Vaccine science is cargo cult science according to Feynman’s definition. There are a ton of peer reviewed papers demonstrating that vaccine aluminum is damaging, that vaccines are full of contaminants, that they can disrupt brain and immune system development, that the smallpox vaccine was ineffective, the polio vaccine is of questionable utility, other vaccines’ immunity wanes after only a few years. They never rebut as you can easily verify yourself by examining the citation list here for opposition and then searching the vaccine survey pdfs for the cites. They just ignore it.[3][4][5]
Climate science is cargo cult science. Climate “scientists” have been known to “hide” their own most interesting data, the data contradicting the prevailing theory which is what Feynman said a scientist should emphasize most prominently[6][7]. Alternative theories and methodological objections are ignored or white washed. (Search the IPCC reports for discussion of the opposition.) To say a science is cargo cult science is not to say that there are no papers published in it that are science, but it is to say one should repose zero or negative confidence in any pronouncement one has not personally verified from first principles.
http://TruthSift.com supports Feynman’s model of science applied to everything. Just as in mathematical practice, you can post proofs and refutations. But nothing is considered established unless every proposed refutation has an established counter-refutation. No proposed refutation can be ducked, and anybody who believes they have a rational objection may post it (and see the establishment statuses reflect the objection in real time). Try it out. Check out (and please contribute to) the ongoing diagrammings of the vaccine/climate science etc literatures. When they have passed through true logical review, confronting all the opposing arguments, what remains will be a genuine science.
[1] Richard P Feynman, What is Science? (1968) http://www-oc.chemie.uni-regensburg.de/diaz/img_diaz/feynman…nce_68.pdf
[2] Richard P Feynman, CARGO CULT SCIENCE (adapted from Caltech Commencement Address 1974) https://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
[3] Eric Baum The Top Ten Reasons I Believe Vaccine Safety Is an Epic Mass Delusion (2016) https://lifeboat.com/blog/2016/06/the-top-ten-reasons-i-beli…s-delusion
[4] TruthSift Topic: Are Vaccines Safe? (2016) http://truthsift.com/search_view?statement=Vaccines-are-Safe…p;nid=4083
[5] TruthSift Topic: The Evidence is Weak Vaccines Have Saved More Lives than They Have Cost (2016), http://truthsift.com/search_view?topic=The-Evidence-Is-Weak-…amp;id=520
[6] Climate data hidden both early (data showing very rapid rise before 1500) and in 20th century (showing decline): https://climateaudit.org/2011/03/21/hide-the-decline-the-other-deletion/
[7] More data contradicting theory hidden. https://climateaudit.org/2011/12/01/hide-the-decline-plus/
I’ve gotten no substantive response to my last post on vaccine safety– neither in the comments, nor the TruthSift diagram, nor anywhere else, nor have the papers I submitted to two medical journals… but I have gotten emails telling me I’m delusional and suggesting I seek psychiatric attention. And this of course is integral to the explanation of how such delusions as vaccine safety persist so widely when it is so demonstrably a delusion: the majority who believe the majority must be right because its the majority are emotionally unwilling to confront the evidence. They assume the experts have done that, and they rely on the experts. But the experts assume other experts have been there. Ask your Pediatrician if he’s personally read Bishop et al and formulated an opinion on vaccine aluminum. Neither has the National Academy, except perhaps their members have and decided, perhaps tacitly, not to review the subject. Their decision not to review the animal literature was not tacit, they said they explicitly decided to omit it, although elsewhere they say they couldn’t find human evidence that addressed the issues. So everybody is trusting somebody else, and nobody has picked up the ball. And can you blame them? Because when I pick up the ball, what I receive in return is hate mail and people’s scorn. The emotional response cuts off any possible inspection of the logic.
On most questions where a majority with authority is facing a minority of dissenters or skeptics, the majority is delusional.
In other words, you are living in the matrix; much of what you and people believe is fundamentlaly wrong.
Reason 1, as above, is that the majority forms its view by circular reasoning, and rejects any attempt at logical discussion without considering it seriously, so it is prone to delusion.
Once the crowd concluded vaccines are safe and effective, for example, the question of whether the aluminum is damaging can apparently no longer be raised (even as more gets added to vaccines). And when I or others try to raise it, we are scorned and hated, and ineffectual in changing the opinion supported by circular reasoning. When new research papers appear that call it into question, they are ignored, neither cited in the safety surveys nor influencing medical practice in any way. This paragraph is all simple reporting of what has repeatedly happened.
Reason 2 is a minority wouldn’t be holding out without a good reason, because they are punished for their opposition with scorn and hatred at least. Except perhaps for explicitly religious issues, the usual reason they are so stubborn is they are defending rational truth.
Reason 3 is there’s often big money to be made or political power to be gained by influencing the majority opinion, and experts given good budgets appear to be pretty good at influencing majority opinion, especially with the aid of mass media, covertly staged stunts, and in many areas time enough to have long ago started from kids and education. On the other hand, rationality and reality don’t usually have press agents or forward looking media strategies, and there’s little or no money in swaying the minority position.
Show me a question with a majority with authority facing a minority where the majority isn’t delusional, and I’ll show you a minority that’s being paid under the table or planted to discredit rationalists in other controversial areas. At least I’ll suggest you strongly consider that as an alternative theory of what you see. The only one I can think of off hand are flat-earthers.
Mass Delusions were famously studied in 19th century first by Charles Mackay in
Popular Mass Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1852) but more interestingly IMO in Gustave Le Bon, (1895) The Crowd. This latter was arguably the single book that had the most influence on the shape of the twentieth century. By their own accounts “The Crowd” was on Theodore Roosevelt’s bedside table, and dogeared by Mussolini. Lenin and Stalin took from it, and “Hitler’s indebtedness to Le Bon bordered on plagiarism” in the words of historian and Hitler-biographer Robert G. L. Waite. Sigmund Freud wrote a book discussing Le Bon, and Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, acknowledged his deep debt, as Goebbels did of Bernays’ reflected insights.
Bernays equally isn’t as widely known as he should be. He invented the field of public relations, the “panel of doctors”, the slogan “making the world safe for democracy”, the diamond engagement ring, broke the taboo on women’s smoking and practically doubled sales by recruiting protesters smoking “torches of freedom”, bacon and eggs, and flouridated water, among many other things. There weren’t any decent safety studies on fluoridated water, and some modern studies say its taking multiple IQ points off the population, and nations and regions that don’t fluoridate have just as good teeth today as nations and regions that do, and putting fluoride in mouthwash and toothpaste rather than the drinking water would plainly have made a lot more sense from the point of view of public safety and health, but one thing you can count on: once he put it in the water supply and convinced everybody it was a health measure, you couldn’t sue for damage from fluoride runoff any more, and potentially multi-asbestos scale class action suits against the Government and aluminum manufacturers disappeared. Since Bernays got done, just raising the issue of fluoride gets you branded fruitcake and shunned to this day.
They are also still “making the world safe for democracy”, which he coined for WW1. But is this what they are doing, or is that another widely held delusion?
Bernays also wrote the book Propaganda which begins: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
I’ve quoted from and summarized and discussed Le Bon extensively before so I will give only a brief flavor here.
“It is not necessary that a crowd should be numerous for the faculty of seeing what is taking place before its eyes to be destroyed and for the real facts to be replaced with hallucinations unrelated to them….
“To return to the faculty of observation possessed by crowds, our conclusion is that their collective observations are as erroneous as possible, and that most often they merely represent the illusion of an individual who, by a process of contagion, has suggestioned his fellows.”
“The events with regard to which there exists the most doubt are certainly those which have been observed by the greatest number of persons. To say that a fact has been simultaneously verified by thousands of witnesses is to say, as a rule, that the real fact is very different from the accepted account of it.”…
“By the mere fact that an individual forms part of a crowd, his intellectual standard is immediately and considerably lowered….
“The inferior reasoning of crowds is based, just as is the reasoning of a high order, on the association of ideas, but between the ideas associated by crowds there are only apparent bonds of analogy or succession. The mode of reasoning of crowds resembles that of the Esquimaux who, knowing from experience that ice, a transparent body, melts in the mouth, concludes that glass, also a transparent body, should also melt in the mouth…
The characteristics of the reasoning of crowds are the association of dissimilar things possessing a merely apparent connection between each other, and the immediate generalization of particular cases. It is arguments of this kind that are always presented to crowds by those who know how to manage them. They are the only arguments by which crowds are to be influenced. A chain of logical argumentation is totally incomprehensible to crowds…”
“When these convictions [of crowds] are closely examined,…, it is apparent that they always assume a particular form which I can not better define than giving it the name of a religious sentiment…
Intolerance and fanatacism are the necessary accompaniments of the religious sentiment. They are inevitably displayed by those who believe themselves in the possession of the secret of earthly or eternal happiness. These two characteristics are to be found in all men grouped together when they are inspired by a conviction of any kind. The Jacobins of the Reign of Terror were at bottom as religious as the Catholics of the Inquisition, and their cruel ardour proceeded from the same source. The convictions of crowds assume those characteristics of blind submission, fierce intolerance, and the need of violent propaganda which are inherent in the religious sentiment, and it is for this reason that it may be said that all their beliefs have a religous form.
Whether the feelings exhibited by a crowd be good or bad, they present the double character of being very simple and very exaggerated… a throng knows neither doubt nor uncertainty.”
The Red pill
So, now what’s in the red pill? Why, its a placebo. You can use any old red jelly bean. But if you swallow it and believe that the majority may be totally delusional about anything, and start looking into practically any subject with dissenters with an open mind, then I predict if you are skilled at critical thinking, you will shortways find the majority is in fact delusional, that is, you are indeed living in the matrix.
Much more widely than you are likely to imagine. For example, the news is basically propaganda, in lockstep among all the mainstream media, who accept whatever the government and political correctness tells them to believe uncritically. Was the passenger plane over Ukraine brought down by missile or strafing? Did the CDC conspire to hide a vaccine autism connection? Is the congress being run behind the scenes by a uniparty? You won’t find any of those subjects discussed unless to whitewash in the US mainstream media. What you want in a media system is ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity. –Joseph Goebbels The history books are no better, as Le Bon observed. The banking system is all based on smoke and mirrors and a healthy skim. Etc.
I don’t expect TruthSift.com to convince the masses they are delusional, because Le Bon assures me logic will never sway a crowd, but I offer it as a tool to shortcut a lot of work for those who swallow the red pill. Rather than having to study a field in detail for years as I have with vaccines and needing to be able to supply PhD level understanding of what you are reading and needing the confidence of your convictions against the many, you can much more rapidly peruse a diagram and find what the real situation is, assuming the diagram has been created and debated.
So I beg readers here to create such diagrams on TruthSift for any topic you are interested in.
Of course, they are fun and interesting too.
I also commend TruthSift to corporations and others wanting to escape the kind of crowd think delusions so well characterized by Le Bon, and achieve actual rationality in your decisions. Use it on Private Diagrams. Everybody in your organization will be able to contribute to the document, if you invite them, exactly where its pertinent. It will naturally divide and conquer your problems in ways where different people can address different problems, achieving true collaboration. Nobody will be able to get confused or pursue some other agenda without being transparently refereed. The answer will be far more rationally derived and argued for than what you are doing now. You can allow people to contribute under pseudonyms if you want. http://TruthSift.com
]]>(1) The National Academy’s Reviews Of Vaccine Safety
The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies has provided several multi-hundred page surveys studying the safety of vaccines, but rather than reassuring, these itemize some iatrogenic conditions being caused, and pronounce the scientific literature inadequate to say whether most others are. The 2011 Institute of Medicine (IOM) Review[1] looked at 146 vaccine-condition pairs for causality, reporting:
The 2003 IOM Review on multiple vaccines said[2]:
“The committee was unable to address the concern that repeated exposure of a susceptible child to multiple immunizations over the developmental period may also produce atypical or non-specific immune or nervous system injury that could lead to severe disability or death (Fisher, 2001). There are no epidemiological studies that address this.”
and:
“the committee concludes that the epidemiological and clinical evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between multiple immunization and an increased risk of allergic disease, particularly asthma.”
(2) The Aluminum.
Alum was added to vaccines back in the 1920’s, with no test of parenteral toxicity until recently[5], because it prods the immature immune system out of its normal operating range.[6] Maybe they figured aluminum is common in the environment, but injection bypasses half a dozen evolved sequential filters that normally keep it out of circulatory flow during development. Vaccines put hundreds of times as much aluminum into infants’ blood as they would otherwise get, and in an unnatural form that is hard for the body to remove.[7][8 (cfsec 4.2)][9]. The published empirical results indicate its highly toxic.
(3) The Safety Studies Ignore Confounding Patient Behavior
Since there are no Randomized Placebo Controlled (RPC) trials supporting vaccines, virtually all studies report on the association (or lack thereof) between vaccines and some iatrogenic condition. But parents who believe vaccines made their kids sick, stop vaccinating them, which systematically moves sick or vaccine damaged kids in the studies into the “low vaccine”, “low thimerisol”, or etc. bin. This invalidates most studies supporting safety (and the few remaining ones suck for other reasons). Numerous studies report incredible preventative effects for vaccines, presumably because of this corruption, like having more thimerisol or more MMR’s is strongly preventative of autism and other mental development issues[28][29][30], or like having more vaccines was strongly preventative of atopy, apparently even years before patients got the vaccines[31]. The fact this confounding factor is overlooked demonstrates extreme confirmation bias and is the defining factor of Cargo Cult Science according to R.P. Feynman.[32]
(4) The Animal Models
Animal models reliably and repeatably show in RPC tests (a) that vaccines at the wrong time in development damage the adult brain or behavior [33][34] and (b) that multiple vaccines cause autoimmune disease even in animals bred to be non-autoimmune[35][36]. The effects are said to be robust, and as we’ve already seen there isn’t good human data rebutting them.
(5) The Contaminants
Studies have repeatedly found contaminants such as viruses, retroviruses, circoviruses, and human DNA in vaccines seemingly whenever tested,
and I’ve found no reason to believe off the shelf vaccines are free[37][38][39][40][41]. Reported contaminants have included SV-40 in polio vaccines which were administered even though scientists knew the vaccines were contaminated and already had hunches and experiments indicating SV-40 causes cancer[41][42]. Chimpanzee Coryza Virus became known in humans as RSV and has killed many millions of infants and hospitalizes 100,000/yr in America today[43]. Contaminated polio vaccine is plausibly also the origin of HIV[44][41]. There are discovered viral contaminants in vaccines today[38][39], with unknown long term effects, as well as I expect many undiscovered contaminants.
(6) Studies Ask Whether Some One Vaccine Damages, and Thus Miss That Many Do.
Virtually every study not reporting damage compares kids who got numerous vaccines to kids who got numerous vaccines. Such studies wouldn’t show statistically significant results no matter how much damage the vaccines are doing, unless one vaccine or vector by itself is doing comparable or more damage than the rest put together. The studies more or less test the hypothesis one vaccine is invisibly damaging, the rest are fine, and the studies are all obscured in the presence of multiple problems, much less the kind of timing and interaction effects observed in animal models. The one study[45] often touted as proving “The Risk of Autism is Not Increased by ‘Too Many Vaccines Too Soon’”[46] in fact compares patients based on antigens, and since DTP had more than 3000 antigens and no other vaccine common among the study patients had more than a handful, effectively compared patients who’d had DTP and dozens of vaccines to patients who did not have DTP (many had DTaP instead) and dozens of vaccines. The only counterexamples to this I’ve found are contrived in bizarre ways to avoid reality, such as the study that withheld the 2 month vaccines till 3 months from a group of kids, and asked the mothers, who were terrified enough a bunch insisted on changing back to the early vaccination group, to record symptoms with no doctor even consulted, identifying the placebo effect as vaccine prevention of diseases. The authors wrote it would have been unethical to give a placebo at 2 months to the kids getting the vaccine at 3 months, in order to do the experiment blind, but apparently consider it ethical to inject dozens of vaccines into your kids with zero placebo controlled testing.[47] [48]
(7) The Extensive Evidence Indicating Flu Vaccines Damage Immune Systems, Particularly in Children.
(8) The Epidemiological Studies That Aren’t Blatantly Confounded
All the credible ecological or epidemiological studies comparing people who got more vaccines to less indicate damage. For example,
Every empirical study I’ve read with a methodology that’s not clearly confounded consistently indicates vaccine damage.
(9) The Consistent Anecdotal and Informal Reports
Anecdotal and informal reports actually compare vaccinated and unvaccinated, unlike the contrived and confounded studies offered to support safety.
(10) The Authorities, Big Pharma, and Media Are Demonstrably Not Trustworthy.
To summarize 10 points in two: (A) the safety literature, wherever it doesn’t outright show vaccine damage, demonstrably is bollixed to where it doesn’t show much of anything. (B) Lots of peer reviewed publications cogently report lots of consistent damage that no published evidence rationally opposes, but are ignored by authorities and media.
The vaccine safety literature is laid out in considerable detail on this TruthSift diagram https://tssciencecollaboration.com/graphtree/Are%20Vaccines%20Safe/406/4083 where readers are invited to add more pertinent citations or arguments. Anybody who thinks I am confused on any point is invited to challenge any claim above and explain why[69]. Please feel free to ask your Pediatrician or other authority, and let me know what they say. I’ve submitted to 2 medical journals so far, but been unable to obtain a substantive review, a review citing any papers or making a case I’m wrong. As I receive no substantive rebuttal, it reaffirms what I have already concluded from extensive research, none exists.
If you’ve read the above, and are thinking: “you were right, I was deluded,” the next step is to ask yourself what else you may be deluded about, and what you can do about it. https://truthsift.com was designed to answer those questions.
If you think this post contains information that should be more widely known please share it.
References
[1] Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality, Kathleen Stratton, Andrew Ford, Erin Rusch, and Ellen Wright Clayton, Editors; Committee to Review Adverse Effects of Vaccines; Institute of Medicine, The National Academies press 2011. 862pp.http://www.commed.vcu.edu/IntroPH/Communicable_Disease/2012/…ccines.pdf
[2] Immunization Safety Review: Multiple Immunizations and Immune Dysfunction Kathleen Stratton, Christopher B. Wilson and Marie C. McCormick, Editors, Immunization Safety Review Committee, Board on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10306.html ISBN: 0–309-50866–5, 152 pages, 6 × 9, (2002) Institute of Medicine.
[3] Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism, Immunization Safety Review Committee, Institute of Medicine of the National Academies ISBN: 0–309-53275–2, 214 pages, 6 × 9, (2004) http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10997.html
[4] The Childhood Immunization Schedule and Safety: Stakeholder Concerns, Scientific Evidence, and Future Studies, Committee on the Assessment of Studies of Health Outcomes Related to the Recommended Childhood Immunization Schedule; Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice; Institute of Medicine ISBN 978–0-309–26702-1 230 pages (2013) http://www.nationalacademies.org/hmd/~/media/files/report%20…ety_rb.pdf
[5] Conference report Workshop summary Aluminum in vaccines Vaccine 20 (2002) S1–S4 http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&a…v.62922401
[6] Neonatal and early life vaccinology. Siegrist CA. Vaccine. 2001 May 14;19(25–26):3331–46. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11348697
[7] Infants’ exposure to aluminum from vaccines and breast milk during the first 6 months, Dórea JG, Marques RC, Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology Volume 20, Issue 7, November 2010, Pages 598–601 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20010978
[8] Do aluminum vaccine adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism? Tomljenovic L, Shaw CA. J Inorg Biochem. 2011 Nov;105(11):1489–99 http://omsj.org/reports/tomljenovic%202011.pdf
[9] http://truthsift.com/search_view?topic=Are-Vaccines-Safe-?&a…p;nid=4083 See statement views for discussion and further citations
[10] Aluminum Neurotoxicity in Preterm Infants Receiving Intravenous-Feeding Solutions, Nicholas J. Bishop, M.D., Ruth Morley, M.B., B.Chir., J. Philip Day, Ph.D., and Alan Lucas, M.D. N Engl J Med 1997; 336:1557-1562May 29, 1997DOI: 10.1056/NEJM199705293362203 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199705293362203#t=articleResults
[11] Aluminum exposure from parenteral nutrition in preterm infants: bone health at 15-year follow-up. Fewtrell MS, Bishop NJ, Edmonds CJ, Isaacs EB, Lucas A. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19858156 Pediatrics. 2009 Nov;124(5):1372–9. doi: 10.1542/peds.2009–0783. Epub 2009 Oct 26. Erratum in Pediatrics. 2009 Dec;124(6):1709.
[12] http://truthsift.com/search_view?statement=Animal-Studies-re…p;nid=4133 See statement views for discussion and further citations
[13] Administration of aluminum to neonatal mice in vaccine-relevant amounts is associated with adverse long term neurological outcomes, C.A. Shaw, Y. Li , L. Tomljenovic, Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, V 128, November 2013, Pages 237–244 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0162013413001773
[14] Slow CCL2-dependent translocation of biopersistent particles from muscle to brain, Zakir Khan, Christophe Combadière, François-Jérôme Authier, Valérie Itier, François Lux, Christopher Exley, Meriem Mahrouf-Yorgov, Xavier Decrouy, Philippe Moretto, Olivier Tillement, Romain K Gherardi BMC Medicine 201311:99 DOI: 10.1186/1741–7015-11–99 http://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741&#…;11-99
[15] http://truthsift.com/search_view?topic=Are-Vaccines-Safe-?&id=406 For discussion of other confirmatory citations
[16] Examination of the safety of pediatric vaccine schedules in a non-human primate model: assessments of neurodevelopment, learning, and social behavior. Curtis B, Liberato N, Rulien M, et al. 2015. Environ Health Perspect 123:579–589; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4455585/
[18] Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity? Miller NZ, Goldman GS, Hum Exp Toxicol. 2011 Sep;30(9):1420–8. doi: 10.1177/0960327111407644. Pub 2011 May 4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170075/
[19] A positive association found between autism prevalence and childhood vaccination uptake across the U.S. population. Delong G. J Toxicol Environ Health A. 2011;74(14):903–16. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21623535
[20] Routine vaccinations and child survival: follow up study in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa Commentary: an unexpected finding that needs confirmation or rejection, Ines Kristensen, Peter Aaby, Henrik Jensen, BMJ 2000; 321 dos: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.321.7274.1435
[21] Oral polio vaccination and low case fatality at the paediatric ward in Bissau, Guinea-Bissau. Aaby P, Rodrigues A, Biai S, et al ‚Vaccine. 2004 Aug 13;22(23–24):3014–7. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15297050
[22] http://truthsift.com/search_view?id=406&nid=4144 See for further discussion and citations
[23] Special Issue ASIA – Autoimmune Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants, Lupus February 2012; 21 (2) http://lup.sagepub.com/content/21/2.toc
[24] Biopersistence and brain translocation of aluminum adjuvants of vaccines Front. Neurol., 05 February 2015 |http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2015.00004
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fneur.2015.00004/full
[25] Chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia following immunization with the hepatitis B vaccine: another angle of the ‘autoimmune (auto-inflammatory) syndrome induced by adjuvants’ (ASIA). Agmon-Levin N1, Zafrir Y, Kivity S, Balofsky A, Amital H, Shoenfeld Y. Immunol Res. 2014 Dec;60(2–3):376–83. doi: 10.1007/s12026-014‑8604-2.
[26] Study Reports Aluminum in Vaccines Poses Extremely Low Risk to Infants (2015–2016) http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/ScienceResearch/ucm284520.htm
[27] Updated aluminum pharmacokinetics following infant exposures through diet and vaccination, Mitkus RJ, King DB, Hess MA, Forshee RA, Walderhaug MO., Vaccine 29(51) 9538–43 2011. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22001122
[28] Thimerosal Exposure in Infants and Developmental Disorders: A Retrospective Cohort Study in the United Kingdom Does Not Support a Causal Association, Nick Andrews; Elizabeth Miller; Andrew Grant et al, Pediatrics September 2004, VOLUME 114 / ISSUE 3 http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/114/3/584.full-text.pdf
[29] Prenatal and Infant Exposure to Thimerosal From Vaccines and Immunoglobulins and Risk of Autism, Cristofer S. Price, William W. Thompson, Barbara Goodson,et al, Pediatrics October 2010, VOLUME 126 / ISSUE 4 http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/126/4/656
[30] Autism Occurrence by MMR Vaccine Status Among US Children With Older Siblings With and Without Autism, Anjali Jain; Jaclyn Marshall; Ami Buikema; et al. JAMA. 2015;313(15):1534–1540. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.3077. http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2275444
[31] Transient suppression of atopy in early childhood is associated with high vaccination coverage, Gruber, C., S. Illi, S. Lau, R. Nickel, J. Forster, W. Kamin, C.P. Bauer, V. Wahn, U. Wahn, and the MAS-90 Study Group. 2003. . Pediatrics 111(3):e282-e288. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/111/3/e282
[32] CARGO CULT SCIENCE (adapted from Caltech Commencement Address 1974), Richard P Feynman https://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm
[33] Peripheral immune challenge with viral mimic during early postnatal period robustly enhances anxiety-like behavior in young adult rats.
Konat GW, Lally BE, Toth AA, Salm AK.Metab Brain Dis. 2011 Sep;26(3):237–40. doi: 10.1007/s11011-011‑9244-z http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21643765
[34] Postnatal Inflammation Increases Seizure Susceptibility in Adult Rats, Michael A. Galic, Kiarash Riazi, James G. Heida, et al, The Journal of Neuroscience, 2 July 2008, 28(27): 6904–6913; doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1901–08.2008 http://www.jneurosci.org/content/28/27/6904.full
[35] Vaccine model of antiphospholipid syndrome induced by tetanus vaccine, L Dimitrijevi, I ivkovi, M Stojanovi, V Petrui, S ivanevi-Simonovi dos: 10.1177/0961203311429816 Lupus February 2012 vol. 21 no. 2 195–202 http://lup.sagepub.com/content/21/2/195.abstract
[36] Self-Organized Criticality Theory of Autoimmunity, Ken Tsumiyama, Yumi Miyazaki, Shunichi Shiozawa 2009 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008382
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0008382
[37] Some oral poliovirus vaccines were contaminated with infectious SV40 after 1961. Cutrone R, Lednicky J, Dunn G, et al. Cancer Res. 2005 Nov
15;65(22):10273–9. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16288015
[38] Viral Nucleic Acids in Live-Attenuated Vaccines: Detection of Minority Variants and an Adventitious Virus, J. G. Victoria, C. Wang, M. S. Jones,et al. J. Virol. June 2010 vol. 84 no. 12 6033–6040 http://jvi.asm.org/content/84/12/6033
[39] Viruses and Virus Nucleic Acid Contaminate Many Vaccines: Risks of cancer and creation of new pathogens should not be underplayed by regulators Prof. Joe Cummins http://www.i-sis.org.uk/Viruses_and_Virus_Nucleic_Acid_Contaminate_Vaccines.php
[40] Impact of environmental factors on the prevalence of autistic disorder after 1979, Theresa A. Deisher, Ngoc V. Doan, Angelica Omaiye, et al. Journal of Public Health and Epidemiology Vol. 6(9), pp. 271–284, 2014 DOI: 10.5897/JPHE2014.0649 http://soundchoice.org/scpiJournalPubHealthEpidem092014.pdf
[41] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13QiSV_lrDQ Dr. Maurice Hillman, The Merck Chief Scientist, discusses how the polio vaccine was administered although they knew it was contaminated with SV-40, which they strongly believed caused cancer. According to the tape, the monkeys from which the vaccine was being grown, were being kept in epidemic conditions crowded into cages, so they were all sick with a variety of viruses which then contaminated the vaccine stock. As Hillman discusses, SIV could very well have entered the human population this way as well.
[42] Association between simian virus 40 and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Vilchez RA, Madden CR, Kozinetz CA, et al. Lancet. 2002 Mar 9;359(9309):817–23. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11897278
[43] Polio eradication: a complex end game, Viera Scheibner, BMJ 2012;344:e2398 http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e2398/rapid-responses
[44] Polio vaccines and the origin of AIDS: some key writings, http://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/
[45] Increasing Exposure to Antibody-Stimulating Proteins and Polysaccharides in Vaccines Is Not Associated with Risk of Autism, Frank DeStefano, MD,MPH, Cristofer S. Price, ScM, Eric S. Weintraub, MPH DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2013.02.001
[46] The Risk of Autism is Not Increased by “Too Many Vaccines Too Soon”, Editorial of The Journal of Pediatrics http://www.jpeds.com/content/JPEDSDeStefano
[47] General Non-specific Morbidity is Reduced After Vaccination Within the Third Month of Life – the Greifswald Study, S. Otto, B. Mahner, I. Kadow, J. F. Beck, S. K.W. Wiersbitzky and R. Bruns, Journal of Infection (2000) 41, 172–175 doi: 10.1053/jinf.2000.0718, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com
[48] http://truthsift.com/node_info?nid=5340&superNode=No&…;rating=TE
[49] Increased risk of noninfluenza respiratory virus infections associated with receipt of inactivated influenza vaccine. Cowling BJ, Fang VJ, Nishiura H, Chan KH, Ng S, Ip DK, Chiu SS, Leung GM, Peiris JS. Clin Infect Dis. 2012 Jun;54(12):1778–83. doi: 10.1093/cid/cis307. Epub 2012 Mar 15. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22423139
[50] Effectiveness of trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine in influenza-related hospitalization in children: a case-control study. Joshi AY, Iyer VN, Hartz MF, Patel AM, Li JT. Allergy Asthma Proc. 2012 Mar-Apr;33(2):e23-7. doi: 10.2500/aap.2012.33.3513. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22525386
[51] Association between the 2008-09 Seasonal Influenza Vaccine and Pandemic H1N1 Illness during Spring–Summer 2009: Four Observational Studies from Canada, Danuta M. Skowronski , Gaston De Serres, Natasha S. Crowcroft, et al.PLOS(2010), http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000258
[52] Vaccination with whole inactivated virus vaccine affects the induction of heterosubtypic immunity against influenza virus A/H5N1 and immunodominance of virus-specific CD8+ T-cell responses in mice. Bodewes R, Kreijtz JH, Hillaire ML, Geelhoed-Mieras MM, Fouchier RA, Osterhaus AD, Rimmelzwaan GF. , J Gen Virol. 2010 Jul;91(Pt 7):1743–53. doi: 10.1099/vir.0.020784–0. Epub 2010 Mar 24. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20335492
[53] Vaccination against human influenza A/H3N2 virus prevents the induction of heterosubtypic immunity against lethal infection with avian influenza A/H5N1 virus. Bodewes R, Kreijtz JH, Baas C, Geelhoed-Mieras MM, de Mutsert G, van Amerongen G, van den Brand JM, Fouchier RA, Osterhaus AD, Rimmelzwaan GF. PLoS One. 2009;4(5):e5538. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005538. Epub 2009 May14. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19440239
[54] Annual vaccination against influenza virus hampers development of virus-specific CD8+ T cell immunity in children. Bodewes R, Fraaij PL, Geelhoed-Mieras MM, van Baalen CA, Tiddens HA, van Rossum AM, van der Klis FR, Fouchier RA, Osterhaus AD, Rimmelzwaan GF., J Virol. 2011 Nov;85(22):11995–2000. doi: 10.1128/JVI.05213–11.Epub 2011 Aug 31. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21880755
[55] Difference in immune response in vaccinated and unvaccinated Swedish individuals after the 2009 influenza pandemic, Isabelle Magalhaes Mikael Eriksson, Charlotte Linde, Rashid Muhammad, Lalit Rane, Aditya Ambati, Rebecca Axelsson-Robertson, Bahareh Khalaj, Nancy Alvarez-Corrales, Giulia Lapini, Emanuele Montomoli, Annika Linde, Nancy L Pedersen,3 and Markus Maeurer BMC Infect Dis. 2014; 14: 319.Published online 2014 Jun 11. doi: 10.1186/1471–2334-14–319 PMCID: PMC4067073 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4067073/
[56] “Vaccine effectiveness was estimated as 100% x (1 — odds ratio [ratio of odds of being vaccinated among outpatients with influenza-positive test results to the odds of being vaccinated among outpatients with influenza-negative test results])”, Center for Disease Control, Early Estimates of Seasonal Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness — United States, January 2015 Weekly January 16, 2015 / 64(01);10–15 http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6401a4.htm
[57] http://truthsift.com/node_info?nid=2823&superNode=No&…;rating=TE for more discussion
[58] Combining Childhood Vaccines at One Visit Is Not Safe, Neil Z. Miller, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 21 Number 2 Summer 2016 http://www.jpands.org/vol21no2/miller.pdf
[59] Adverse events following HPV vaccination, Alberta 2006–2014, Xianfang C. Liu, , Christopher A. Bell, , Kimberley A. Simmonds, , Lawrence W. Svensona, Margaret L. Russell, Vaccine Volume 34, Issue 15, 4 April 2016, Pages 1800–1805 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X16002036
[60] For further data analysis and discussion see http://truthsift.com/node_info?nid=5196&superNode=No&…;rating=TE
[61] http://www.vaccinationcouncil.org/2009/05/22/a-pretty-big-secret/
[62] http://www.vaccineinjury.info/survey/results-unvaccinated/results-illnesses.html
[63] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%23hearthiswell
[64] http://www.morganverkamp.com/august-27-2014-press-releas…nd-autism/
[65] https://sharylattkisson.com/cdc-scientist-we-scheduled-meeti…documents/
[66] http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/bigpharma
[67] http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/06/editors-in-chief-of-w…-poss.html
[68] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/01/15/drug-companies-do…orruption/
[69] http://truthsift.com/search_view?topic=Are-Vaccines-Safe-?&id=406
TruthSift.com is a platform designed to support and guide individuals or crowds to rationality, and make them smarter collectively than any unaided individual or group. (Free) Members use TruthSift to establish what can be established, refute what can’t be, and to transparently publish the demonstrations. Anyone can browse the demonstrations and learn what is actually known and how it was established. If they have a rational objection, they can post it and have it answered.
Whether in scientific fields such as climate change or medical practice, or within the corporate world or political or government debate, or on day to day factual questions, humanity hasn’t had a good method for establishing rational truth. You can see this from consequences we often fail to perceive:
Peer reviewed surveys agree: A landslide majority of medical practice is *not* supported by science [2,3,4]. Scientists are often confused about the established facts in their own field [5]. Within fields like climate science and vaccines, that badly desire consensus, no true consensus can be reached because skeptics raise issues that the majority brush aside without an established answer (exactly what Le Bon warned of more than 100 years ago[6]). Widely consulted sources like Wikipedia are reported to be largely paid propaganda on many important subjects [7], or the most popular answer rather than an established one [8]. Quora shows you the most popular individual answer, generated with little or no collaboration, and often there is little documentation of why you should believe it. Existing systems for crowd sourced wisdom largely compound group think, rather than addressing it. Existing websites for fact checking give you someone’s point of view.
Corporate or government planning is no better. Within large organizations, where there is inevitably systemic motivation to not pass bad news up, leadership needs active measures to avoid becoming clueless as to the real problems [9]. Corporate or government plans are subject to group think, or takeover by employee or other interests competing with the mission. Individuals who perceive mistakes have no recourse capable of rationally pursuading the majority, and may anyway be discouraged from speaking up by various consequences[6].
TruthSift is designed to solve all these problems. TruthSift realizes in your browser the Platonic ideal of the scientific literature, but TruthSift applies it to everything, and makes it tangible and lightweight, extended to a much lower hurdle for publishing. On a public TruthSift diagram, members (or on a Private diagram, members you have invited), who believe they can prove or refute a statement, can post their proof or refutation exactly where it is relevant. TruthSift logically propagates the consequences of each contribution, graphically displaying how it impacts the establishment status of all the others, drawing statements established by the combined efforts in thick borders, and statements refuted in thin. Statements are considered established only when they have an established demonstration, one with every posted challenge refuted.
The Scientific literature works very similarly. Each paper adds some novel argument or evidence that previous work is true or is not true or extends it to establish new results. When people run out of valid, novel reasons why something is proved or is not proved, what remains is an established theory, or a refutation of it or of all its offered proofs.
TruthSift is a platform for diagramming this process and applying it to any statements members care to propose to establish or refute. One may state a topic and add a proof tree for it, which is drawn as a diagram with every step and connection explicit. Members may state a demonstration of some conclusion they want to prove, building from some statements they assert are self-evident or that reference some authority they think trustworthy, and then building useful intermediate results that rationally follow from the assumptions, and building on until reaching the stated conclusion. If somebody thinks they find a hole in a proof at any step, or thinks one of the original assumptions need further proof, they can challenge it, explaining the problem they see. Then the writer of the proof (or others if its in collaboration mode) may edit the proof to fix the problem, or make clearer the explanation if they feel the challenger was simply mistaken, and may counter-challenge the challenge explaining that it had been resolved or mistaken. This can go on recursively, with someone pointing out a hole in the proof used by the counter-challenger that the challenge was invalid. On TruthSift the whole argument is laid out graphically and essentially block-chained, which should prevent the kind of edit-wars that happen for controversial topics on Wikipedia. Each challenge or post should state a novel reason, and when the rational arguments are exhausted, as in mathematics, what remains is either a proof of the conclusion or a refutation of it or all of its proofs.
As statements are added to a diagram, TruthSift keeps track of what is established and what refuted, drawing established statements’ borders and their outgoing connectors thick, and refuted statements’ borders and their outgoing connectors thin so viewers can instantly tell what is currently established and what refuted. TruthSift computes this by a simple algorithm that starts at statements with no incoming assumptions, challenges, or proofs, which are thus unchallenged as assertions that prove themselves, are self evident, or appeal to an authority everybody trusts. These are considered established. Then it walks up the diagram rating statements after all their parents have been rated. A statement will be established if all its assumptions are, none of its challenges are, and if it has proofs, at least one is established. (We support challenges requesting a proof be added to a statement which neither has one added nor adequately proves itself.) Otherwise, that is if a statement has an established challenge, or has refuted assumptions, or all of its proofs are refuted, it is refuted.
To understand why a statement is established or refuted, center focus on it, so that you see it and its parents in the diagram. If it is refuted, either there is an established challenge of it, or one of its assumptions is refuted, or all of its proofs are. If it is not refuted, it is established. Work your way backward up the diagram, centering on each statement in turn, and examine the reasons why it is established or refuted.
Effective contribution to TruthSift diagrams involves mental effort. This is both a hurdle and a feature. TruthSift teaches Critical Thinking. First you think about your Topic Statement. How actually should you specify Vaccine Safety or Climate Change, so it covers what you want to establish or refute, and so it is amenable to rational discussion? There is no place you could go to see that well specified now, and can you properly assure it without properly specifying it? Next you think about the arguments for your topic statement, and those against it, and those against the arguments for, and those for the arguments for, and the arguments against the arguments against, and so on until everybody runs out of arguments, when what is left is a concise rational analysis of what is established and why. The debate is settled point by point. The process naturally subdivides the field into sub-topics where different expertise’s come into play, promoting true collective wisdom and understanding.
For TruthSift to work properly, posters will have to respect the guidelines and post only proof or challenge statements that they believe rationally prove or refute their target and are novel to the diagram (or also novel additional evidence as assumptions or remarks or tests, which are alternative connector types). Posts violating the guidelines may be flagged and removed, and consistent violators as well. Posts don’t have to be correct, that’s what challenges are for, but they have to be honest attempts, not spam or ad hominem attacks. Don’t get hung up on whether a statement should be added as a proof or an assumption of another. Frequently you want to assemble arguments for a proposition stating something like “the preponderance of the evidence indicates X”, and these arguments are not individually necessary for X, nor are they individually proofs of X. It is safe to simply add them as proofs. They are not necessary assumptions, and if not enough of them are established, the target may be challenged on that basis. The goal is a diagram that transparently explains a proof and what is wrong with all the objections people have found plausible.
For cases where members disagree on underlying assumptions or basic principles, stipulation is available. If one or more statements are stipulated, statements are shown as conditionally true if established based on the stipulations and as conditionally false if refuted based on the stipulations. The challenges to the stipulation are also shown. TruthSift supports reasoning from different fundamental assumptions, but requires being explicit about it when challenged.
Probability mode supports the intuitive construction of probabilistic models, and evaluates the probability of each statement in the topic marginalizing over all the parameters in the topic. With a little practice these allow folding in various connections and evidence. These could be used for collaborative, verified, risk models; to support proofs with additional confidence tests; to reason about hidden causes; or many other novel applications
Fig 4: Detail from a topic showing an established conclusion some may find surprising. Please
Rebut it if you can. Dashed edges represent citation into the literature. Title is shown for each
statement, on actual topic select “View Statement” to see body.
Basic Membership is free. In addition to public diagrams, debating the big public issues, private diagrams are available for personal or organizational planning or to exclude noise from your debate. Private diagrams have editing and/or viewing by invitation only. Come try it. http://TruthSift.com
TruthSift’s mission is to enable publication of a transparent exposition of human knowledge, so that anyone may readily determine what is truth and what fiction, what can be established by valid Demonstration and what can’t, and so that anyone can read and understand that Demonstration.
We intend the process of creating this exposition to lead to vastly increased understanding and improved critical thinking skills amongst our members and beyond. We hope to support collaborative human intelligences greater than any intelligence previously achieved on the planet, both in the public domain and for members’ private use.
And please, I’d love feedback or questions. [email protected]
1. Richard P Feynman, What is Science? (1968) http://www-oc.chemie.uni-regensburg.de/diaz/img_diaz/feynman…nce_68.pdf
2. Assessing the Efficacy and Safety of Medical Technologies, Office of Technology Assessment, Congress of the United States (1978)
http://www.fas.org/ota/reports/7805.pdf
3. Jeannette Ezzo, Barker Bausell, Daniel E. Moerman, Brian Berman and Victoria Hadhazy (2001). REVIEWING THE REVIEWS . International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, 17, pp 457–466. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag…aid=101041
4. John S Garrow BMJ. 2007 Nov 10; 335(7627): 951.doi:10.1136/bmj.39388.393970.1F PMCID: PMC2071976
What to do about CAM?: How much of orthodox medicine is evidence based?
http://www.dcscience.net/garrow-evidence-bmj.pdf
5. S. A. Greenberg, “How citation distortions create unfounded authority: analysis of a citation network”, BMJ 2009;339:b2680
http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b2680
6. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd, (1895), (1995) Transaction Publishers New Edition Edition
7. S Attkisson, “Astroturf and manipulation of media messages”, TEDx University of Nevada, (2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU
8. Adam M. Wilson , Gene E. Likens, Content Volatility of Scientific Topics in Wikipedia: A Cautionary Tale 2015 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0134454 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0134454
9. Kiira Siitari, Jim Martin & William W. Taylor (2014) Information Flow in Fisheries Management: Systemic Distortion within Agency Hierarchies, Fisheries, 39:6, 246–250, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03632415.2014.915814