PBS blunders on vaccines and autism

Earlier this week, the NewsHour on PBS – usually one of the best news shows on TV – featured a segment on “Parents’ fear of vaccines.” The transcript of the May 22 show, available here, illustrates how badly the news media tends to report science. One reason for this flawed reporting is the media’s belief – probably stemming from training in journalism schools – that they need to present “both sides” of a story.

The story opens well, with a tale of a child in San Diego, California, who had to be quarantined because she was exposed to measles. The source was a 7-year-old boy who’d been exposed to the measles in Switzerland, and who hadn’t been vaccinated. The mother was shocked and upset that her daughter had to be quarantined. The un-vaccinated boy caused 70 children to be quarantined, 11 to come down with measles, and 1 to be hospitalized. Fortunately, all the children recovered.

Then the story goes off the rails: the reporter interviewed a mother – with no medical or scientific training – who read on the Internet “that the information I was getting from the mainstream medical community wasn't necessarily accurate. Nobody told me about possible reactions, such as increased chances of allergies, increased chances of asthma, increased chances of autoimmune disease. Nobody told me any of that.”

Well, nobody told her that because it isn’t true. However, the intrepid PBS reporter, Betty Ann Bowser, said it this way: “nobody told her that vaccines trigger autism in children, as she read on the Internet, because most doctors don't believe that's true.”

Here we have error number one: by saying “most doctors,” Bowser instantly implies that some doctors think otherwise. How is the viewer to know who is right? Bowser then goes on to report on the fraudulent 1998 study linking vaccines to autism (see my earlier blog post for much more on this), which she correct said “has since been discredited.” But then Bowser reported that “At the time, many vaccines contained a mercury-based preservative called thimerosal, and some research linked it to autism. By 2002, thimerosal had been removed from most vaccines. And since then, study after study has found no connection between vaccines and autism.”

Error number two: research did NOT link thimerosal to autism. This was one of the bogus claims – also discredited – made by Andrew Wakefield and others in their attempts to link vaccines to autism. As I reported earlier, Wakefield’s original study was discredited and his own co-authors repudiated it, after they learned (among other things) that he was being paid huge fees by a lawyers’ group that was attempting to sue vaccine makers. Multiple studies have failed to show any link between thimerosal and autism. And that’s the best science can do: if there isn’t a link, we can never prove a negative, we can only show that the evidence doesn’t support a link.

The PBS story then righted itself a bit, quoting a medical researcher (Dr. Anne Schuchat) on the enormous benefits that childhood vaccines have produced:

“The vaccines that babies get today are preventing about 33,000 deaths over the course of those babies' lives, preventing 14 million infections, and also saving about $43 billion.”

But Bowser (the reporter) didn’t stop there – she had to report (error number three) “the other side.” So she quoted Jay Gordon, a pediatrician who is in the Wakefield camp – he thinks vaccines cause autism, despite the lack of evidence. Bowser reports that “not one of his 3,000 patients has been vaccinated against all the diseases recommended by the government; 50 percent of them haven't been vaccinated at all.” And she quotes Gordon saying

“I think the children who receive no vaccines at all are statistically safe…. Vaccines are causing an increase in the incidence of everything from diabetes to multiple sclerosis to other autoimmune diseases. And these are extremely rare occurrences, OK -- overstating it, OK, isn't honest, but it's happening.”

Wow, this is really damaging stuff. How many parents will withhold vaccines from their kids after hearing this? There is no scientific evidence to support Gordon’s position, and a great deal of evidence contradicting it. And his phrase “statistically safe” is tragically wrong – individually, some of these children will likely be fine, but statistically speaking, they are clearly in danger, and furthermore they are endangering their communities.

Jay Gordon is a charlatan. He is a well-known pediatrician who has appeared on countless news shows, and he clearly enjoys the publicity – and the money – he gets from being a public figure. For some interesting rebuttals of Gordon’s mistaken claims about autism, see this Skeptico blog from 2005 and the detailed rebuttal by Orac, who points out that Gordon is a big fan of David and Mark Geier, two frauds who are little more than professional expert witnesses and consultants for people suing vaccine makers.

Unfortunately, Bowser (the reporter) didn’t bother to look for skeptical views about Gordon, but apparently was happy to have someone to present “the other side.” By giving a platform on a widely respected news show to these anti-vaccine charlatans, the NewsHour and PBS are doing more harm than they realize.

Towards the end of the piece, Bowser brings in another medical expert, Dr. James Cherry, a professor at UCLA who does research on vaccines. Cherry helps right the ship (which the reporter is determined to sink) in this exchange:

DR. JAMES CHERRY: I think it's terrible [Dr. Gordon's practices, that is]. Once those children start crawling around, they're going to need tetanus [vaccines]. They're exposed to tetanus and injury, and they're going to have to be treated, and the treatment is going to be far worse. And it's actually bad for these people.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Is that irresponsible?

DR. JAMES CHERRY: Well, in my opinion, it is.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Is he doing something dangerous?

DR. JAMES CHERRY: Yes.

Too bad Bowser didn’t end there. But instead, she ended with a quote from Bernadine Healy, a former Director of NIH. Astonishingly, Healy said “Vaccines are safe, but there may be the susceptible group. I think the public health officials have been too quick to dismiss the hypothesis as irrational without sufficient studies of causation.”

I don’t know what studies Healy has been reading – if any – but she’s out of her depth here. The NewsHour missed a great opportunity to educate the public and improve the health of our children. My fear is that they’ve contributed to a trend – withholding vaccines from children – that will lead to many needless illnesses, and deaths, in the years to come.

Candidates re-state their views on autism

After both John McCain and Barack Obama have recently made erroneous statements linking vaccines to autism, it appears that their campaigns have take steps to produce scientifically accurate positions on their websites. This is to be applauded – although we’ll wait and see what the candidates say if they are questioned about this again. Because I blogged on this recently, I thought it was worth posting this update showing the candidates’ responses to the criticism they received (deservedly so) from many quarters after their irresponsible remarks. I’m not entirely convinced that their websites represent their views – I’d rather hear it from their own mouths. Still, this is progress.

As of today, here is what both candidates’ websites say on the topic of autism:
Obama: at his website he has these two paragraphs describing the issue:

"More than one million Americans have autism, a complex neurobiological condition that has a range of impacts on thinking, feeling, language, and the ability to relate to others. As diagnostic criteria broaden and awareness increases, more cases of autism have been recognized across the country. Barack Obama believes that we can do more to help autistic Americans and their families understand and live with autism. He has been a strong supporter of more than $1 billion in federal funding for autism research on the root causes and treatments, and he believes that we should increase funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to truly ensure that no child is left behind.
More than anything, autism remains a profound mystery with a broad spectrum of effects on autistic individuals, their families, loved ones, the community, and education and health care systems. Obama believes that the government and our communities should work together to provide a helping hand to autistic individuals and their families."

After John McCain's strongly worded but inaccurate statement on the issue (“there’s strong evidence that indicates it’s [the rise of autism] got to do with a preservative in vaccines,” he said), his campaign had an even bigger error to correct, so they made a special web page on autism, here. (This page was created sometime after his comments.) I'll quote the entire content verbatim here:

John McCain is very concerned about the rising incidence of autism among America's children and has continually supported research into its causes and treatment. He has heard countless stories about families' hardships obtaining a diagnosis for their children's autism and accessing quality medical treatment. He believes that federal research efforts should support broad approaches to understanding the factors that may play a role in the incidence of autism, including factors in our environment, for both prevention and treatment purposes.
John McCain was proud to lend his support to the Combating Autism Act of 2006, which he cosponsored, and worked to ensure its enactment. This law is helping to increase public awareness and screening of autism spectrum disorder, promote the use of evidence-based interventions, and create autism Centers of Excellence for Autism Spectrum Disorder Research and Epidemiology. John McCain understands that despite the federal and scientific research efforts to date, the exact causes of autism are not yet known and greater research is needed to understand this disorder. That is why in November 2007, he joined with Senator Lieberman in requesting the leadership of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which has jurisdiction over federal research into autism, to hold a hearing on federal research efforts regarding factors affecting incidence and treatment in order to help determine where research efforts can best be directed. As President, John McCain will work to advance federal research into autism, promote early screening, and identify better treatment options, while providing support for children with autism so that they may reach their full potential.

Both candidates have retreated to carefully worded statements supporting more research, and saying nothing about vaccines. Both websites say that the causes of autism are not yet known. I’d be much more impressed if they would come out and say explicitly that multiple scientific studies have failed to show any link between vaccines and autism – and even better yet, if they would say that they don’t want to pour more valuable research money into investigating a discredited hypothesis. But I expect that the carefully worded statements on their websites – designed not to offend anyone, including those who persist in their belief that vaccines cause autism – are the best we’re going to get. At least the websites don’t repeat the blunders the candidates themselves have made.

The Vioxx Wall of Shame

The April 16 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has an astonishing account of medical and research fraud, perpetrated primarily by Merck with the willing assistance of a number of biomedical researchers. What’s astonishing is not only that it happened, but that apparently this sort of thing goes on all the time, according to the accompanying editorial in JAMA.

The details reveal an extensive, systematic effort by Merck to shape and distort the research around its blockbuster drug Vioxx (rofecoxib). Merck ran its own trials of Vioxx, prepared the results for publication, and then recruited outside authors to be the lead authors, because (obviously) that would give the studies more credibility. We can assume they (Merck) intended to then describe each paper as “a study led by independent unversity researchers....” In many cases the authors had little or nothing to do with the study – they merely attached their name to the paper after the study was completed. In some cases, Merck paid the authors a consulting fee. Perhaps these scientists were simply padding their resumes, or perhaps they really believed that the studies were good science – but by allowing Merck to use their names in this fraudulent manner, these scientists undermined the integrity of the scientific literature. They deserve to be called out, so I’ve decided to create a Vioxx Wall of Shame and list their names in this post. All of these names can also be found in the article in JAMA by Ross et al., JAMA 299(15):1800-12.

The details only came to light because of the ongoing lawsuits against Merck on behalf of patients who might have been harmed by Vioxx. [Aside: for those who don’t know, Vioxx is a painkiller much like ibuprofen/Advil or aspirin.] The scientists who wrote the exposes in JAMA had access to numerous internal documents that normally would never see the light of day. So for example, Ross et al. found internal versions of a paper listing 9 Merck authors, with the first author left unspecified as “External author?” When the paper appeared, not one but three academic authors appeared as the first three authors, followed by 8 of the 9 Merck authors (one was removed for an unknown reason) – despite the fact that the final version was almost unchanged from the draft. This is just one of the smoking guns that show not only Merck’s deception, but also the unethical behavior of these scientists. These three authors are the first three names on the Vioxx Wall of Shame.

The Ross et al. study found 20 articles published on Vioxx by Merck, and in 16 out of 20, the first author is an external academic scientist. This despite the fact that for all the studies, a Merck employee was the author of the first draft of the manuscript. On those 16 articles, external authors were usually first, second, and third authors (sometimes all three) on the published version. This illustrates that the academic authors were likely motivated by academic “credit” they gain by appearing to lead these studies: the first author, and to a lesser extent the second and third authors, are generally regarded as the intellectual and scientific leaders of a study, and the first author gets the most credit for the publication. The problem is that they took credit for work they did not do.

Perhaps even more egregious is the practice of hiring outside companies to write the papers. Merck did this multiple times for Vioxx. The fact that such companies exist, and make a profit, is strong evidence that this happens all the time. For example, one company (Scientific Therapeutics Information, STI) wrote a paper and sent it to Merck with an email message in which they say that Merck needed to "invite" an author. In another case, STI describes an “independent” author who was “too busy” to make revisions to “his” article. STI wrote to Merck because they wanted to be paid more money for handing the revisions. Another company, Health Science Communications, sent a contract to Merck for $23,841 to write a manuscript including figures and tables, “journal-ready for author submission to journal”. One particularly damning STI document discloses their progress (in 1999) on writing 8 studies on Vioxx targeted at different journals: 7 of the 8 studies eventually appeared, all in the intended journals, and all of them with academics as sole author. Those authors appear in the Wall of Shame.

Vioxx Wall of Shame

Leon J. Thal, UC San Diego
Steven H. Ferris, NYU School of Medicine
Louis Kirby, Pivotal Reearch Centers
These three listed their names as the first 3 authors on a paper in Neuropsychopharmacology (2005;30(6):1204-15) despite having made few or no contributions to the paper.

William Garnett, Department of Pharmacy Virginia Commonwealth University, Medical College of Virginia. Listed as sole author on a paper about Vioxx that was paid for by Merck and written by a private company, Scientific Therapeutics Information. The paper was: Clinical implications of drug interactions with coxibs. Pharmacotherapy 2001;21(10):1223-32.

Noor Gajraj, Dept. of Anesthesiology, UT Southwester Medical Center. Listed as sole author on a paper about Vioxx that was paid for by Merck and written by a private company, Scientific Therapeutics Information. The paper was: Cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors. Anesth Analg. 2003 Jun;96(6):1720-38.

Arthur Weaver, Arthritis Center of Nebraska. Listed as sole author on a paper about Vioxx that was paid for by Merck and written by a private company, Scientific Therapeutics Information. The paper was: Rofecoxib: clinical pharmacology and clinical experience. Clin Ther. 2001 Sep;23(9):1323-38.

Mark C. Hochberg, School of Medicine, University of Maryland. Listed as sole author on a paper about Vioxx that was paid for by Merck and written by a private company, Scientific Therapeutics Information. Paper: Treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis with COX-2-selective inhibitors: a managed care perspective. Am J Manag Care. 2002 Nov;8(17 Suppl):S502-17. Dr. Hochberg gets extra credit for a later article titled “COX-2: Where are we in 2003? - Be strong and resolute: continue to use COX-2 selective inhibitors at recommended dosages in appropriate patients.” (Arthritis Res Ther. 2003;5(1):28-31.) I have to wonder if he wrote that one himself.

F. Michael Gloth III, Victory Springs Senior Health Associates and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Listed as sole author on a paper about Vioxx that was paid for by Merck and written by a private company, Scientific Therapeutics Information. Paper: Pain management in older adults: prevention and treatment. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2001 Feb;49(2):188-99.

Thomas Schnitzer, Northwestern University Medical School.
Listed as sole author on a paper about Vioxx that was paid for by Merck and written by a private company, Scientific Therapeutics Information. Paper:
Osteoarthritis management: the role of cyclooxygenase-2-selective inhibitors.
Clin Ther. 2001 Mar;23(3):313-326;

A. Mark Fendrick, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan. Listed as sole author on a paper about Vioxx that was paid for by Merck and written by a private company, Scientific Therapeutics Information. Paper: Cost-effective use of NSAIDs: issues pertinent to coxib use in managed care. Am J Manag Care. 2002 Nov;8(17 Suppl):S529-41.

So that's the list. These scientists have authored many other publications besides their Vioxx work, and I have to wonder about their other studies. A scientist who will put his name on a paper at the behest of a drug company cannot be trusted to conduct objective science. The editors of JAMA (DeAngelis and Fontanarosa) called for these scientists and others like them to be “banned from publishing articles in that journal" and to be “reported to the appropriate authority (ie, medical school dean or department chair)” - a good idea, so I wonder if JAMA has reported the authors described in their own journal?

The JAMA editors also call for sanctions against the scientists who participate in these schemes. As the JAMA editors say in their editorial:

“Individuals, particularly physicians, who allow themselves to be used in this way, especially for financial gain, manifest a behavior that is unprofessional and demeaning to the medical profession and to scientific research.”

To some scientists, the JAMA revelations may come as no surprise. But to most of us, the behavior of Merck and of the scientists who colluded with Merck is shocking and reprehensible. Medical journals need to tighten their oversight, as do the employers (mostly medical schools and universities) of these authors. Quoting the JAMA editorial again: “When integrity in medical science ... is impugned or threatened ... patients, clinicians, and reearchers are all at risk for harm, and public trust in research is jeopardized.”

Finally, all of this is made worse by the fact that Vioxx does kill people, and Merck knew it, and they kept their own findings from the public. This is revealed in the other JAMA paper by Psaty and Kronmal from the same issue. Their investigation revealed that Merck's own internal analysis, in April 2001, "identified a significant increase in total mortality" among patients taking Vioxx versus placebo. Psaty and Kronmal show how selective reporting of results made Vioxx appear safe when it really isn't. They call for greater oversight of clinical trials and much greater scrutiny by journal editors and reviewers. We can start by calling out scientists such as those in the Vioxx Wall of Shame.

Vaccines, autism, and Obama

I’m really disappointed in my candidate.

I recently put a “Scientists for Obama” bumper sticker on my car, because I liked his positions on science and other issues, but this week he joined McCain and Clinton on the bad science bandwagon that continues to attempt to link vaccines to autism.

First, McCain made a statement that “there’s strong evidence that indicates it’s [the rise of autism] got to do with a preservative in vaccines.” In fact there is no evidence in support of this and much evidence against it. Then Clinton answered, in response to a questionnaire from an autism activist group (which is promoting the bogus vaccine-autism link), that she was “committed to ... find the causes of autism, including ... vaccines,” and further that “we don’t know what kind of link there is between vaccines and autism, but we should find out.” Wrong, Senator Clinton – we do know what kind of link there is, because we’ve run dozens of studies, and the answer is that there is no link. No link!

And finally, most recently, our last hope, Barack Obama, who had stayed out of it, said at a rally this week that “some people are suspicious that it’s [autism is] connected to the vaccines.... The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it.” Wrong, Senator Obama. The science is as conclusive as it can get, and there is no link. Unfortunately, most people – and most Senators, it seems – don’t understand that scientific methods cannot prove a negative. So if there is no link between A and B, you can study it to death, and the best you can say is that “we failed to find a link.”

I blogged on the autism-vaccine issue not long ago, so I won’t repeat that here, except to remind readers that the controversy all started (see my earlier blogpost) with a fraudulent study by Andrew Wakefield in The Lancet arguing for a link between vaccines and autism. Wakefield's data was collected fraudulently, and after the fraud came out – including Wakefield’s financial interest in the study – his own co-authors repudiated him and retracted their findings. Wakefield is under criminal investigation in the UK, so he relocated to the U.S., where our lax regulations have allowed him to set up shop again, offering his own brand of “help” to parents of autistic children. Meanwhile he tours the U.S. giving talks and interviews, pushing this bad science, and making plenty of money off the parents of autistic children.

The blogs I’ve seen on this have multiple responses from vaccine-autism believers, including parents with heartbreaking personal stories, and a growing number of journalists who are astonishingly ignorant of science (including David Kirby at the Huffington Post, who seems to think he’s figured it all out). They are all wrong, but their activism continues to muddy the waters and confuse the public. There are numerous sites explaining the science in more measured terms, including the Institute of Medicine’s detailed reports, and it’s a shame that the science is being shouted down.

I wrote to Senator Obama today – on his campaign website – asking him to talk to a real scientist about this issue and to reconsider his statements. If he doesn’t – and I don’t expect that his staff will even tell him about my comments – then we’re left with three leading candidates who are all misinformed on this important public health issue. My only (slight) consolation is that Obama’s statement is the most muted of the three, since he didn’t actually assert that there was a link, just that the science was inconclusive. If I get a reply from the Obama campaign, I'll be sure to post it here.

WARF is evil

No, not Worf – the bad Klingon with the heart of gold in Star Trek: The Next Generation. I like him just fine.

I’m writing this week about WARF, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. Sounds harmless, doesn’t it? Well, unfortunately it’s not. You see, WARF holds three patents on embryonic stem cells, and they are using these patents to slow down or block research on stem cells – research that is one of the most promising avenues for curing a wide range of diseases, and even slowing the effects of aging.

Why would anyone want to hinder the progress of stem cell research? Well, there are two reasons (at least). Everyone knows that some people are morally opposed to the use of human embryonic stem cell research, but WARF doesn’t have a problem there. (Neither do I; in fact I strongly support it.) No, the second reason is simply this: money. WARF wants to impose licensing fees on anyone who wants to do embryonic stem cell research – that’s the whole purpose of their patents. WARF isn’t a research institution, it’s just a money-making foundation for the University of Wisconsin, so they’re not doing any research themselves. The patent is nothing more than a dollar-extracting device for them.

Personally, I think the whole patent system is a mess, and it should be scrapped and replaced by a system that can handle modern technology, and that gives scientists and engineers the freedom to pursue their work, rather than wasting countless hours (and dollars) on lawyers. But that’s a larger issue.

Even if I liked patents, I would oppose patents on embryonic stem cells. These are a life form, not an invention. Research is at an early stage, and patents are particularly damaging at this point in their development. One damaging effect – impossible to quantify – is that patents will discourage scientists from going into the field in the first place, because they know they might have difficulty pursuing their ideas. Scientists have already pointed out that the the WARF stem cell patents are overly broad, making it too easy for WARF to demand payments from scientists working on a wide range of new techniques.

The most recent development (in March) was that the US Patent and Trade Office (PTO) ruled in favor of WARF on 3 legal challenges to their stem cell patents. The lawsuits were filed by two citizens groups who claimed that the invention was obvious and not deserving of a patent. Last year the PTO agreed to take a look, which raised everyone’s hopes (except WARF’s), but this new ruling is a big letdown.

Scientists have complained in the past that WARF charges high fees – especially high for private companies, less so for universities) and requires them to wade through reams of paperwork (a huge waste of time) to use embryonic stem cells. See the Science article from last April in which George Daley of Harvard complains that his mouse research “would grind to a halt” if he had to deal WARF’s red tape.

I’m not surprised that the PTO ruled in WARF’s favor – after all, PTO has a selfish interest in keeping the patent system as it is. The more patents, the better (for them). The real problem, though, isn’t the legal claim – the challenge to the patents was a long shot in the first place, and I never thought they had a good chance of winning. The problem is that we allow these types of patents in the first place.

Meanwhile, WARF claims it is seeing “a small amount of commercial royalties” – as if the fact that they weren’t making much money was somehow a mitigating factor. If this is true, then why are they holding the entire research enterprise hostage for a small amount of money that they want for themselves? Obviously they are trying to distract attention from the real issue, which is that we’re allowing a private entity to prevent work on problems that could benefit all mankind. This is completely and utterly illogical; it appears that our legal system has us so tied into knots that we can’t - as a society, as a species – do what’s best for ourselves.

I’ve heard the arguments from the other side – that patents are necessary for a thriving commercial sector, especially for technology companies. I don’t buy it. The arguments just don’t hold up in today’s rapidly changing environment. Giving a person (or a corporate entity) exclusive control over an invention for 20+ years may have made sense 50 or 100 years ago, but it doesn’t today. And even if it did, it doesn’t work for stem cell technology. WARF is hampering research for their own short-term profit goals.

If the University of Wisconsin truly wants to benefit society, then it should insist that WARF license its stem cell patents for free to anyone who wants them. (WARF’s home page says that it “ensures the inventions of UW-Madison benefit humankind” – so they apparently agree with me!) If they argue that they deserve some profits, I’d point out that the U.S. government paid for the work in the first place. It’s true that U.S. law allows universities to claim ownership – and patents – on work produced on their campuses with federal support, but just because you can do something doesn’t make it okay.

WARF is evil.

Chiropractic hucksters

Time for a vacation blog. I’m on vacation this week, and I can’t help noticing all the ads in the local paper for various scams. Are pseudoscience and hoaxes are a necessary part of our tourism industry? People seem to enjoy being taken on ghost tours and trying out various sham treatments at resort spas, and buying whatever bogus “lucky” artifacts the locals are selling. But today’s post is prompted by a recurring back injury that I aggravated this week. It’s slowly getting better, aided by ibuprofen, but there are plenty of hucksters here who would love to give me a spinal “adjustment” to cure my pain – or so they claim in the local newspaper.

No thanks, I’ll stick with ibuprofen and rest. Chiropractic is, in the words of a recent book, “the greatest hoax of the century.” (See the book by L.A. Chotkowski at Amazon.com.)

Perhaps I should be amazed that chiropractic still flourishes after over a century in which not a single study has shown it to be effective. One reason is that chiropracters are numerous and well-organized – the reviews of Chotkowski's book on Amazon.com are mostly negative, and many are likely written by chiropracters. (If any of them read this blog, I’m sure I’ll get some similar comments.) Chiropracters call themselves doctors and use “Dr.” in front of their name, but they do not have medical training and are not M.D.’s. They have their own schools, with woefully low standards, and some of their beliefs are so strange that they would be laughable, except for the fact that these people actually inflict treatments on unsuspecting patients. The “profession” thrives despite the fact that the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare concluded 40 years ago that chiropractic education is inadequate and that chiropractic theory was not based upon any valid science.

(You want to know one of their wacko beliefs? Well, chiropractic teaches that correcting “vertebral “subluxations” will cure infections, by “boosting the immune system.” I have to put that last phrase in quotes because the very notion of boosting the immune system is questionable – listen to Mark Crislip’s excellent QuackCast for more on that topic. Even more crazy – and harmful – is their opposition to vaccines. A former president of the International Chiropractic Association said in 1993 that he was “a firm opponent of artificial immunization and the antiquated germ theory on which it is based.” Apparently the ICA doesn't believe that bacteria and viruses cause disease. Eventually, Darwinian selection will weed these crazies out of the population, but that will take too long for me.)

The evidence against chiropractice is voluminous, and I won’t try to summarize it here, but Chirobase has a long list of links, including comments on how chiropracters lure people in, on the various scientific studies – all negative – testing the effectiveness of chiropractic, and on the harm that chiropractic can cause. One of the scariest is the risk of stroke from their neck manipulations. Chiropracters claim (of course) that the risk is small, but why take any risk for a treatment that has never been shown to be effective? The risk is great enough that a Chiropractic Stroke Awareness Group has been formed to try to educate the public.

I’ll stick with ibuprofen and rest. Meanwhile, perhaps the local spa can offer me some aromatherapy. Hey, at least there’s no risk of stroke – and it smells nice.

Creationism in a science journal, redux

It’s been a month since the controversy over the stealth attempt to sneak creationism into the well-respected journal Proteomics, but one outstanding question remains unanswered: how did this happen? Several of us have agreed to blog simultaneously today to demand an answer – see these blogs today for new postings:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula (P.Z. Myer’s science blog)
http://pimm.wordpress.com (Attila Csordas’s science blog)
http://larsjuhljensen.wordpress.com (Lars Juhl Jensen’s science blog)

When the article appeared originally (in the online version of the journal), we all pounced on the bizarre claim of a “mighty creator” that appeared in this paper. We also pointed out that the Editor-in-Chief (Michael Dunn) should have noticed that something was amiss from the title alone, which was “Mitochondria, the missing link between body and soul” – and also in the abstract, which claimed to “disprove the endosymbiotic hypothesis of mitochondrial evolution.”

Some astute readers further discovered, after a quick investigation, that most of the article was also plagiarized. In fact, so much of it was plagiarized that I suspect the only original text was the creationist nonsense. The EIC was able to force the authors to retract the article before it appeared in print, and all that remains is this retraction. The journal website says only that the retraction is “due a substantial overlap of the content of this article with previously published articles in other journals.”

The EIC should post more of an explanation at the journal website than this. We’d like to know if

1. the authors, Warda and Han, snuck their bogus claims into the article after the peer review process was complete,
2. the reviewers were sloppy and missed these claims, which were present in earlier drafts,
3. the reviewers were incompetent, or
4. the article wasn’t reviewed by independent peer reviewers.

Or maybe there’s another explanation. The journal should explain the full story on their website in a prominent location.

The obvious plagiarism made this easy for the EIC to force a retraction. What if it hadn’t been plagiarized, though – what then? I’d like to see a statement from the EIC repudiating the creationist claim and making it clear that such non-scientific claims won’t be permitted to slip through again.

Finally, I noticed that the Warda and Han article is listed by the journal’s website as the most-accessed article for the past month. Controversy brings attention, obviously, and Proteomics should use the attention to provide a full explanation of the Warda and Han fiasco.