McCain embraces pseudoscience? |
3rd March 2008
This is a little frightening:
At a town hall meeting Friday in Texas, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., declared that “there’s strong evidence” that thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was once in many childhood vaccines, is responsible for the increased diagnoses of autism in the U.S. — a position in stark contrast with the view of the medical establishment.
…
McCain said, per ABC News’ Bret Hovell, that “It’s indisputable that (autism) is on the rise amongst children, the question is what’s causing it. And we go back and forth and there’s strong evidence that indicates that it’s got to do with a preservative in vaccines.”
Of course, there’s not any evidence to support such a claim. The latest studies show that there’s no link and the evidence for it in the first place was flimsy at best.
As Tapper points out, this is actually a dangerous statement; McCain lending his authority to this could cause some to forgo vaccination of their children.
So, what do you think? Should presidential candidates be making statements about scientific issues, especially when the consensus of the scientific and medical establishment contradicts them? We expect them to act if we have solid scientific evidence of a problem, but this is veering into pronouncements on whether such a problem exists.
(via Political Animal)
Presidential candidayes should only make statements about scientific issues if their long term goal is win an Oscar or the Nobel Peace Prize.
So, I have been thinking about this one since last night, and there is one thing about it that really stands out to me. One of the major jobs of the President (and other elected officials) is to educate the people on things that they ought to be aware of. This was highlighted this morning on NPR when I was listening to a piece on NPR about FDR. One of the best things that he did to help bring the country out of recession was to talk to the people and explain what led us into recession in the first place.
Passing along unfounded information isn’t helping anyone. What McCain says seems to make sense, but when it runs counter to the scientific evidence, there is a real problem.
I know this is off topic but must needs it be said.
FDR no better understood what caused the depression than how to cure it.
Generally, everything that comes from the mouth of a politician should be taken with great skepticism - especially one with a $Trillion budget.
You know what they say about opinions Dave, everyone has one
and I mean everyone, even the staff at the New York Federal Reserve:
So, I would add that generally everything that comes out of the mouth of an economist should be taken with a grain of salt.
Let’s have a real debate about this, Shane. For starters I have a few “economists” on my side that think that FDR’s policies were foolish including: Ben Bernanke, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Arthur Laffer, Freidrich Heyak, Arnold Kling, Don Boudreaux, Jim Powell, and even the icon of modern liberalism, John Meynard Keynes (Keynes argued for deficit spending not price controls, the tripling of taxes when the money supply was already severely strained, or the destruction of the food stock.)
Funny how the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve agrees with me and not with either of the authors you linked.
Why is it that the U.S economy took over twice as long to recover than the rest of Europe? Sweden was out of recession by 1934. Switzerland by 1933, England by 1935. Was it because they didn’t have the economic genius that was FDR?
Why did the US go back into recession in 1936 when the rest of the world didn’t?
I know the guy is a hero of the left but increasingly the evidence is that FDR kept the country in much worse shape for an additional seven years - and you’ll have a hard time finding many contemporary economists - save Brad DeLong - who think much differently.
Oh, and lest I forget I need to add: Alan Greenspan, Paul Volker, Lawrence Summers, Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Many, if not most, of these give FDR credit for the FDIC and moving us off of the Gold Standard but universally they denounce the NIRA - a “major achievement” in his first 100 days done by trashing the Constitution.
Dave, that isn’t a debate, that is a list of economist.
We can both make lists all day long, and in the end your will likely be longer than mine. On the other hand, that doesn’t count for shit because I could make a list a mile long of climatologist that believe global warming is real versus the handful that don’t, but that hasn’t kept you from being a skeptic. I might add that climatology is real science too.
I will instead defer to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. on this one:
And I don’t take them seriously. I think that they have fun speculating, but in the end that is all it is and I am generally less than impressed. You see, I could care less if the new deal could have been ended a few years earlier or not. That is so much less important than the humanity his policies inserted into the system. As Schlesinger so eloquently said:
Perhaps the case has been made that the depression could have ended a few years before. What is more important was that in the long run a society was created that cared for the people that made it up in such a way as to provide security under which something damn near a golden age could flourish. This went on until about the time that some of the economist you listed above ‘took charge’. Things aren’t looking so good right now. Are they?
So, no. I am not going to have a debate where we trade names of economists. That feels sort of pointless.
That’s nice, Shane. Defer to a non-economist for your argument about economics.
And as for things being “good right now” it begs the question; compared to when?
I think I told you how i feel about economist. Why would i rely on them to do my arguing for me?
I am not familiar with this particular vaccination issue, but I do believe that we must be careful about making “science” (”technology”) a new “religion.”
I personally view vaccinations as a primitive approach to “disease prevention.” (Yes, I know, it has “worked,” but there are side effects: increased immune deficiency, for one, and drug resistant “bugs” for another.)
That said, John McCain does seem to display gross tendencies to “wing it.”
Who is resorting to pseudoscience?
From the AP:
It never ceases to amaze me how people who believe themselves to be critically thinking adults can look the other way in the vaccine debate. While vaccines may have some obvious benefits, but as with any health care procedure, one needs to be educated about the whole of the vaccine debate in order to give informed consent to be vaccinated, or allow their child to be vaccinated. There is plenty of evidence, anecdotal and statistical, about potential adverse effects of vaccination.
Where the pseudoscience lies in the vaccination debate is with policy makers who blindly accept notions from pharmaceutical corporations and doctors who won’t look at the other side of the issue and acknowledge the potentially fatal or life-long devastating consequences of vaccination. Nor are they willing to look at the potentially beneficial effects that certain diseases have on stimulating the development of our immune systems.
I wondered if someone would take issue with me calling the vaccine-autism link pseudoscience. I got that plus arrogant condemnation of doctors and condescending rhetoric about critical thinking. Neat.
I’m not in the habit of using lawsuits as scientific evidence, especially ones that are only tangentially related to what anti-vaccination types are claiming. As your quote states, that case deals with a rare condition worsened by vaccinations. What McCain and other proponents of a link claim is that thimerosal is responsible for the rise in autism. Like I said, the evidence for that has been debunked or contradicted by numerous recent studies showing no link. One of the famous proponents of the link said we’d see a drop in California after they removed thimerosal from vaccinations and that hasn’t happened.
I don’t want to start a debate about the usefulness of vaccinations overall. I don’t want polio back, but that’s just me. McCain’s claim was pretty specific and it’s contradicted by the evidence we have. There’s not much more to it.
McCain wouldn’t be McCain if he didn’t wing it occasionally.