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Anonymous

Dr. Laibow,

First and foremost, I would like an actual response to my post that deals with the factual claims you made in your previous comment. I have cited several (25) papers that are in direct contradiction to your claims.

"starting with the concept that papers published are not necessarily either accurate or definitive,and then getting ready to do what would basically be a review of publications of significance which you were apparently not able to find."

I will agree. Not all papers are factual. Some have had data skewed, or have flawed methodology. Some journals have less stringent standards, and some you can pretty much just pay to get it your article in. This I will not dispute. This is a problem with much research today. The standard level for publication has certainly lowered in recent years. However, I think you misunderstand the scientific method to a point. Yes, someone can publish an article with wild new claims, but it is not accepted until it is beaten and pummelled by scientific peers trying to falsify your results. This occurred with the Wakefield study. Every study found contradictory results, so the paper was dismissed. This didn't happen with germ theory, or the theory of relativity, or the theory of evolution. People tried to falsify it, but they didn't because the results were factual. I found studies in direct contradiction to all your statements, all within the first two pages of google scholar. The landmark value of each is not the point. The point is, there are LOADS of studies in direct contradiction of your claims, because researchers actually researched your claims and found contradictory results. You are fighting a loosing battle, with a lack of evidence. If I reference one paper supporting your claims, you would say it is exemplary, but if I find ten in contradiction to that exact paper, what then? Is the value of the one greater than ten? Wouldn't the sheer law of probability state the one is more likely to be statistically insignificant than all of the other ten?

"that is, I was until I read the last two paragraphs of your comment in which both my competence was impugned (based on the fact that you disagree with my position) and my right to speak authoritatively based on my academic bibliography a la PubMed."

Alas, I apologize for my ad hominem attack. This is below me and I should not have made this statement. I would attempt to report that your competence was called in to question by me based on supporting evidence. I think your claim of herd immunity may have been the most abrupt claim, as it is well demonstrated in not only human studies, but animal and plant inoculation tests. For example, treatment of ash trees with a chemical against the Emerald Ash borer is expensive. By randomly applying it to 20% of the trees, the actual protection is above 80% because of herd immunity. If you decrease the pool by which an organism can foster, and then dilute that pool with immunity, you can understand why it is more difficult for disease spread. As for your right to speak authoritatively, you do have some I suppose, but by no means does is give any weight to unsupported claims. Argument by authority (argumentum ad verecundiam) is a fallacy. This is why when someone like Linus Pauling, winner of a Nobel peace prize and Nobel prize in chemistry, one of only two people to win prizes in separate fields, makes the claim that mega doses of vitamin c cured cancer and the common cold it lends no weight to it without evidence. His results were falsified, and we know that if you take 3 grams of vitamin c, your body will absorb what it can, then urinate out the rest. Now, if you were to make a claim like live attenuated virus versus heat killed viral vaccines provide an increased incidence in disease (x) upon immunized individuals`` and you happened to be a virologist, or epidemiologist, or other related fields, your claims would have slightly more weight. If your field was say, proctology, I may be more sceptical unless the disease was say cancerous polyps in the colon. The pubmed search was just to see if you had published any papers with regards to anything you have actually mentioned. Unfortunately it appears you have made more claims then research.

"The articles you claim do not exits are, in fact, quite easily found, assuming that you wish to find them. Do your own research."

I don not believe I say the words do not exist once in my entire comment, with the exception of the quotation of your comment. If I can still read correctly I always mentioned "please show me" for the evidence you mention. I did not make claims the papers did not exist, if I did I regretfully retract my statements, as I cannot speak with full competency about that. The entirety of my comment was taking your "factual" claims and providing evidence in direct contradiction to that claim. You made comments such as
"Study after study shows that unvaccinated children are healthier, have far, far less asthma, autism, allergic response, deaths from all causes, days absent from school, behavioral and neurological problems, etc " and "On that basis, since placebo controlled double blind studies against NO vaccine, not a more toxic one, are never done." in which I provided evidence in direct contradiction. I even found several studies involving twins of placebo controlled double blind testing, which is about the best medical testing we can conduct... You made factual claims, I provided evidence of my claims, and evidence against yours. I provided citations as to where my evidence was located. You have not, although I still gladly offer this opportunity.

Assuming these articles are widely available, and the fact they would be landmark papers, they should be widely discussed and supported. I am not going to go looking for the needle in the haystack. I have searched before, but I search for unbiased strings, such as placebo controlled double blind vaccine testing. This is not a leading search, but would return results of such you requested. If I search for "evidence against vaccines" or "evidence for vaccines" that would be cherry picking evidence, although the fact I still find more papers in support of vaccines when searching for evidence against vaccines should say something in it of itself.

I have provided my evidence and made my claims. Provide your evidence to the contrary. I am fairly confident that I will be able to provide at least five papers in direct contradiction to each reference you provide. Perhaps that is cocky, but I suppose I am an optimist.

Braeden Cowbrough
THIRD YEAR Biochem. Student
Carleton University

August 2, 2012 - 7:31am

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