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You’ve done it again just a couple of days ago, with your favorite professor garnering yet another prize for his promotion of the Biklenattractive notion known as “facilitated communication” – “FC” – the transparently pseudoscientific farce whereby autistic children seem to be in communication with the world outside their unfortunately limited comprehension. I’m sure that Douglas Biklen and his staff are receiving enthusiastic kudos following the announcement that the UNESCO/Emir Jaber al-Ahmed al-Jaber al-Sabah Prize – US$40,000 – has been awarded him by the Kuwaiti Government, “for the positive impact of his work on people with intellectual disabilities.”

This United Nations prize was awarded to Mr. Biklen because of his advocacy of FC, which has been very thoroughly debunked as wishful thinking, bad science, and nonsense via a 1993 TV special on PBS “Frontline” as well as through my personal investigation and experience with the University of Wisconsin-Madison project using this manipulative deception, the year before in 1992. My readers may wish to visit here to read this incredible news story. James T. Todd, Ph.D., at Eastern Michigan University, notified me of this latest promotion of nonsense, expressing his dismay, and I wrote to him:  

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We are all going to die. Before you panic, please stop and consider that there's probably nothing you can do about it. Wait, sorry. That wasn't very reassuring, was it? Well, how about this: you may or may not see your inevitable death coming. Feel better? No?

Look, I'm no good at breaking bad news to people. And even if I were, there's really no way to sugar coat this. Some people are working hard to put a stop to the grim reaper's oncoming train (before you complain about this mixed metaphor, you should know that the down economy has forced the grim reaper to take part-time work as a train conductor), but in the meantime, scores of us drop dead every day.

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Here is a recap of the stories that appeared last week at Science-Based Medicine, a multi-author skeptical blog that separates the science from the woo in medicine.  

SANE Vax adopts Dr. Hanan Polansky’s “microcompetition” as its own. Hilarity ensues. (David Gorski) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/sane-vax-microcompetition/ After DNA fragments were reportedly discovered in HPV vaccine, anti-vaccine groups raised irrational alarms. Now they are claiming that Dr. Polansky’s hypothesis about microcompetition (derived with the help of his invention, Computer Intuition!) supports their fears. It doesn’t: Dr. Gorski explains why.  

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VAERS stands for the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System - it is run by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) as one method of monitoring vaccine safety. This is a fairly basic and standard practice, similar to the less formal reports of drug adverse events to the FDA after drugs are on the market.

Such voluntary reporting systems are an early warning system. Their purpose is to indicate a possible new trend that might indicate a previously unrecognized side effect or risk. Such reporting systems are also important because drugs are typically studies in thousands of individuals before going to market, but then they may be used by orders of magnitude more people, perhaps millions. Therefore there may be side effects or risks that are statistically too small to show up in studies of thousands of people, but will show up when given to millions.

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Richard Saunders

While I’ve always felt that Australians tend to be somewhat more sensible and pragmatic about silly notions that so easily capture attention in other parts of the world, a matter that our friend Richard Saunders just called to my attention has brought all that to a screeching halt…

There exists a group calling itself the “Australian Vaccination Network” [AVN]. It’s headed by Meryl Dorey, a mother who has withheld immunization from her own children despite the threat to their health. As Aussie Dick Smith has said, wisely:

I think they're choosing not to vaccinate because they don't understand risk management. They are told that there is a risk with vaccination. Now, everything in life has a risk. There's a minute risk but it's been proved all over the world that the advantages far outweigh the risk.

  1. JREF Media Roundup, February 24, 2012
  2. Skeptic History: Wakefield
  3. Announcing the JREF's Skeptical Group Database
  4. An Introduction to Human Information Processing (Part 1)