Sugar: the bitter truth

You'll want to pay close attention as Dr. Lustig discusses the biochemistry of High Fructose Corn Syrup metabolism...

Part 1: Let's agree on what we're talking about...

People seem to be quite passionate in their insistence that somehow I have been duped by oil-loving-neo-cons in my analysis of the AGW issue, so it makes me wonder if we are not in agreement on the basic facts. It is completely possible I have been duped, but I'd like to know that we are discussing the same facts and conclusions. I'd appreciate your responses.

Common Ground:
Can we agree that Global warming should be defined as the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans? Can we also agree since the mid-20th century there has been an observable increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans, with the global surface temperature having increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the last century? Can we also agree that currently this is projected to continue?

If we agree on those basic points, then we can move on to see if we agree on what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded from the available data:

The IPCC has concluded that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations resulting from human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation caused most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century.

The IPCC also concluded that variations in natural phenomena such as solar radiation and volcanoes produced most of the warming from pre-industrial times to 1950 and had a small cooling effect afterward. These basic conclusions have been endorsed by more than 40 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.

Climate model projections summarized in the latest IPCC report indicate that the global surface temperature will probably rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the twenty-first century. The uncertainty in this estimate arises from the use of models with differing sensitivity to greenhouse gas concentrations and the use of differing estimates of future greenhouse gas emissions. Some other uncertainties include how warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe. Most studies focus on the period up to the year 2100. However, warming is expected to continue beyond 2100 even if emissions stop, because of the large heat capacity of the oceans and the long lifetime of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Further the IPCC feels that an increase in global temperature is projected to cause sea levels to rise and will change the amount and pattern of precipitation, probably including expansion of subtropical deserts. We would also expect the continuing retreat of glaciers, permafrost and sea ice, with warming being strongest in the Arctic. Other likely effects include increases in the intensity of extreme weather events, species extinctions, and changes in agricultural yields.

From the IPCC's statements, it is possible to generate a list of Falsifiable Predictions/Statements of the impact of AGW:

1. Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the last century.


2. Global surface temperature will probably rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the twenty-first century.


3. Most of the observed temperature increase is a result of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations are a direct result from human activity.


4. An increase in global temperature will cause sea levels to rise.


5. A continuing retreat of glaciers, permafrost and sea ice is expected, with warming being strongest in the Arctic.


6. Increases in the intensity of extreme weather events.


7. Expansion of subtropical deserts.


8. Increases in species extinctions.

You also have some untestable statements:

1. Unspecified changes the amount and pattern of precipitation.


2. Unspecified changes in agricultural yields.

Have I missed anything?

The Statistician's Case for Skepticism of Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC)

The key to a meaningful debate is to agree on the data which you wish to discuss. If we can't agree on the data, it is hard to have a discussion on it's interpretation.

I think we can all agree on a few data points:

1. In the 20th century we saw both warming and cooling periods.


2. In the 20th century we saw an increase in atmospheric Carbon-Dioxide (CO2).


3. Earth’s climate is a function of an enormously complex system with thousands of variables which are in constant flux.


4. Natural cycles of warming and cooling have existed as long as earth has had a climate.


5. We only began to make large-scale *reproducible* measurements using modern instrumentation in the last 100 years.

If we can start there, and accept these data points as true, we can begin to have a discussion about Anthropogenic Climate Change (from the point of view of a statistician).

Causality

What we are primarily concerned with in this debate is what is causing the current global warming trend. We need to know this in order to make decisions about what to do about it. Absent a cause, there can be no meaningful solutions. Causes are often distinguished into two types: Necessary and sufficient. A third type of causation, which requires neither necessity nor sufficiency in and of itself, but which contributes to the effect, is called a "contributory cause."

Necessary causes:
In General: If x is a necessary cause of y, then the presence of y necessarily implies the presence of x. The presence of x, however, does not imply that y will occur.

For ACC specifically: If man made CO2 is the cause of the current Global Warming trend, then the presence of the current Global Warming trend implies the presence of man made CO2. The presence of man made CO2, however does not imply that the current Global Warming trend will occur.

Sufficient causes:
In General: If x is a sufficient cause of y, then the presence of x necessarily implies the presence of y. However, another cause z may alternatively cause y. Thus the presence of y does not imply the presence of x.

For ACC specifically: If man made CO2 is a sufficient cause of the current Global Warming trend, then the presence of man made CO2 implies the presence of the current Global Warming trend. However, another cause, say increased solar irradiance, may alternatively be the cause of the current Global Warming trend. Thus the presence of the current Global Warming trend does not imply the presence of man made CO2.

Contributory causes:
A cause may be classified as a "contributory cause," if the presumed cause precedes the effect, and altering the cause alters the effect. It does not require that all those subjects which possess the contributory cause experience the effect. It does not require that all those subjects which are free of the contributory cause be free of the effect. In other words, a contributory cause may be neither necessary nor sufficient but it must be contributory.

Correlation is not Causation

I think most people who accept the science behind ACC would likely identify man made CO2 as a contributory cause - and most likely because it is obviously not a Necessary nor a Sufficient cause. Which is interesting because the only thing we have to go on is the fact that (recently) these two events tend to run together (and as we will discuss later, this isn't always true).

Now, enter a different problem: questionable cause ( or correlation is not causation).

This breakdown in logic is committed when a person assumes that one event must cause another just because the events occur together. This fallacy involves drawing the conclusion that increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations is the cause of the current Global Warming trend simply because increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and the Global Warming Trend are in (mostly) regular conjunction (and there is not a common cause that is actually the cause of increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and the current Global Warming trend).

The mistake being made is that the causal conclusion is being drawn without adequate justification. One factor that makes causal reasoning complicated is that it is not always evident what is the cause and what is the effect. This is particularly true if increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations and the current Global Warming trend cause each other by way of system feedback, where cycles tend to reinforce each other. Individual perception of causality can be clouded by emotions and ideologies.

Errors of causality logic can be avoided by a careful study of the temporal sequence of events.

If, for example, increases in temperature were followed by increases in atmospheric CO2 then you would be hard pressed to say that increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations is the cause of the current Global Warming trend.

Falsifiability

So, assuming you still believe that increased atmospheric concentrations of man made CO2 are driving the current global warming trend, you now need a falsifiable hypothesis to test.

Falsifiability (or refutability) is the logical possibility that an assertion can be shown false by an observation or a physical experiment. That something is "falsifiable" does not mean it is false; rather, that if it is false, then this can be shown by observation or experiment. Falsifiability is an important concept in science and the philosophy of science. The term "testability" is related but more specific; it means that an assertion can be falsified through experimentation alone.

By way of example, if you wanted to say that increases in atmospheric concentrations of man made CO2 is the cause of of the current Global Warming trend (as opposed to a contributory cause), you would have to accept that this is false if you can show a period of time where atmospheric concentrations of man made CO2 increased at a time when temperature decreased. In fact, this is a pertinent question for those who cite increases in man made CO2 as even a contributory cause of the currently observed global warming trend. A suitable explanation of why the global temperature increased from 1918, decreased from 1940 to 1976, increased from 1976 to 1998, and decreased from 1998 to the present, irrespective of the fact that the people have been adding increasing amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere is required.

Statistician's Conclusion

1. The sample size ( 150-200 data points) is too small to draw meaningful conclusions.


2. Increases in CO2 are both positively and negatively correlated with temperature in that time period.


3. It is not clear that some other force(s) are responsible for both the increase in CO2 concentrations as well as the temperature increases.

Climate scientists are free to say what they want, but when it comes to future climate and any sort of statistical certainty, no one knows what they’re talking about. No one. Not the IPCC nor its scientists. Not the US Congressional House leadership, not the President, not me, not you, and above all, not Mr. Albert Gore. Earth’s climate is warming and no one knows exactly why. There is no falsifiable scientific basis whatsoever to assert this warming is caused by human-produced CO2 gasses because current data and our understanding of the variables involved is simply inadequate to establish any cause at all.

Opinion

Wealth, technology, and human ingenuity are our most powerful tools for dealing with change

Most all scientists generally agree that there is little humanity can do to influence the global climate for many decades, even if we got rid of the industrial civilization that has allowed billions of people to leave immeasurably longer and better lives. Our resources would be far better spent creating innovative technology that allows us to make the best of a constantly changing climate than crippling industrial civilization (our best tool for dealing with a constantly changing world) in a futile attempt to stop climate change.

Further, attempts to halt climate change are not only costly and most likely futile, but ignore the benefits of a warmer climate

Adapting to a warmer climate has many costs, but many benefits as well. According to NASA satellite data, higher levels of CO2 have dramatically increased biomass production and biodiversity worldwide. Global warming may cause Africa to become more arid, but enormous territories in Siberia and Canada might finally be open to settlement, and new resources and shipping routes will become available.

Unfortunately, the focus is usually on reversing anthropogenic causes of ecological change. Such attempts are not only futile, but ignore the large scale economic destruction caused by environmental restrictions on human productivity. Free societies and technological innovation have allowed human ingenuity bring about vast improvements in human life. This change has almost doubled the life expectancy and quadrupled the standard of living in the developed world – and is now transforming the developing world.

If a tree study fails in the woods, does anyone report it to the IPCC?

Science (and I am speaking here of Science as guided by the scientific method) is predicated on several key behaviors in the pursuit of knowledge: (1) Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena; (2) they design experimental studies to test these hypotheses; (3) these steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results. A basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established.

IPCC's Assessment Report from 2001 - with the error bars in grey emphasised

Some of you will recall the story of Michael Mann's Hockey Stick reconstruction, its statistical bias, and the influence of the bristlecone pines. The end result of which was to invalidate the hockey stick and throw into question the whole warming trend influenced by human activity and CO2. However, it is highly doubtful that many of you have come across the story of the Yamal tree data.

The Yamal tree ring data was originally collected by a pair of Russian scientists, Hantemirov and Shiyatov, and published in 2002. In their version of the data, Yamal had little by way of a twentieth century warming trend. However, a version by Keith Briffa, which had made it into print before the Russians', was somewhat different.

Briffa's verison had a sharp uptick at the end of the twentieth century -- you guessed it: a hockey stick. As you might expect, after its first appearance in Briffa's 1999 paper, this version of Yamal was seized upon by climatologists, appearing again and again in temperature reconstructions. It contributed significantly to the reconstructions in Mann and Jones 2003, Jones and Mann 2004, Moberg et al 2005, D'Arrigo et al 2006, Osborn and Briffa 2006 and Hegerl et al 2007, among others.

It turns out that the Yamal data was never made public -until recently- and what we have come to learn about it is rather shocking from a scientific point of view:

1. In all there are 252 cores in the CRU Yamal data set.
2. A (larger) data set of 34 trees from the vicinity of Briffa's trees shows no dramatic recent warming.
3. Briffa's paper draws on data from just 12 trees.
4. All 12 cores selected by Briffa show strong growth since the mid-19th century.

The implication is exceedingly clear: the dozen tree cores were cherry-picked.

Unfortunately for the skeptics of the result, the Briffa has gone out of his way to ensure much of the measurement data used in the reconstructions remains a secret - failing to fulfill procedures to archive the raw data. Absent the raw data, other scientists could not reproduce or refute the results. Perhaps most shocking is that the most prestigious peer reviewed journals, including Nature and Science, were reluctant to demand the data from contributors.

The reasoning behind Briffa's subsample selection may have been a mystery, but with the other information gleaned, it became possible to perform some tests on the validity. This was done by performing a simple sensitivity test: replace the twelve cores that Briffa had used for the modern sections of Yamal with some of the other available data. Sure enough, there was a suitable Schweingruber series called Khadyta River close by to Yamal, and with 34 cores, it represented a much more reliable basis for reconstructing temperatures.

A revised dataset was prepared, replacing Briffa's selected 12 cores with the 34 from Khadyta River. The revised chronology was simply staggering. The sharp uptick in the series at the end of the twentieth century had vanished, leaving a twentieth century apparently without a significant trend. The blade of the Yamal hockey stick, used in so many of those temperature reconstructions that the IPCC said validated Michael Mann's work, was gone.

[ Tip of the hat to Travis Britt who spotted and obscure news story on this. For a more complete treatment of the entire story visit Bishop Hill's blog ]

It's back: Vaccinations and Autism in the News

Once agin Autism rates are up and people are rehashing that old saw about childhood vaccination being a suspected culprit. ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/autism-rate-now-at-one-pe_b_256141.html )

I'm told, the question people who are concerned about Vaccines and Autism really care about goes something like this:

"Our children receive 36 vaccines by the time they are five, including 20 by their first birthday. Is the administration of so many vaccines causing autism in certain children?"

To answer this question in the manner it is posed would require assignment of children to a randomized double blind study containing a vaccine group and a non-vaccine group in the first year of their lives. This is the only sure fire way to rule in or rule out a causative relationship between vaccines and autism. Are we really willing to risk our children to the likes of:

• Hepatitis B
• Rotavirus
• DTP
• Hib
• Pneumococcal
• Polio
• Flu
• MMR
• Varicella
• Hepatitis A
• Meningococcal

On the other hand, rational folks are usually unwilling to expose children to their children to such childhood disease risks on the off chance that they will somehow help science and establish a correlative relationships between Autism and Vaccination. This leaves us in a bit of a sticky situation. As scientists we will have to resort to the next best thing: can we establish a correlation between childhood vaccination and autism?

What we are asking here is can we establish some sort of trend between the use of Thimerosal (or some other agent commonly found in vaccines) and Autism. We are able to do this analysis because Thimerosal has been phased out of many vaccines in the last 20 years and so we have pre and post Thimerosal rates of Autism data. For your consideration, I have include summaries of 14 commonly reference studies on this type of investigation. You can download and read them all here ( http://alexhorovitz.com/autism_studies.zip )

Fourteen Studies on Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Autism

Study	Conclusion	Comments
Safety of Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines: A Two-Phased Study of Computerized Health Maintenance Organization Databases Thomas Verstraeten, Robert L. Davis, Frank DeStefano, Tracy A. Lieu, Philip H. Rhodes, Steven B. Black, Henry Shinefield, Robert T. Chen and for the Vaccine Safety Datalink Team Pediatrics 2003;112;1039-1048	Conclusions: No consistent significant associations were found between TCVs and neurodevelopmental outcomes. Conflicting results were found at different HMOs for certain outcomes. For resolving the conflicting findings, studies with uniform neurodevelopmental assessments of children with a range of cumulative thimerosal exposures are needed. Pediatrics 2003;112:1039–1048; cohort study, computerized medical record systems, language development disorders, speech disorders, thimerosal, vaccines.	There is no correlation in the data they looked at between Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Autism
Thimerosal and the Occurrence of Autism: Negative Ecological Evidence From Danish Population-Based Data Kreesten M. Madsen, Marlene B. Lauritsen, Carsten B. Pedersen, Poul Thorsen, Anne-Marie Plesner, Peter H. Andersen and Preben B. Mortensen Pediatrics 2003;112;604-606 DOI: 10.1542/peds.112.3.604	Conclusions: The discontinuation of thimerosal containing vaccines in Denmark in 1992 was followed by an increase in the incidence of autism. Our ecological data do not support a correlation between thimerosal containing vaccines and the incidence of autism. Pediatrics 2003; 112:604–606; autism, vaccine, thimerosal, mercury, population, epidemiology.	There is no correlation in the data they looked at between Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Autism
Continuing Increases in Autism Reported to California’s Developmental Services System: Mercury in Retrograde Robert Schechter, MD, MSc; Judith K. Grether, PhD Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2008;65(1):19-24	Conclusions: The DDS data do not show any recent de- crease in autism in California despite the exclusion of more than trace levels of thimerosal from nearly all childhood vaccines. The DDS data do not support the hypothesis that exposure to thimerosal during childhood is a primary cause of autism.	There is no correlation in the data they looked at between Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Autism
Neuropsychological Performance 10 Years After Immunization in Infancy With Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines Alberto Eugenio Tozzi, Patrizia Bisiacchi, Vincenza Tarantino, Barbara De Mei, Lidia D'Elia, Flavia Chiarotti and Stefania Salmaso Pediatrics 2009;123;475-482 DOI: 10.1542/peds.2008-0795	Conclusions: Given the large number of statistical comparisons performed, the few associations found between thimerosal exposure and neuropsychological development might be attributable to chance. The associations found, although statistically significant, were based on small differences in mean test scores, and their clinical relevance remains to be determined. Pediatrics 2009;123:475–482	There is a small correlation in the data they looked at between Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Autism. The standard caution is warranted: correlation is not causation. They leave open the possibility that this is possibly a random correlation.
Autism and Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines: Lack of Consistent Evidence for an Association Paul Stehr-Green, DrPH, MPH, Peet Tull, Michael Stellfeld, MD, Preben-Bo Mortenson, DrMedSC, Diane Simpson, MD, PhD American Journal of Preventive Medicine 2003;25(2):101–106	Conclusions: The body of existing data, including the ecologic data presented herein, is not consistent with the hypothesis that increased exposure to Thimerosal-containing vaccines is responsible for the apparent increase in the rates of autism in young children being observed worldwide. (Am J Prev Med 2003;25(2):101–106) © 2003 American Journal of Preventive Medicine.	There is no correlation in the data they looked at between Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Autism
Thimerosal Exposure in Infants and Developmental Disorders: A Prospective Cohort Study in the United Kingdom Does Not Support a Causal Association Jon Heron, Jean Golding and and the ALSPAC Study Team Pediatrics 2004;114;577-583 DOI: 10.1542/peds.2003-1176-L	Conclusions: We could find no convincing evidence that early exposure to thimerosal had any deleterious effect on neurologic or psychological outcome. Pediatrics 2004;114:577–583; ALSPAC, cohort study, neurodevelopment, safety, thimerosal, thiomersal, mercury, vaccines.	There is no correlation in the data they looked at between Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Autism
Early Thimerosal Exposure and Neuropsychological Outcomes at 7 to 10 Years William W. Thompson, Ph.D., Cristofer Price, Sc.M., Barbara Goodson, Ph.D., David K. Shay, M.D., M.P.H., Patti Benson, M.P.H., Virginia L. Hinrichsen, M.S., M.P.H., Edwin Lewis, M.P.H., Eileen Eriksen, M.P.H., Paula Ray, M.P.H., S. Michael Marcy, M.D., John Dunn, M.D., M.P.H., Lisa A. Jackson, M.D., M.P.H., Tracy A. Lieu, M.D., M.P.H., Steve Black, M.D., Gerrie Stewart, M.A., Eric S. Weintraub, M.P.H., Robert L. Davis, M.D., M.P.H., and Frank DeStefano, M.D., M.P.H., for the Vaccine Safety Datalink Team New England Journal of Medicine, Thompson WW et al. (September 27, 2007)	Conclusions: Our study does not support a causal association between early exposure to mercury from thimerosal-containing vaccines and immune globulins and deficits in neuro- psychological functioning at the age of 7 to 10 years.	There is no correlation in the data they looked at between Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Autism
Association Between Thimerosal-Containing Vaccine and Autism Anders Hviid; Michael Stellfeld; Jan Wohlfahrt; et al. JAMA. 2003;290(13):1763-1766 (doi:10.1001/jama.290.13.1763)	Conclusion: The results do not support a causal relationship between childhood vaccination with thimerosal-containing vaccines and development of autistic-spectrum disorders.	There is no correlation in the data they looked at between Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Autism
Thimerosal and Autism? Karin B. Nelson and Margaret L. Bauman Pediatrics 2003;111;674-679 DOI: 10.1542/peds.111.3.674	Conclusion: Thimerosal is being eliminated from the vaccines used in routine infant immunization programs in the United States and Canada. If thimerosal was an important cause of autism, the incidence of autism might soon begin to decline. One can hope but not expect that that will happen; time will tell. Mercury poisoning and autism both affect the central nervous system but the specific sites of involvement in brain and the brain cell types affected are different in the two disorders as evidenced clinically and by neuropathology. Mercury also injures the peripheral nervous system and other organs that are not affected in autism. Nonspecific symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and irrational fears may occur both in mercury poisoning and in children with autism, but overall the clinical picture of mercurism from any known form, dose, duration, or age of exposure—does not mimic that of autism. No case history has been encountered in which the differential diagnosis of these 2 disorders was a problem. Most important, no evidence yet brought forward indicates that children exposed to vaccines contain- ing mercurials, or mercurials via any other route of exposure, have more autism than children with less or no such exposure. Continuing vigilance is necessary regarding the safety of vaccines, as is open-minded evaluation of new evidence. However, such evidence must be of sufficient scientific rigor to provide a responsible basis for decisions that influence the safety of children. When information is incomplete, as it is at present for thimerosal-autism questions, a balancing must be made of risks posed by vaccine constituents and the benefits of disease prevention achieved by keeping immunizations widely available. On the basis of current evidence, we consider it improbable that thimerosal and autism are linked.	There is no correlation in the data they looked at between Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Autism
Lack of Association Between Rh Status, Rh Immune Globulin in Pregnancy and Autism Judith H. Miles* and T. Nicole Takahashi Thompson Center for Autism and Neurodevelopmental Disorders, and Department of Child Health, University of Missouri Hospitals and Clinics, Columbia, Missouri American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A 143A:1397–1407 (2007)	Conclusion: Analysis of complete records including the blood group status and RhIg exposure of 214 families showed that Rh status is no higher in mothers of children with autism than in the general population, exposure to antepartum RhIg, preserved with thimerosal is no higher for children with autism and pregnancies are no more likely to be Rh incompatible. This was also true for autism subgroups defined by behavioral phenotype, gender, IQ, regressive onset, head circumference, dysmorphology, birth status, essential, or complex phenotype.	There is no correlation in the data they looked at between Rh Immune Globulin in Pregnancy and Autism
Mercury concentrations and metabolism in infants receiving vaccines containing thiomersal: A descriptive study Michael Pichichero, MD The Lancet, Volume 360, Issue 3947, Pages 1737 - 1741 30 November 2002	Conclusions: Administration of vaccines containing thiomersal does not seem to raise blood concentrations of mercury above safe values in infants. Ethylmercury seems to be eliminated from the blood rapidly via the stools after parenteral administration of thiomersal in vaccines.	This shows that the mercury in thiomersal doesn't stick around long enough to cause damage and is below levels that are considered safe anyway.
Lack of Association between Measles Virus Vaccine and Autism with Enteropathy: A Case-Control Study Mady Hornig, Thomas Briese, Timothy Buie, Margaret L. Bauman, Gregory Lauwers, Ulrike Siemetzki, Kimberly Hummel, Paul A. Rota, William J. Bellini, John J. O’Leary, Orla Sheils, Errol Alden, Larry Pickering, W. Ian Lipkin PLoS ONE | www.plosone.org 1 September 2008 | Volume 3 | Issue 9 | e3140	Conclusions: This study provides strong evidence against association of autism with persistent MV RNA in the GI tract or MMR exposure. Autism with GI disturbances is associated with elevated rates of regression in language or other skills and may represent an endophenotype distinct from other ASD.	There is no correlation in the data they looked at between Measles Virus Vaccine and Autism
MMR vaccination and pervasive developmental disorders: a case-control study Liam Smeeth, Claire Cook, Eric Fombonne, Lisa Heavey, Laura C Rodrigues, Peter G Smith, Andrew J Hall The Lancet September 11, 2004	Conclusions: Our findings suggest that MMR vaccination is not associated with an increased risk of pervasive developmental disorders.	There is no correlation in the data they looked at between MMR Vaccine and Autism
Pervasive Developmental Disorders in Montreal, Quebec, Canada: Prevalence and Links With Immunizations Eric Fombonne, Rita Zakarian, Andrew Bennett, Linyan Meng and Diane McLean-Heywood Pediatrics 2006;118;e139-e150 DOI: 10.1542/peds.2005-2993	Conclusions: The prevalence of pervasive developmental disorder in Montreal was high, increasing in recent birth cohorts as found in most countries. Factors accounting for the increase include a broadening of diagnostic concepts and criteria, increased awareness and, therefore, better identification of children with pervasive developmental disorders in communities and epidemiologic surveys, and improved access to services. The findings ruled out an association between pervasive developmental disorder and either high levels of ethylmercury exposure comparable with those experienced in the United States in the 1990s or 1- or 2-dose measles-mumps-rubella vaccinations.	There is no correlation in the data they looked at between MMR Vaccine and Autism.

There are more, of course, but the trend is pretty clear: Vaccination and Autism are simply not correlated We can completely exclude causative discussions because without any clear correlation it is really hard to suggest that something that is completely unrelated is the causative agent. It would be like saying Vaccination has caused a decrease in child fatalities in automobile accidents. While it is true that there has been a decrease in child fatalities in automobile accidents and this happened at the same time we were increasing vaccinations, it is completely clear that they are unrelated. When scientists say that the data has established that x has no correlation/association with y it means that the two phenomenon are unrelated even if they are happening at the same time.

It is time to move on people...

If you want to blame something other than the expanded defintion, blame the internet.

You see, the internet made all the Aspy's rich enough to attract spouses and offered an increase in the opportunity to procreate. Before the internet age, they were all accountants. No mates. Now they program computers, get rich off stock options, buy Ferrari's and get hot wives who would have never dated an accountant.

We know the number one factor in autism is the genetic component. An Aspy and a Normy are going to begat an Aspy some amount of the time and the rise of the number of Aspys is totally correlated with the increase in the number of computer programmers who have gotten rich and started having larger families.

;-)

While I'm busy working on a little piece about Climate Crisis as Religion...

I thought I'd share a cool new (and relatively accurate) feature of the iPhone 3GS and Apple's MobileMe offering:








Really quite amazing how good this phone is... I'm glad my 3G fell on the ground and shattered at the beach the other day. :-)

Wisdom of crowds and mass hysteria...

The earth is warming. Man is causing some amount of this warming. Now get over it, because we don't have enough data to make any serious scientific predictions never mind create worthwhile public policy.

Statisticians know that an average of independent estimates tend, over time, to outperform a randomly selected individual estimate when trying to accurately determine an unknown quantity. James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds does a superb job of documenting this phenomenon. One example most people are familiar with is guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar. If you average the guesses of 1000 people that average number will almost certainly be more accurate than any individual guess.

So it goes with weather forecasting and weather forecasting models. In a daily forecast mode, it is quite demonstrable that different models and different runs of the same model will, when averaged, make better predictions than any individual model or run. This is because they are unbiased - that is to say there is nothing about a 3 day forecast that requires the complexity of assumptions that a long run model takes on.

However, this really doesn't translate over to climate models in the same way. This is because Climate models have to deal with very long range predictions and they are specifically tasked with having to answer questions like what will the impact of a certain rate of Carbon Dioxide production have on future temperatures and weather patterns. So we are all up on the facts, if you look at the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project published US National Center for Atmospheric Research's Gerald Meehl in 2000 you will quickly note that all of those models were based on greater amounts of carbon dioxide than was known to be accumulating in the atmosphere at the time. In turn, they tended to predict warmer temperatures than were actually observed.

And this is an ongoing problem for scientific consensus. Observations do not, as a matter of fact, line up with the predictions being offered by the media alarmists: "without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that." Notice the vagary of the claim. Then consider the most recent data.

Just last year in Nature, Noah Keenlyside of Germany's Leipzig Institute of Marine Science found that the natural processes in the oceans are likely to continue to offset much global warming through the middle of the next decade. If he is right, this will mean that come that period of time we will have seen NO WARMING for almost 2 decades. Now look at the IPCC's climate models (below). NONE OF THEM HAVE A 2 DECADE PERIOD WHERE NO WARMING IS PREDICTED.



In short models are only as accurate as their ability to mimic observed reality. Politicians need to stop pretending they are anything more. They are far from a crystal ball. I'll be glad to reconsider when we see models that can accurately predict temperature for even a decade or two.