Mercury has a use …

…inside a clock.

Statistical critique: where do we draw the line? (An application to drug safety analysis)

I just read an interesting entry (and thread) on Andrew Gelman’s statistical blog that goes along the lines of some questions I have been pondering lately. Specifically, these two paragraphs hit me (this is form an email to Gelman):

The whole spirit of your blog would have led, in my view, to a rejection of the [...]

Lying with statistics: when statistics can’t tell the truth, or why I’m interested in the statistics of drug safety (and an application to the thimerosal-autism controversy)

Drug safety is hard to study. There are so many things that can go wrong with the human body. To statistically analyze every single possible thing that can go wrong is impossible. There are thousands of possible adverse events, a whole lot of laboratory measurements that have to be taken (so we can address, among [...]

While anti-vaccine researchers are being charged with ethical lapses, the mercury issue marches on

Dr. Mercola links to an public service announcement about the presence of mercury in vaccines. This PSA(Public Service Announcement) contains one tidbit that I haven’t heard yet: that the EPA suggests that the amount of mercury still present in vaccines is safe only if you weigh over 500 pounds. Is there a source for this [...]

Mark and David Geiers’ IRB: If there is a story here, I’m disappointed

Activists asserting a connection between vaccines (or components of vaccines) and autism have had a hard time of late. First, it was Dr. Wakefield, proponent of the theory of the connection between the MMR(Mumps, Measles, Rubella) vaccine and both autism and irritable bowels, was formally charged with professional misconduct. Now, Kathleen Siedel of Neurodiversity has [...]

More on Ayurveda

So, not long after I read Orac’s hit piece on alternative medicine about a very old JAMA article about mercury in Ayurvedic herbs manufactured in India and sold in the US, I read this entry on how the government of India is testing Ayurveda and trying to see how it fits with the world of [...]

Statistical commentary on the Geiers’ latest paper, Part IV

In “Part I”:http://www.randomjohn.info/wordpress/2006/03/03/statistical-commentary-on-the-geiers-latest-paper-part-i/, “Part II”:http://www.randomjohn.info/wordpress/2006/03/03/statistical-commentary-on-the-geiers-latest-paper-part-ii/, and “Part III”:http://www.randomjohn.info/wordpress/2006/03/03/statistical-commentary-on-the-geiers-latest-paper-part-iii/ of this series I discussed the statistical methodologies in the recent paper by Mark and David Geier, who extracted data from the VAERS(Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) and the CDDS(California Department of Developmental Services) and tried to show that efforts to remove the compound thimerosal from vaccines [...]

Statistical commentary on the Geiers’ latest paper, Part III

In “Part I”:http://www.randomjohn.info/wordpress/2006/03/03/statistical-commentary-on-the-geiers-latest-paper-part-i/ and “Part II”:http://www.randomjohn.info/wordpress/2006/03/03/statistical-commentary-on-the-geiers-latest-paper-part-ii/ of this series I discussed the statistical methodologies in the recent paper by Mark and David Geier, who extracted data from the VAERS(Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) and the CDDS(California Department of Developmental Services) and tried to show that efforts to remove the compound thimerosal from vaccines have resulted [...]

Statistical commentary on the Geiers’ latest paper, Part II

In “Part I”:http://www.randomjohn.info/wordpress/2006/03/03/statistical-commentary-on-the-geiers-latest-paper-part-i/, I discussed how Mark and David Geier in their paper used a bizarre analysis of VAERS(Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) data to support their conclusion that the removal of thimerosal from vaccines resulted in a decline in cases of newly diagnosed/reported autism. I concluded that their incorrect analysis did not really support [...]

Statistical commentary on the Geier’s latest paper, Part I

The Geier -brothers- +father and son team+ have “released a paper”:http://www.jpands.org/vol11no1/geier.pdf discussing the link between vaccine preservative thimerosal (a compound containing -m-ethylmercury) and autism. I have been “invited to comment”:http://www.patsullivan.com/blog/2006/03/geiers_link_aut.html on the matter, and have chosen to accept the invitation in a very narrow capacity. That very narrow capacity is specifically on the statistics of [...]