you're wrong about everything, right? Ad hominem much?

Charles Darwin, in Origin of the Species said the following concerning the proper evaluation of his theory: “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts on both sides of each question.” Too bad Darwin wasn’t on the State Board of Education to vote to keep “weaknesses” in.

Darwin, of course, was stating the obvious. That we must consider all the evidence before making a decision about something. Ms. Garner won't like to admit it, but Evolution was accepted by scientific consensus by this very means a very long time ago. Debate over the course of some decades by the finest minds in science.

In a pedantic point, Darwin's book was not called "Origin of the Species" but "On the Origin of Species", being as it is a work explaining the emergence of species plural. You'll also note that it is not called "On the Origin of Life", and thus must not have anything to do with Garner's proposed "macro-evolution".

At least, he was intellectually honest about his theory.

Ah, "at least". Suggestion once again. He wasn't honest about everything. This casts doubt on evolution. Painful.

He recognized that science advances by constantly probing and questioning, not by censorship, intimidation, or indoctrination.

Are we talking about the advancement of science? I'm quite sure that Darwin would also have recognised that continuing to debate a scientific theory 100 years after it has come to be considered accurate by scientists is rather counter-productive. But that is not even the issue here. Whilst we should certainly teach our children about gravity, it wouldn't exactly be "scientific" to perpetuate a debate on the matter on the basis that we should never stop questioning. We never do stop questioning these theories, but what Ms. Garner has failed to grasp is the nature of that questioning. Scientific research. Experimentation. Not debate in a room full of teenagers. How would such a debate advance science or some other subject such as history?

We have debate in the public between creationists and evolutionists, although that debate is painted as a scientific one, the matter has already been resolved in the scientific community for some 100 years or more. Finally, we have debates like these. The reader can see Ms. Garner's side, and the side of people such as me. So it doesn't really look like anyone is pulling off the censorship routine. Or at least not doing it well. So I'm sure Darwin would be more than satisfied (well of course I'm not sure, I never knew the guy and neither did Ms. Garner). The question that remains is whether that debate has any place in the class room.

The 3 Republicans don’t seem to get it. They want to water down the current standard to eliminate any airing of “weaknesses” by eliminating the word “weaknesses.” The battle is over that one word. It needs to be there. As a lawyer, I know more than most that words are important. So don’t be fooled, the retention of the word is worth all of us fighting for.

Again, the "strengths versus weaknesses" model of assessment does not really work for science and really should be scrapped entirely in favour of teaching kids how to assess scientific evidence, form and test hypotheses and build theories.

Garner then decides to elaborate further on her definition of Evolution. In doing so, she describes a theory that only appears in one kind of text book or scholarly publication anywhere: creationist ones.

Short primer on evolution: In describing evolution, there are 2 catagories: (1) Micro-evolution, and (2) Macro-evolution. Micro-evolution (small changes over time within the same species) is something we can observe today (bugs become resistant to drugs; birds beaks grow longer, moths change colors).

Biologists make no such distinction, and for a very good reason. There are no differences in the underlying mechanisms that drive the micro or the macro. Evolution is driven by replication, mutation, genetic drift, natural selection, gene transfer. Ask creationists what micro-evolution is driven by and they'll give the same answer. So it's rather like making a distinction between taking a walk in your garden (by using the easily provable micro-walking) versus going down to the shops (which would require the obviously impossible macro-walking).

If we're agreed that some evolution can generate some variation, then why can we not agree that more evolution can generate more variation?

But Garner has evidence that there's a difference between the macro and the mirco.

I personally think it makes perfect sense that a good Designer would design each creature with built-in abilities to adapt to survive. But the debate before the Board is not over micro-evolution, but over the teaching of macro-evolution. We have never observed one species becoming a different species (macro-evolution).

In fact, we have observed species become a different species quite a number of times both in the lab and in the wild. Some nice (but not at all exhaustive) examples of these are detailed at the following links:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html

But on to more "evidence". Am I using sarcastic quotes too much?

And we have never observed how life began.

Indeed we have not, but then we don't teach highschool kids how life began. We don't teach abiogenesis as fact to anyone at all. It's not a part of the theory of evolution at this time and won't be until that evidence is in. At this time, the origin of life is rather irrelevant to the debate.

This is where we need to examine the scientific strengths and weaknesses. And with respect to macro-evolution there are numerous scientific weaknesses, to name a few: (1) the Cambrian explosion of life; (2) gaps in the fossil record; (3) the intractable origin of life chemistry problems; (4) the origin of information in the DNA molecule; and (5) irreducibly complex features. Honest scientists acknowledge these and other weaknesses—but atheists don’t want these weaknesses highlighted—particularly not to our children. This is the Scopes Monkey Trial in reverse.

It would take another blog post in itself to fully refute the five points outlined here. They are classic cliches, and nothing new at all. But briefly, number 1 is something of a mystery. That is to say, I have little idea what Garner is getting at and it's unlikely that she does either (I have seen one argument regarding the Cambrian Explosion used by creationists, but that argument was dropped some years ago when it was mysteriously removed from the creationist website that had hosted it). Number 2 represents limitations to our knowledge. I think we can safely say that were there no gaps in our observations, we would have little need for theory (or religion) and science itself would become a job dedicated to teaching rather than research. If the reader has been following closely, we can of course immediately dismiss number 3 as having exactly nothing to do with how evolution is taught. Number 4 is in a similar vein since it deals with events prior to the origins of life and with concepts of "information" that are perhaps rather beyond a high school class. Number 5 is a topic I've already made a nonsense of here.

She concludes her list of "weaknesses" by claiming that "honest scientists" acknowledge these issues. Certainly, mainstream biologists don't assume that abiogenesis is an answered question, but they also don't consider it a part of theory. The vast majority of biologists, and the scientific community at large, consider evolution accurate. Just as consensus determined by historians informs the history syllabus, so too does the scientific consensus inform the scientific syllabus. What Garner of course means by "honest scientists" is creationists and intelligent design proponents. What "atheists" refers to here is not clear, but is presumably "everyone else" including the scientific community and all of the science advocacy groups. And the Catholic Church. Hmm...

Because their fields are a pseudoscience (as distinct from a fringe science), these people are considered to be scientists only by themselves. But what if we decided to include creationists and intelligent design proponents in our definition of the scientific community? Would evolution remain accepted by consensus? Are scientists redrawing the lines of the definition of "scientist" so that they can maintain an artificial consensus?

In terms of raw numbers of people, it's hard to assess just how many creationists are active in research. Newsweek puts the figure at approximately 700 in the United States. There are 480,000 life scientists in the United States, and evolution also is accepted by the overwhelming majority of scientists in the physical sciences, an even larger group. Not to mention almost universal support in scientific communities across the world. Let us generously suppose then that we are talking about 2000 creation scientists in a worldwide community of just 1 million biologists and geologists. 0.2% of a community does not break a consensus. So even if we include creationists in the scientific community the consensus, unsurprisingly, remains that evolution is valid and thus it should be taught as valid.

The "scientific debate" is a fabrication. To the scientific community, it is a (scientifically) small and illogical tantrum. It is only in the public eye that the debate has any validity or support at all. And the bulk of creationist efforts are bent towards increasing that validity. We need only look at the publication patterns of the creationists to see evidence of this. They produce little original research, preferring instead to publish essays and glossy text books. In 2008 alone, biologists published over 3000 research papers with the word "evolution" in the title (plus over 400 reviews, an unknown number of essays and textbooks). We can assume that there were many more on the topic of course, since most papers would not mention such a broad topic as evolution in their titles. It would greatly surprise me if the various creationist communities combined have managed to publish 3000 research papers in the last 20 years. Or even an output of research comparable to their small size. This is not reflection of general poor output or funding,creation advocacy groups generate plenty of essays and command tens of millions of dollars annually. Propaganda is the priority, not science.

Ms. Garner has one more shot to fire. The cost. The terrible danger that exists if we do not allow the Creation Tantrum to be given the validity of discussion in the classroom. The cost of accepting that evolution is both a valid theory and a reflection of fact.

Thus she concludes:

Jeffrey Dahmer, one of America’s most infamous serial killers who cannibalized more than 17 boys before being captured, gave an last interview with Dateline NBC nine months before his death, and he said the following about why he acted as he did: “If a person doesn’t think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we died, you know, that was it, there was nothing….” (Dateline NBC, The Final Interview, Nov. 29, 1994).

The implication is clear. Evolution is part of a nihilistic and atheistic attack on religion. It leads to more atheism. And atheism leads to cannibalism (oh okay, at least to immorality). And the moral expert she cites to both imply and support this? A serial killer and cannibal. It makes my mind sore.

Will evolution kill faith? The Catholic Church seems to think not. The 1 billion Christians who follow that church seem to have no issue accepting evolution and their faith side by side. Evolution only poses a threat to Christian faiths which consider the book of Genesis to be a literal account of Creation. And that by no means assures that those who lose their faith in that literal truth are destined to become atheists. And what if they do become atheists? It is, of course, utterly unsurprising that someone like Dahmer could only build morality on the basis of personal consequence meted out by authority. He was a psychopath. He did not value human life in itself.

If the punishment of God is all that keeps Ms. Garner from killing and eating people, then I do hope she retains her faith. But I suspect that this is not the case. There is, in truth, no evidence at all that atheists are less moral on average than Christians. But we're rather getting away from the point, which is that the path from evolution to people-eating is a fantasy. One dreamed up by people who seem to think that morality is a very thin veil, a tenuous construction drawn over the amoral animal that is man. And held in place only by the ten commandments. I do wonder how strong the faith of the Creationists must be if they really see science, the simple observation of nature, as this manner of threat. But certainly, a little more faith in people is sorely needed.

Things Happen After Event Shock

The Daily Mail have decided to have a go at MMR again as pointed out by Ben Goldacre at Bad Science. A child has fallen terribly ill "six months after MMR jab". Ten years after Andrew Wakefield speculated himself into the headlines by suggesting a link between MMR and autism (in a press-release mind, not in a research paper), this misguided rubbish is still being presented as "science news". Actually, most of the papers now seem to reject the link and are thus in the business of demonizing Wakefield himself, as if they had nothing to do with the scare. But the Daily Mail is apparently not quite ready to take even that ass-covering step. They cite the 1998 Wakefield paper (it was a press release that actually made the claims) and I have responded, though I wonder if it will be published.

Daily Mail, please read the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al. It does not suggest anything more than a temporal connection between the MMR vaccination and the onset of a symptom associated with autism (colitis) that's a long way from even suggesting a possible connection between MMR and autism. Wakefield decided to make that particular suggestion directly to the press, perhaps because the evidence did not support him and he knew it would not be published. More tellingly, ten of his his co-authors on the 1998 paper retracted their support for that claim.
So here we have another temporal association. Thing Y has happened after thing X. And so we must assume that X caused Y, right? Rubbish. I'd imagine a whole load of things happened before this poor kid fell ill.

At this point I ran out of words in the little submission box, so I'll conclude as I would have liked.

The child doubtlessly slept, ate breakfast and breathed constantly just prior to falling ill. So far as we can actually gather from the evidence here, almost anything could have "caused" this tragedy. The likeliest explanation though, is that it was nothing we could have predicted. You write that the child had previously suffered brain damage due to a Herpes Simplex infection at the age of two weeks. Anyone who has had coldsores will know that re-activation of that virus (it never leaves us) is not a predictable event and it has never been causally linked to events such as vaccination, as far as I'm aware.

To imply that MMR was responsible for this sad event is deeply irresponsible journalism and it will doubtlessly further the anti-vaccination movement and lead to more sick kids, and probably more deaths from measles- a disease that was nearly extinct in Europe before this totally unfounded scare.

Update 23 Jan 2009: Predictably enough, my comment has not appeared on the Daily Mail article. Nor have any at all, for that matter. Given that the Goldacre Evidence Army was alerted, that seems just a little suspect to me...

What's the Storey?

This week, due to finding myself very busy, I haven't had a chance to write my usual (vaguely) weekly blog. I did manage to write a letter to the Irish Times newspaper after being rather incensed by the comments of Northern Irish politician Cllr. Mervyn Storey. Since it has been a week and I'm very impatient, I decided to post it here. Cllr. Storey, it seems, would like to bring creationism to European shores. He would also prefer to see the theory of evolution removed from sylabbuses in Northern Ireland, but seems to have a fairly hazey notion of what it is he wants rid of. His poorly-researched thoughts on the matter may be read here. My general thoughts on evolution and creationism can be read elsewhere on this blog.

Madam,

Mervyn Storey (Opinion and Analysis, November 3rd) describes a scientific theory called "naturalistic evolution" in his argument for the teaching of creationism in Northern Irish schools. "The central, core belief of naturalistic evolution", Storey claims, "is that somewhere in the universe at some time in the far distant past, non-living matter of itself, with no outside influence or mind to guide it, gave rise to living creatures." As a biology research student, I must confess to having never heard of the theory of naturalistic evolution. However, on examination of Storey's description, I find that it summarises the hypotheses on a process called abiogenesis, the emergence of life from non-living matter. A hypothesis is a candidate theory, not yet accepted by the scientific community as a model or representation of reality. With regard to abiogenesis, there are several of these hypotheses, but no accepted theory. Biochemists know of many plausible means by which simple life might emerge by materialistic means, but whether any of these actually occurred is very much an open question. Mr. Storey might well delight at such an admission from a biologist, however I should point out that abiogenesis is not in fact an element of the theory of evolution. Rather, evolution is a theory which explains the emergence of the many varied species from a single common ancestor species, and does not address the first emergence of the first life from lifelessness. This is why Darwin's 1859 work describing evolution was entitled "The Origin of Species" and not "The Origin of Life". Whether that single-celled Adam or Eve emerged by abiogenesis, fell from the sky or was sculpted from clay by the hands of the Creator is largely irrelevant to the veracity of the theory of evolution.

It is troubling that Mr. Storey is either ignorant of the theory he is attacking, or has knowingly constructed a straw man in this "naturalistic evolution" concept that no scientist accepts as fact or teaches as fact. Such ignorance and misrepresentation are common tools of the American creationist movement, and it is most saddening to see such stock anti-scientific rhetoric finding receptive minds on our shores. It is also very worrying that such a flimsy argument is being used to promote what Mr. Storey must consider to be the automatic alternative to evolution. He is presenting us with the same old false dichotomy; that if evolution is false, creationism is true. The veracity of evolution relies on evidence; creationism, to judge from Mr. Storey's argument, on the falseness of evolution.

Fear and Vaccination in London

Author's note: After my successful foray into soapboxing with the LHC story, I decided to get back up on the box again to trumpet my current hypothesis. Science, the scientific method and scepticism are misunderstood by almost everyone and something has to be done. For more evidence of just how bad things are, check out the ongoing research into the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide. The research itself is satire (sorry to spoil the fun, but I certainly don't want people to think I don't get it). The reactions of the public are the really frighetning part. Anyway, on to the self-righteous ranting.

In 1998 a British-based surgeon, Dr. Andrew Wakefield published a research paper in which he and his team tentatively identified a bowel disorder associated with autism which he coined “autistic enterocolitis” and speculated (a very important word there) that this might be caused by vaccination with the MMR vaccine. Most people are roughly aware of what MMR is. The measles, mumps and rubella triple vaccine. It is a mixture of the three viruses, alive but weakened to the point that they’re not even able to infect infants. They do however cause the recipient’s immune system to generate lots of cells and antibodies that will basically squash the three viruses should they ever be seen again. The need for vaccination against these three diseases is an easy case to make. Measles in adults can cause brain damage. Mumps may cause infertility in males, especially kids. Rubella, if it infects the unborn through the mother, can cause a wide range of birth defects. These complications don’t occur often- but the viruses are so infectious that those rare cases would be a big deal in any highly populated country.

Cause and Effect

So MMR was suggested to have an influence on autistic intestinal inflammation, but there was more. According to Wakefield’s paper, there also appeared to be a connection between the time of administration of MMR to a child and emergence of autism, though that element of the study was retrospective. The paper itself did not rock the boat in the mainstream media, though the scientific community began criticising it immediately. The connection between MMR and autism was not clear, and the study group was small. Just twelve children, all selected because they had autism. At best, that sort of study would represent a starting point for some more solid research. To be meaningful and to make that connection really clear we’d need thousands of examples, and we’d to be able to compare our results with loads of non-autistic kids.

It wasn’t until Wakefield decided to jump outside of the peer-review system that things began to go bad. I discussed in a previous posting how science makes its way into the mainstream media. I even included a flow chart, which I’ll reproduce now. What Dr. Wakefield did was follow the path on the far right. Skipping all external controls and critique he instead decided to talk directly to the press. And what he had to say would cause a sensation. He called for a halt to administration of the MMR vaccine in favour of vaccinating for each of the three diseases separately over an extended time of several years. His stated reasoning was that he believed that MMR might be causing Autism. The initial response in the media was muted. The press release and an accompanying video released by Wakefield’s hospital drew some attention. Wakefield found himself defending his work in letters to the journal that had published his paper, Lancet. In 2000, Wakefield published more papers pushing his MMR hypothesis. Then in 2001, something snapped. Perhaps it was the publicity, the momentum built in the last couple of years. Perhaps Wakefield’s recent high-profile exit from his hospital position (a “mutual decision”) was noticed. Perhaps some of his new research papers pushed the right buttons. Whatever it was, the MMR and autism story hit the mainstream.

What Grows in Darkness

The newspapers went wild, particularly in the UK. By 2002, the stories in the press questioning the safety of MMR numbered in the thousands. Few dealt with the inconvenient peer-reviewed research papers that refuted Wakefield’s findings and the controversy dominated health reporting for several years. Here was a piece of news based on the (very carefully worded) concerns of a single surgeon. But somehow the line (in the Daily Mail at least) became “Scientists Fear MMR Link to Autism”. “One Scientist Cautiously and Inappropriately Suggests MMR Link to Autism” is not very catchy perhaps, but the fear mongering sentiment went further than headlines and permeated the reporting. As a direct result, MMR vaccination rates in the UK fell to 80% by 2003. In some urban areas of London, the rate was as low as 65%. When we learn a little about how vaccination works these, figures become even more alarming.

Vaccination is not 100% effective on a person-to-person basis, though it is usually above 99% effective. This is generally not an issue however, as vaccination also serves to protect the unvaccinated by eliminating the pool possible hosts for a given virus. Because your neighbours are all immune, your chances of even encountering the virus, let alone contracting it, are dramatically reduced. The virus is much less likely to be passed around by accident. This effect is called “herd immunity”. For the three viruses that MMR protects against, the threshold for good herd immunity is around 95% of the population. With the rate of uptake so low in 2005, the risk was rapidly increasing that herd immunity would collapse, resulting in large scale epidemics amongst the roughly 20% of unvaccinated children and the 1% for whom the vaccine had failed to take.

Predictably, the epidemics began around 2000, when the earliest signs of concern had begun to filter through to the public. Measles epidemics were reported in Ireland, Austria and Italy. Most significantly, measles incidences in the UK have increased steadily over the last eight years. Although the increase may appear minimal (from 56 cases per year in 1998 to an estimated 900 cases per year by 2006) the disease was declared “endemic” in the British population earlier this year. This means that the virus is now circulating freely in the population without need for re-infection from outside sources. So anyone without immunity is immediately at much greater risk. Herd immunity is degenerating. There is also evidence that travellers to and from Europe triggered minor outbreaks in the United States. Mumps is on the rise again also, primarily hitting age-groups who passed through infancy prior to the introduction of MMR. Some 70,000 cases were reported between 2004 and 2006. There were a handful of deaths as a result of the measles and mumps resurgences. Three deaths were reported in Ireland, one death in the UK and two cases of brain damage. Not many, but a reminder to us of times when these diseases were a true threat.

The degeneration of herd immunity is just the first step, there is another risk associated with allowing these viruses to become endemic. For every infected person there are literally billions of mumps, measles or rubella viruses in their system. The more viruses there are, the faster they reproduce. The faster they reproduce, the more often they mutate. With part of the population vaccinated and part not vaccinated, what we are doing is presenting the mutating viruses with an obstacle to overcome. The risk is growing that one of these three viruses may undergo the mutation required to evade MMR entirely.

In 2004, ten of Wakefield’s co-authors on the 1998 paper withdrew their support for the work. Since the first publication, at least twenty peer-reviewed research or review papers have discredited the MMR link to autism. Wakefield’s suggested new “autistic enterocolitis” has been dismissed by autism researchers as a common symptom of the condition. Ten years after the controversy began, MMR is not the only vaccine to fall victim to the resurgent paranoia and disillusionment with modern medicine, though this is a trend which predates the MMR scare. Some papers continue to lead a crusade against any proposals for new “multivalent” vaccines that, like MMR, would combine protection from several diseases.

Apportioning Blame

It was a need for a simple cause which ultimately brought the MMR crisis into being. But the fact is, there’s no known single cause for autism. And nor are the causes of the vaccination crisis as clear as they seem. It would be easy to point the finger at Dr. Wakefield. He’s certainly not free of blame. Wakefield’s 1998 study was prompted when he was approached by solicitors representing a group planning to sue MMR manufacturers for causing the autism. According to a Sunday Times report in 2006, Wakefield received money from that group to perform his 1998 study and it appears that some of the study participants were sourced by them too. It is also alleged that Wakefield’s hospital, who were quick to back his findings and arrange press contact, also received money in the form of legal aid. It seems clear from interviews at the time that Wakefield was aware of the fine balance of risks associated with his bold statement. He was aware that switching from the use of MMR to using three vaccines over a number of years very significantly increases a child’s risk of contracting one of the diseases in that time. Wakefield’s point was that the risk of autism outweighed both the fact that his results were unclear and the fact that his suggested course of action brought great risks. He should absolutely not have been going public with his poorly-conceived idea, yet his language in the press release and interviews was actually quite suitably cautious. The subtlety was lost on many news outlets. Rather than exhibit caution themselves, they perpetuated a fear-laden story that has done incalculable damage to public health in Europe. Many of these are the same papers that, years later, are now assassinating Wakefield’s character in light of professional misconduct charges. Ultimately we have to blame pretty much everybody; parents looking for simple answers, lawyers looking for litigation, a surgeon with a bias, a hospital looking for publicity, a media willing to spin anything to sell papers. Not to mention the confused reactions of most GPs and politicians (a blog in itself). And then there’s us. The scientists fought the good fight on the day, sure. But it could be argued that our aloofness from the public has created a culture in which science is only noticed when it is sensational; a culture in which the people have neither the education nor the inclination to view science with proper scepticism. It’s conceivable that just one of those groups had it in them to prevent this whole huge mess. Instead we are now facing continued vaccine paranoia and a dangerous resurgence of diseases we once had on the run.