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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

One last time: The latest Geier & Geier paper is not evidence that thimerosal causes autism, part 2

The other day, in response to several e-mails asking me about the latest bit of bad science and epidemiology purporting to support the idea that mercury in the thimerosal preservative that used to be in many childhood vaccines is a major cause of autism, I posted links to EpiWonk’s thee-part (so far) takedown of this […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

One last time: The latest Geier & Geier paper is not evidence that thimerosal causes autism

Several people have been sending me either links to this paper or even the paper itself: Young HA, Geier DA, Geier MR. (2008). Thimerosal exposure in infants and neurodevelopmental disorders: An assessment of computerized medical records in the Vaccine Safety Datalink. J Neurol Sci. 2008 May 14 [Epub ahead of print]. (Full text here.) Some […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Epi Wonk versus the Geiers, part II

Epi Wonk has completed part II of her deconstruction of the latest abuse of epidemiology and statistics by those pseudoscientists for the mercury militia, Mark and David Geier. (I commented on part I here): Pretty steep slopes and, therefore, apparently strong associations. But there’s no attempt to control for, or adjust for, the confounding effect […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Epi Wonk versus Mark and David Geier: Guess who wins?

There’s a new blog in town that I’ve been meaning to pimp. It’s a blog by a retired epidemiologist who got things started looking at the role of diagnostic substitution in autism diagnoses and argued that the autism “epidemic” is an artifact of changing diagnostic criteria. The blog is Epi Wonk, and it’s a good […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Ben Goldacre takes on Mark and David Geier

Somehow, in all the blogging about dichloroacetate earlier this week, I somehow missed a mention of a truly annoying thing that the editors of Lancet Neurology did. In essence, they allowed ethically challenged mercury warrior Mark Geier a forum to review Richard Lathe’s book Autism, Brain, and Environment. Egads! How desperate wer the editors of […]