Bad science ....

[Bullseye]

Originally Posted by Paul mabbott

Demonstrating that you should give people mercury compounds and that the MMR is harmless?

Sorry,read this a few times,still dose not make sense to me,maybe I'm very stupid !.Or are you saying that the MMR is harmless and that it's the mercury in it that's the cause?,because whichever way you say it,it can still cause autism.

[Bullseye]

Originally Posted by Digit

And Al Bore dropped out of his climate studies!

Roy.

Yeah,but he's making millions from "carbon trading",so he's not making all this fuss just to make money...................................ah,wait... ............

[Digit]

And apparently his electricity bill is something like Zimbabwe's national debt!
You get a group of people who study their subject with no applause, then along comes Al, spouts off what they have said and HE gets a Nobel Prize!
Typical innit?

Roy.

[weirdwolf]

Originally Posted by Bullseye

Sorry,read this a few times,still dose not make sense to me,maybe I'm very stupid !.Or are you saying that the MMR is harmless and that it's the mercury in it that's the cause?,because whichever way you say it,it can still cause autism.

Whilst I am very sorry that your son has a disability the immunization link to autism has been disproved by numerous studies.
Mercury is NOT included in MMR jabs and hasn't been for several years, the levels in the jabs was tiny and in a form that was excreted rapidly from the body.
People who do not immunize their children are not only putting them at risk they are also putting other children at risk of serious complications and death.

[mickmassie]

Originally Posted by Bullseye

Check out this ? http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpre...dy-minimum.png

What does this show ?

M.

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by Bullseye

Sorry,read this a few times,still dose not make sense to me,maybe I'm very stupid !.Or are you saying that the MMR is harmless and that it's the mercury in it that's the cause?,because whichever way you say it,it can still cause autism.

what hes saying is that the authors who wrote the book that the excerpt that kicked off this thread was from are, amongst other rubbish, saying that there is no harm in having mercury in tooth fillings because the dose is so low.

however the dose in the MMR is even lower.

Therefore I guess that paul is wondering how you square this proposition with your defence of these same "scientists" who you seem to be asserting speak nothing but the gospel truth on every other subject.

[Paul mabbott]

Not quite - there's a typo insofar as I missed out a 'not'!
But yes, there is an element of self-contradiction: saying on the one hand that MMR injections were causing problems but then saying that there were no MMR problems when mercury was removed ....

Originally Posted by eeyore

what hes saying is that the authors who wrote the book that the excerpt that kicked off this thread was from are, amongst other rubbish, saying that there is no harm in having mercury in tooth fillings because the dose is so low.

however the dose in the MMR is even lower.

Therefore I guess that paul is wondering how you square this proposition with your defence of these same "scientists" who you seem to be asserting speak nothing but the gospel truth on every other subject.

[zan]

I think a lot of the problems come from a general misunderstanding of how science is (and must be) done with regard to these issues. Even reading this thread, it is clear that there are a huge variety of opinions on the subject and that I think it is often a huge failing of both the media and scientists that the reality of a lot of the research done isn't presented in a more honest, but understandable way a lot of the time.

One of the big things I think is the notion of certainty, which you can rarely achieve scientifically anyway, but is what people (the public \ media) really want. You wouldn't go into a bookies for example and demand to know which horse will definately win a given race- rather you would take various considerations into account, and accept that you would have to go with the most likely option. Things are similar with scientific work for the most part, and you have to accept that uncertainty will always be present to a greater or lesser degree because it is impossible to take account of all possible permutations at the same time. However, by accumulating more and more data from more and more studies, you can reduce this uncertainty to an acceptable level. (I'm thinking along the lines of climate science here, there are fields and studies that don't require such replication, and others that will need more...). The uncertainty is why you will rarely hear a scientist tell you something is definately true or untrue for example, and the reason why a lot of seeming contradictions can appear.

However, I don't think this is ever really explained to people, and ends up seeming like scientists are just giving wishy washy answers a lot of the time.

[Digit]

I agree Zan, but frequently, and regrettably, it is rarely promulgated in that manner.
Take for example the TV series 'Walking with Dinosaurs'.
Very entertaining but long on statements and short on facts, with a quite astonishing amount of guesswork promoted as proven.
Inevitably this results in back tracking in the future when new facts arise, books can be out of date almost before they are published.
Recently we were also treated to a serious comment that Stonehenge was a Stone Age A & E department.
My suspicion bump begins working overtime when many theories are promoted as 'proven', or people start fiddling figures to fit their theories.
Why for example has the UN erased the MA Warm period and the 'Little Ice Age' from their graphs? If they are so certain of their facts why is this sort of thing necessary?
Also of course they do their argument, which may prove to be correct, no service what so ever with scare tactics that fail to materialise.

Roy.

[zan]

Absolutely, and it's a total minefield even within published scientific work as to whether a study is actually done well and the conclusions can be justified or whether it's done badly and published anyway. It takes a good level of knowledge and expertise to be able to determine that as well. Add to that the fact that journalists often like to sell the 'underdog' story and you get a lot of poor science getting a lot more attention than it deserves with absolutely no way for the public to tell the difference most of the time.

I haven't looked at the UN data, but is it possible that they're showing the output from a computer model? If so, then since the little ice age was a bit of an anomaly (as far as I'm aware) it probably wouldn't appear in simulations (see again my comments on probability). If not, then I couldn't tell you why they were removed. The other problem is that people often look to short term trends, rather than the long-term problem (and this is true of many many things, not just climate change) as evidence that everything is ok. Remember last summer everyone was saying that global warming can't be true because it was cold and wet? They're not saying that this year I've noticed! Give it time, and I'm pretty sure we'll start seeing more changes on our doorsteps.