Direct implications as to the message as presented. When he did happened to be directly relevant to the misinformation.

As to the timing of the disorder, it’s true that I don’t have the true information on that, fair enough. Thing is, that’s what the concession was. So, without noting whether or not it happened before or after the vaccination (I could argue that, but it’s not what I’m arguing here), it just happens to be what was conceded. Basically, the concession is dismissing that it caused the mitochondrial disorder, but it is saying that it may have accentuated a preexisting condition.

Also, a tic; “scientific plausibility” is a gargantuan, broad term that basically says “anything goes, so far as it fits in with inductive reasoning”. Now, there’s obviously some stuff which is considered not so, for reasons of crippling any progress. But to simply throw the term as a conditional for the case is like saying “Well, I’m sure the government would have thrown out the case if it didn’t have a premise”.
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I see your point, Regan, but I still see the issue. It is a newspaper, indeed, and if you are concerned you will look for other sources. But, at the end of the day, we’re not concerned mainly about people who are going to inform themselves on the subject, we’re concerned about those who aren’t. And that’s where the misrepresentation becomes an issue, such that people not only will take it for granted but, as a dominant source, will have a cognitive bias for certain constructions. I mean, I’m not concerned about you being misinformed, or Kristina. I’m worried about going home to my grandmother and having to explain to her why mom and dad aren’t taking up the fight against vaccines.

That said, I’m not expecting that to change, but I’m not exactly an optimist. Reporters are flitting observers, no more. Explaining all of the nuances to someone who has to see many stories at the same time, or has limited time for each, isn’t going to happen, and so we get some simple constructions. And that’s being optimistic (for me), because I’m assuming competency, and having done some work in public relations as an intern I get that reporters can be, well, a little lazy.

Oh, yeah, the term “autism” is problematic. Especially because if you look at the discourse there’s sometimes a issue of attribution (”autism” means very different things to different people), and often looking at the way it is used and described conceptually shows some distance between the term itself and the diagnostic criteria (a good thing, in my view, since I find the criteria to be absurd).

Cliff

I probably won’t comment about this part again, but the use of this single word seems to cause more trouble than it is worth, esp. since the term seems to denote something different or more with each revision and since it is based on a selection of behaviors and not necessarily the inclusion of all, not even comprehensive or necessarily cross-referenceable. Labelling specific behavioral and physical manifestations, biochemical (as they become available and reliable) and developmental trajectories seems more useful. JMO.

(Sorry ’bout that, but I needed to get that off my chest with this ongoing discussion about what “causes” “autism”. Thanks for your tolerance.)

This was interesting, and interestingly enough about Gardiner Harris, the author of the NYTs story, although on an unrelated story a few years back. The point was criticism of injecting more politics than might be called for into reporting a medical story and perhaps not including broader points of view. I thought that the Columbia Journalism Review made an interesting point,

Partisan Infection Strikes Medical Coverage
Columbia Journalism Review
“…if you’re going to include in an article on a life-and-death medical matter wild speculation from a partisan with no medical training, you must — any White House reporter can tell you how this works — also include wild speculation from an untrained partisan from the other side of the debate. ..”
http://www.cjr.org/politics/partisan_infection_strikes_med.php
(I know, then you get into that “balance” thing…which was addressed in the NYTimes (!) )

The bottom line for me is that, influential or no, it is a newspaper, not a research journal, and if I am really interested, I figure that I’ll have to read the primary sources or wait for a good research review article, because I don’t expect the beat reporters to be scientists or to include all the details and subtlties or even to necessarily quote the most relevant people. I figure most of what laypeople say in these kinds of articles are their opinion.

It isn’t an accusation, it is an opinion. Which is way I phrased it “I think statements like this…”

“And I’d like to know if you fact-checked that before making the accusation.”

Yes, I checked by asking myself twice.

“my defense was more of the usage of the CV to make inferences on the subject. That should never have been considered libel in any way or form.”

And my point was the CV does not contain any reasons or circumstances around why he left for another job, just when he did.

“And the government concession it isn’t relevant to the quotation, because the government wasn’t conceding anything about the causation of the mitochondrial condition as much as it was the causation of the autism-like symptoms that come from the condition. They’re very different things.”

I don’t think there is enough evidence from documents released to say which came first, the chicken or the egg. And the phrase autism-like symptoms is just silly. Autism is based on behavioral characteristics, it either meets the criteria or it doesn’t. Since the case was part of the omnibus case and scheduled to be one of the test cases I would think that it would have already gotten beyond the question of whether the child had autism. If the government had reason to doubt the autism I would have thought they would have attempted to have the case disqualified from the proceedings and dealt with separately. However, I don’t know that for certain, I am just guessing.

“The government’s concession in this case was based on a legal, not a scientific, standard of evidence.”

The courts decisions are based in science, not credibility of the parties or laws. If it was not scientifically plausible for the injury to occur the settlement would not have.

Now I would give you that it is a long way from there to proven. But this isn’t just some obscure legal argument either. 50% and a feather is a long way from being a quack.

Heh, not to be too pessimistic on that, but manipulation happens all of the time in media, and if you took every such incident to be a moral incident, you might as well throw every person who’s worked in media as a sinner. It’s part and parcel of the job.

Note I haven’t particularly indicted the Pollings morally, but I think there is a manipulation here, since it has been reported as such so often in that format. If anything, they weren’t as straightforward about the facts as much as the message they were trying to present. Now, I also know that people are far more territorial about that then I have ever been, and hold people accountable more than I do for putting the message over the facts as a form of lying. I respect that, but find it highly optimistic.

Really, my defense was more of the usage of the CV to make inferences on the subject. That should never have been considered libel in any way or form.

“No, I don’t think they have any more information. They may have spoken directly to the parents but I do not know. However, I don’t think their comments in the article are any more relevant as they have a clear bias in their statements. But for that matter the CDC weighing in isn’t really relevant either.”

On the one hand, yes, they don’t know everything about the case, like the CDC and all others. If we were to take a radical form of argument, we could just as well say that any analysis of a murder trial is useless, because we don’t know that a murder is being contested with absolute certainty, because we don’t know all of the details about the case.

But I hope you understand that I’m not going to venture into this, because the standard of proof is too high. We have a general outlook on scientific factors in this case that have been presented, and we have a general outlook on the legal standards in this case, and we have a general standard as to the nature of the case as it relates to other cases. Yes, they’re non-specific, but I don’t need to say which organs were punctured to make moral claims about a stabbing death, for example. Analysis of the situation is fair without an intimate level of detail that no one is ever going to have.

As to the scientific nature of the claims; the claim made is a direct attribution about a scientific detail in the case from Ms. Polling. That is a claim about the science, and it can be addressed in those terms. Now, you can make the case that the paper skewed the quote in order to present Ms. Polling differently, but otherwise it’s a fair to address the claim as such.

And the government concession it isn’t relevant to the quotation, because the government wasn’t conceding anything about the causation of the mitochondrial condition as much as it was the causation of the autism-like symptoms that come from the condition. They’re very different things.

And, again, these aren’t unfair challenges. If you’re making statements in order to create an authenticity or representation, such a representation is a statement, much like any other, and can be contextualized differently as to bring a different message (even something of a non-message). It’s not as if we’re just using some direct attributions to the person.

Cliff

One thing I have in abundance, however, is irony. Wahoo.

One thing that has to be understood about the VCIP [sic; vaccine injury compensation program] is that it was created in response to fears that vaccine manufacturers would abandon the vaccine business due to liability concerns (a legitimate fear) and that it designed to compensate any injury that could be attributed to vaccines, with a standard of evidence that is a legal, not a scientific standard that’s been likened to “50% and a feather.” [my emphasis]

The government’s concession in this case was based on a legal, not a scientific, standard of evidence. The case of Hannah Poling does not offer scientific proof that vaccines cause or contribute to autism.