The Contenders:
The NAA vs the Left Brain / Right Brain blog. These two are pretty much polar opposites. Both of these think the other is fucking crazy. There is very little middle ground here for debate. While, I like and support the NAA, and do think the DTAP vaccine contributed to my daughter's autism, I am often just as confused on this issue. Everyone thinks they are right and if you don't agree with them, you're an evil prick. Don't hold your breath for any empathy or open mindedness between these two.
NAA (National Autism Association)Article vs Article
The mission of the National Autism Association is to educate and empower families affected by autism and other neurological disorders, while advocating on behalf of those who cannot fight for their own rights. We will educate society that autism is not a lifelong incurable genetic disorder but one that is biomedically definable and treatable. We will raise public and professional awareness of environmental toxins as causative factors in neurological damage that often results in an autism or related diagnosis. We will encourage those in the autism community to never give up in their search to help their loved ones reach their full potential, funding efforts toward this end through appropriate research for finding a cure for the neurological damage from which so many affected by autism suffer.
LB/RB (Left Brain / Right Brain)
First of all, this site has by far one of the coolest web designs. While I often disagree with a lot of the content, I am in awe of how great their site looks. The site owners describe their site's core content and interest as "always been autism and the news, science – and bad science – associated with it". More info at About LB/RB. LB/RB is based in the U.K. and pushes the "neurodiversity" concept. I have said before and will say again, I would love for my daughter to grow up, advocate for herself, and run a condescending smart ass autism blog.
- LB/RB: How Much Longer? - LB/RB's style is on display in this piece. Basically, you are wrong, you are an idiot, shut the fuck up and act right. For example, "How much longer, NAA, before you act like a reasonable member of the autism communities? (substitute Generation Rescue or SafeMinds for NAA, they are all basically the same group)."
- NAA's How Much Longer Campaign discussed in a recent Autism Wars post, Autism Wars: How Much Longer: Parents vs Government and can be found on NAA's website here.
- California schools with high vaccine exemption rates
- Is the rate of autism recovery going down with time?
- Dr. Bernadine Healy talks about vaccines and autism…or does she?
Related:
- Left Brain/Right Brain: tries again
- Autism Blog lbrb: Left Brain, Right Brain Maybe But Not an Ounce of Common Sense
J, responding to your comment on my blog, it seems I was looking at a different LA Times article by Mooney, the one he had published just prior to your piece. But while he did indeed say the line you quoted him as saying (which I already did suspect was a legitimate quote from somewhere), as I stated in my article, it was indeed cherry-picked and quote-mined in order to distort its intended meaning. Mooney's intent was to promote the thesis of his book, that scientists need to learn how to better communicate science to the public and that he feels that's something some scientists are stubborn about learning. And while I fully support better communication between scientists and the public, I fundamentally disagree with Mooney as to how. But the point here is that Mooney was not suggesting in any way that when evidence is concerned, scientists can't see the forest from the trees or that as you say, "scientists are smart, they must be right." That's a flat-out distortion of what he was saying. Mooney respects the scientific method and was only saying scientists can be poor communicators of science to the public. That was his point and that is, as I understand it, largely the thesis of his latest book.
ReplyDeleteSo as I said before in my article, it's not the gist of his argument, as you directly claim. It's not even close to the gist of Mooney's argument against anti-vaccinationists nor of anyone else defending the science of vaccination. Mooney wasn't making an argument from authority and this was indeed used as a platform for you to just imply the classic "scientists have been wrong before" gambit, which is merely a tactic and doesn't offer any positive evidence for your position. As someone once said, "Galileo was a rebel, but not all rebels are Galileo."
Regardless of how much you seem to hate people bluntly and unapologetically telling you that you're wrong, it doesn't change the fact that you're wrong, that this issue has been sufficiently settled, and that there is no longer any reasonable debate over it. Certainly any scientist is free to conduct their own studies and then submit those studies to peer review to try and get them published in a reputable journal if they want, but there's every reason at this point to conclude such studies looking for phantom causes of autism in vaccines would be about as useful as a new investigation to determine whether or not the Holocaust really happened.
So my advice: if you want to be taken seriously and not have to make convoluted arguments based on quote-mining and completely misrepresenting your opponents, switch sides to the position that has actual empirical evidence supporting it.