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We interrupt this blog for breaking news...
Extreme Humiliation - A New Sport for the Mercury-Autism Crowd?Kathleen Seidel, in her Neurodiversity website, has broken what may be the "story of the year" about the "dysfunctional duo" of Geier and...
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The Seven Most Common Thinking Errors of Highly Amusing Quacks and...
Thinking Error 4 – Conspiracy Theories:To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, “Conspiracy is the last refuge of a quack.”Assertions of conspiracy receive a great deal of play in the claims of quacks and...
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Another Autistic Child Murdered (Take Two)
I have deleted the previous post under this title after reading the comments - including my own - and reflecting on them. In what may be a once-in-a-lifetime occurence, I find myself in agreement with...
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Prometheus Rises
Sorry to have bugged out so suddenly and for so long. I hope that I still have a few readers left after all this time.I unexpectedly received a grant (these days, almost nobody expects to get an NSF...
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What You Want is What You Get
A few weeks ago, a reporter interviewed me about my research. During the interview, she asked me, “What do you want the result to be?” I was flabbergasted – it truly had never occurred to me to “want”...
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Word Play: Believing
The English language is often tricky, even for those of us who grew up speaking it. One problem is that some words have several - often somewhat contradictory - meanings. One such word is...
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The Power of Critical Thinking: Scientific Method
“Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” Richard Feynman(from the lecture “What is and What...
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The Power of Critical Thinking: Bias and Self Deception
Bias:Some time ago, during one of those post-conference informal discussions, I heard a fellow give the best description of bias that I've ever heard. I will attempt to paraphrase:Bias is the natural...
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Fear Pressure
For some time now, I’ve wondered why promoters of the mercury-causes-autism get so hostile when they talk to us skeptics. Time after time, I’ve been accused of:[1] Preventing parents from treating...
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Listening to Autism
Periodically (every other day, if not more frequently), some outraged parent will send me a blistering e-mail about how I am "not listening to the parents" or "not listening to the autistic children"...
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Finding Truffles amongst the Clods
ARI’s Parent Ratings of Behavioral Effects of Biomedical InterventionsFor years I have advised people to avoid this site because it presents poor data in a poor fashion. The “data” is gathered (if that...
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A Tale of Two Studies – Part the Second
”…it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything...
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A Tale of Two Studies
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…”In March of 2007, two studies on different aspects of autism have been published. These...
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If Everything works, is Anything Working?
A few weeks ago, I wrote about ARI’s parental survey and how that could be used to show the natural progression of untreated autism. Today, I’d like to delve a bit deeper into some of the implications...
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The Age of Unreason
Before I get too far into this narrative, I should divulge that I am a “Baby Boomer”. This is not something I am proud of, as “My Generation” was one of the most spoiled and self-centered generations...
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Theories of Everything
Physics, that most pure of pure sciences, has been pursuing the "Theory of Everything" - a theory that will explain the four fundamental forces and their interactions - for some time now. Nobel Prize...
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But we have to do something!
I always find a little shiver of fear going down my spine whenever I hear someone - especially someone in elected office - say the words, "We have to do something about [X]!"In my experience, those...
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A Crisis of Faith or "Bait and Switch"?
Over the past year, I've noticed an odd trend among the supporters of the mercury-causes-autism hypothesis. It began gradually, as trends often do, with a few seemingly random phrases like "...and...
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The Next Revolution?
As the chelationistas rediscover/redefine/remarket themselves, surely there are parents who are feeling a little misled, deceived or perhaps even exploited. Maybe it's time for another "revolution" in...
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Survey says..... Nothing!!!
Generation Rescue just published their long-awaited telephone survey results that showed - surprise! - that vaccinations cause autism.Well, actually, it doesn't really show that vaccines cause autism,...
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