Strange! The 37th Skeptics’ Circle was lost in the Bermuda triangle but magically reappeared again today. Ooh! Anyway, click over to Autism Diva’s place quickly and read it before it disappears again.
There’s a lot of good stuff there this week, but I should draw your attention especially to a couple of exposes of those mercury-autism quacks Mark and David Geier. First, Kathleen Seidel exposes some phony credentials the Geier’s are claiming, and she follows this with a revelation of the Geiers’ huge conflict of interest – they set up their own Institutional Review Board to review their own studies! Orac then provides some additional perspective on the significance of this. (It’s a real no no in the research world apparently. See especially the comment from Mark Chu-Carroll.) Fascinating stuff. Remember this the next time some mercury-autism nut quotes the Geiers as the source for “studies” showing thimerosal in vaccines causes autism, or when they cite “conflict of interest” as the sole reason to dismiss studies that don’t support their mercury-causes-autism beliefs.
The circle is not just about autism – there’s plenty of other good stuff there too.
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