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by dboat 2619 days ago
Scientists and researchers are constantly saying wrong, untrue things when they are not restrained by the rigor of the peer review process. It is not a scientist's informed opinion that matters, what matters is what they can show.

If you do not understand this, I can see how you might receive criticisms and feel they are unfair. But deploy an actual credible source of information, and not someone's opinion, and see the difference it makes.

1 comments

Just this past week Monsanto was found to have bullied scientists into falsifying results about their weed killer.

Just because the ideal is that scientists are about the truth, doesn't mean that is what happens.

Edit: There's not been one single peer reviewed double blind test done on the efficacy of vaccines or parachutes.

Why do y'all keep saying there aren't studies being done?

Hell, this one was peer reveiwed, double blind _and_ and done with twins.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/2871241/

And that's just one of thousands of examples.

No, there has not been any studies done on the "efficacy" of vaccines.

You misread something. Your link is about "adverse reactions", my statement was about "efficacy".

>There's not been one single peer reviewed double blind test done on the _efficacy_ of vaccines

None of those studies controlled who was exposed to the disease. This is unethical by modern standards and is stated as a comment in your link.

Notice the results from the study in Asia: (your link)

>"25 (2.5%) of 1017 infants assigned to receive vaccine and 20 (2.0%) of 1018 assigned to receive placebo had a serious adverse event within 14 days of any dose.

The most frequent serious adverse event was pneumonia (vaccine 12 [1.2%]; placebo 15 [1.5%])."

The infants getting the vaccine vs placebo within 14 days had almost identical results.

...when it comes to adverse effects. In other words, the researchers could not find any side effects.
Regarding the Monsanto story, that's why we have peer review and journals that do not allow you to publish just by paying. If Monsanto managed to get a corrupted study published in a credible journal, that would be quite a scandal. If this is real, I would be genuinely interested in seeing it.

As to your other point, there are studies done for -every- approved vaccine. You aren't just wrong, you could scarcely be more wrong if you tried.

* https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20692031

* https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

It was not hard to find these, and yes they cover efficacy. Please stop spreading misinformation, especially when it can cost lives.

This is a common misunderstanding with all of these tests. _None_ of them test for defense/protection against the disease itself. They only test for indicator of immune response.

I looked at the test in a previous comment above, the results between placebo and vaccine are similar.

There were no controls on _any_ of these tests on who was exposed to the disease.

The second link says they had an "immunogenic response" (the only tests ever done for vaccines) but then ends with this:

>... vaccine was ineffective at reducing the natural infection rate in semi-immune African adults.

Monsanto effects on scientists brought before the courts:

https://newspunch.com/monsanto-lied-bullied-scientists-hide-...

>Wisner, who said the trial would include commentary from 10 current or former Monsanto employees, also read aloud internal corporate documents obtained during the case. In response to one critical study about glyphosate exposure, Donna Farmer, product protection lead, wrote in an email: “How do we combat this?”[0]

Peer reviewed journals do not defend or protect studies that are never published in the first place.

[0] baumhedlundlaw.com/pdf/monsanto-documents/41-Internal-Email-from-2008-Monsanto-Executive-Long-Aware-of-Glyphosate-Link-to-non-Hodgkin-Lymphoma.pdf

This is an ugly way to argue. When debunked, instead of owning anything you add new arguments, moving on as if it had any bearing on the previous points. I see now why you don't want to "fight" people here.

You do not deserve to complain about not wanting a fight when you behave in such a way.

> Peer reviewed journals do not defend or protect studies that are never published in the first place.

Obviously. That's why studies which are not published in quality journals are not considered credible by the scientific community.

You ever talk to a flat-earther? Or an Obama birther? How about a climate change denier? If you aren't willing to pay much attention all of these positions can be defended. But as soon as you ask for a credible source, you get the same thing you tried earlier "I don't want to fight, I just want to spread BS freely." If they do deploy some sort of source and you show them what's wrong with it, they just move on, exactly like you tried to do multiple times in this thread.

Nobody gets to be right all the time, so I don't blame anyone who doesn't have enough time/interest to educate themselves for falling for these ideas. Where it becomes pitiful however, is when someone is shown over and over again and they do nothing but dig in and move on, instead of accepting when they got it wrong.

If your insistence ever successfully convinces someone not to vaccinate their child, who then goes on to needlessly spread infections in their school, then you can no longer say that your ignorance is harmless.

In my meager experience most people like you will just dig in further and further until the day they die. Not all though. Continue to vigorously defend your ignronace if you want - it's your choice, but you can't say no one ever tried to tell you better. Whatever harm you manage to cause with your position, you fought hard to keep causing it.

Relying on peer reviewed journals as the only source of valid data/information is a logical fallacy, it's an appeal to authority. So I don't think that is a valid debunking to claim "not in a peer reviewed journal, so it's not true".

In the video link below the interviewer asks: "Is there a danger vaccinating populations? As we do today?"

https://youtu.be/BpC0Tbb3diI?t=394 (link is directly to the question)

The doctor being interviewed is someone who is medically qualified to study this subject, and has spent significant time studying vaccines. I think she has a scientifically valid point.

Why do you believe she is wrong?

Now you've changed your tack to take on the publishing process itself. That was a mistake.

> it's an appeal to authority

You are misusing the phrase "appeal to authority." Citing a published paper is absolutely NOT an appeal to authority, it is the polar opposite, and the distinction between those two things is the fundamental property of the scientific method.

With published papers, you don't have to trust in authority because the methodology and data are right there to be examined by all. The peer review and credibility are valuable and have weight because anyone caught falsifying data would lose their entire career in an instant. This is also why we don't just accept any old journal, as many simply allow anyone to publish as long as they pay.

To see an example of what an appeal to authority actually is, we need look no further then the second half of your comment. Linking to an interview of an expert in her field giving her opinion is what an appeal to authority actually is. Ironic.

You tried to paint an equivalence between our sources, but all you did was reveal that you do not understand how scientific progress is made. This is no longer an argument, at this point I'm educating you on what you should have learned before ever taking a stance on the subject of vaccinations.

If you can't even accept why credible, published papers carry more weight than appeals to authority, and can't understand what an appeal to authority is after it has been explained to you twice, then conversing with you is pointless.