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Comment by lovich | Hacker News Reader

Why is it so hard to believe scientific consensus, especially when the papers on are available for free on places like arxiv?

I’d be somewhat more amenable to the idea that the pharma corps were the bad guy here, I think my post history shows I’m solidly anti corporate, but I can’t get past all the logical inconsistencies and errors in the anti vax crowds side.

Like look at RFKs critique here. The study was on weather or not vaccines cause autism in children. RFK critiqued this because they excluded dead children who were the “most likely to be harmed”(paraphrase).

That is a logical error, he’s complaining that the study didn’t study things the study wasn’t studying. Why am I supposed to take people seriously when the bedrock of their arguments are ludicrous?

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He (RFK) didn't just critique the exclusion of children that died:

> The exclusion included all children who died before age two, those diagnosed early with respiratory conditions, and an astonishing 34,547 children — 2.8% of the study population — whose vaccination records showed the highest aluminum exposure levels.

> ... The authors, without explanation, deemed these high exposures “implausible,” even though those implausibly high exposures are routine for American children who follow the recommended immunization schedule.

I'm not arguing the study should be retracted, but asking why those high exposure children were excluded seems reasonable. Also, the children who died presumably died at some point after receiving vaccinations. Excluding them entirely seems like it could miss potential harm and seems relevant to the studies purpose of links to chronic disease.

I agree with you that vaccines are beneficial. It still makes sense to understand the tradeoffs and ask reasonable questions about potential harms.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/flawed-science-bought-conclu...

Just to be clear - I'm not anti vax and I'm not commenting here in support of RFK or his specific criticisms. This is something of a sidebar.

I'm just curious about how many intelligent people take pharma company statements, or conclusions they've paid researchers for, as gospel.

(I'm being rate limited, as you noticed in your other comment. Yes I am here in good faith, no I am not ragebaiting. I don't have permanent accounts on HN to avoid doxxing, thanks for your concern, hope you can drop the ad hominems and focus on the discussion at hand)

I’ll respond since this does appear to be good faith. Also yeah, they turned up the rate limiter, I’m getting hit every day, but you’ve got to admit between your user name implying you’re not real science and the content of your comments, how people would not believe you were being in good faith.

Anyway, we’re not taking the pharma company’s word as gospel, that’s why people are looking at scientific studies which can be analyzed and falsified in a reproduction. The alternative in this situation is either doing nothing, in which case what is there to discuss, or taking RFKs word as gospel and he is historically a crank, his argument is logically flawed, and critically, he’s brought no counter evidence or science on his side.

He just doesn’t like the results of the study and wants it to go away

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