It's even tougher when the studies are bullshit.

There's definitely a hierarchy of journals. Some (many) aren't worth reading and don't even show up on good database searches. You want peer-reviewed journals that have tough standards - The New England Journal of Medicine; Science; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - stuff like that.

Even then, I was taught both in my science degree and in my medical training to NOT read the discussion/conclusions until I'd studied the results for myself. Sometimes authors come to the wrong conclusion, or they miss something that's there in the data. It happens every so often. And you do need formal education in statistics and epidemiology to understand clinical and many other types of medical studies. I couldn't understand medical studies at a time when I could understand any scientific/lab bench paper. It's information - you need to know how the authors are treating the data: what's significant and what's not. And you need to understand study types and error and be able to see where a study is weak, maybe too weak in design to support any conclusion.

There is no actual number since many other factors apply - including all vaccine effectiveness. However numbers start in the hundreds. May be higher.

Noted was one reason that complicates accurate numbers. At least once vaccine was losing its effectiveness. Reasons why and if limited only to some sources has not yet been determined.

With seven or eight million researchers in the US, limited funds, a publish or perish system, and a serious decline in peer review, the temptation to fake it, or at least twist it, is huge. I read some numbers the other day about big pharma trying to replicate results of promising studies are having a dismal success rate.

Here are some reasons.

Your post is chock full of emotion. And anger. And no numbers. And resentment that also says you do not want to learn from mistakes.

99% of kids don't get sick. That proves no vaccine is a good solution? Of course not. If 1% of kids are getting sick, then a major epidemic exists. Does not matter what your few examples imply. What matters are well proven facts. We know that fear of vaccines is not based in informed decision. And that where fear of vaccines exists, so does motivated reasoning.

Notice I do not reply with cheapshots. Can you say same?

Jim, i havent done the study myself, but am willing to agree that the risk to your kids not being vaccinated is less than if they were. Especially given the info you had at the time.

My question, and i assume many others here also, is, do you recognise that the risk was/is so low, thanks to the fact that many of these diseases have been severely retarded thanks to high rates of imminisation by others.

If i can speak frankly, i know thats why i get emotional about this subject. I take on the minute risk involved in imminisation so that families like yours can afford the luxury of not doing it.

This is in no way an attack on you. I just wondered if you have ever realised the reason why people like me sometimes get upset by people with similar views to yours. Just wondering if you've ever thought to be grateful for those people who have tqken the risk so that you cqn feel fairly safe not doing so.

My first impulse is to ask if we should compare xoB's "temptations" among scientific researchers
with the "temptations" of, say, auto mechanics or salesmen or ...:bolt:

But aside from such silliness as my impulse, my next one was to question
why advance a "fake it or twist it" condemnation from that link.
It's not really a significant part of the article.
The article talks about several other factors and influences that
come to bear on "replication".

I think it is a reasonably good article, talking about several different
real world issues that researchers face. But many of them are quite
similar to the issues that manufacturers face... similar to proprietary secrets,
little interest from funding agencies for "confirming-type" studies,
etc.

Although the authors seem particularly interested in the idea
that research is not self-correcting, there is de facto evidence that it is.

When there is "competition" between research centers, and/or collaboration on projects,
or the reputations of the investigators, and especially if an individual's career
and/or continued funding, etc. on the line... something that is
non-reproducible becomes evident and controlling.

One thing I (did not see in the article) is a review of the actions
and the lengths to which institutions will go to protect their own reputations
if/when even hints of "falsification" some into play. They usually make it into the lay press.

yes, of course I do. It's awesome to live in America in the late 20th, early 21st Century. I take a WHOLE lot of shit for granted that was a real pain in the ass for people in this country as few as 50 years ago. We all do. I have to make my decisions in the current climate though. I can't justify unnecessary risk out of a sense of gratitude to those gone before. I am vaccinated, by the way.

so, thanks!

you're a big fat liar

a smelly one

Lamplighter found a number, with a cite. It was 2. Do you have a better source than he does?

Effectiveness is irrelevant in this case, since you weren't talking about infection rates, you were talking about death rates. When a baby dies of measles, or whooping cough, there are no other factors--that's what they died from. You said that Jenny McCarthy was responsible for "so many dead infants." I ask again: do you have numbers to back up this claim, or was your hyperbole merely an emotional response that you now regret?

Now Clod, no need to be insulting, the art of intertwining spin doctored information with verifiable facts to make it all seen credible doesn't constitute an emotional response: it's just good old, cold, calculated, completely logical propaganda technique.

He sits on a throne of lies

In the interest of full disclosure, the 2 cases I cited were (only) of measles in the UK among 1300 cases in 10 years .

By adding whooping cough (pertussis) to the taunt, the numbers change...

Here is the incidence in the US by year... note the upsurge in the McCarthey era.
(The incidence of measles follows a similar profile, but at a lower rate.)

Attachment 45719

If death is the insisted criterion, then the data for only one year (2012) includes 18 deaths:

Because I've read 4 different articles on the subject this week, but didn't bother to track them all down.

Childhood Pertussis vaccination doesn't begin until 2 months of age; so, you can eliminate the <3 mos. category (13 deaths) as having been influenced by anyone's anti-childhood vaccination rhetoric. The information you provided here doesn't say whether or not they where vaccinated either, as vaccinations is not 100% effective. You can also eliminate the adult category (55+ years, 1 death) as childhood vaccination and first booster does not confer lifetime immunity; rather, lasting only 3-6 years. The potential influence a Jenny McCarthy type may have had in 2012 is 4 deaths (you didn't specify them as non-immunized versus failed immunization either), not 18 deaths as the tw-lamplighter school of spin doctoring would propagandize.