when i read this i saw no mention of a control group?
Some gut bioma could theoretically be slightly better than other to deal with it. Some bacterias could be more efficient metabolizing some damaging products in our diet into other not so bad or even inocuous. Is teorethically possible.
Both problems could be related and in this sense is a pretty interesting field. They could just give to an artificial gut bioma in a petri dish some diluted compounds, (or just give some autist children organic cultured fruits and keep it in a pesticide free environment) and see what happens
Gut feeling: regulatory environment is a lot more strict these days, so we're probably a lot better off with today's pesticides than whatever straight-up toxic chemicals were used in the past. I bet if we started looking we'd see things like arsenic and similar used in the past.
This doesn't look very convincing though. Without a no-treatment or sham treatment control, the results could be placebo effect, reversion to the mean on their metrics, or due to the antibiotic treatment rather than the transplanted gut bacteria, or a just a statistical fluke with this small population.
One thing that stands out to me is the lack of difference in developmental age between 8 weeks and 2 years after treatment. I find it hard to understand how that would occur under the model where this treatment does something.
This begs the question, is any other treatment known to produce such strong results?
It's like finding a couple dozen people with the flu, feeding them chicken soup, and then reporting that a month later they feel healthier, so the soup must have helped. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't, but you didn't measure that so you don't know.
According to this professional medical trial, the recorded ASD scores are "based on the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) rated by a professional evaluator"
You should have specific knowledge of that evaluation in order to criticize it as relying on "subjective questionnaires" and shouldn't introduce doubt by simply stating something as "given".
I have two children with combinations of these symptoms and it's staggering how many of the symptoms could be interpreted either way depending on the classifying doctor's specialty.
Great, so we have a study showing that either the treatment or the placebo effect is very strong. Wait, that's not very useful, isn't it?
No need for a control group the effect is so strong!
Studies of psychological conditions are notoriously hard because much of the quantification is subjective, but this study wasn't even blinded and had no control.
Any study attempting to show or imply causation needs to control for confounding variables; this is statistics 101. Usually you do this with an aptly named control group.
If you don't have that control, you're left with "either my results are meaningful or else (very likely) there is a confounding factor." Great, that's not very useful.
So either, vaccine studies are "not good ones" as you say, or you perhaps have overlooked something?
It was difficult, but I got these two:
(1954) Salk study of anti polio vaccine: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114166/
(2009) Pregnancy and infant results after anti human papillomavirus: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19935017
There are probably more, but they are difficult to find.
As far as I have found, the only experiments that did do this were completely unethical, and have not been repeated in modern western science: (that I know of)
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-medic...
If the groups are big enough, you expect from statistic that both groups would have a similar number of ill people without treatment and a similar number and type of "sede effect"without treatment. So the difference can be atribute to the drug/vaccine, if statistically significant.
A study were all the participants are exposed on purpose to the disease is very difficult to justify, with or without control group. Perhaps a vaccine for a strain of cold, that is an illness with a very low rate of deadly complications?
Can you show me where this is demonstrated?
>A study were all the participants are exposed on purpose to the disease is very difficult to justify, with or without control group.
I agree, solid scientific study on vaccines is nearly immoral.
So from a dispassionate scientific perspective, it seems reasonable to state the science on vaccines is not settled.