How do you analyze evidence? - Page 5

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Mamakay, I'll leave it to Amnesiac to decide if she wants to start another thread, or refer you to previous posts she has made on the topic.

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Originally Posted by mamakay

That would be called immunodependence upon a product in my weird world.

Yes, but lets play devil's advocate here. The medical profession, if pushed, may suggest that all they are doing is following the "original" plan that they misinterpretted. they might publicise pertussis vaccines cradle to grave on the basis that that is what "nature" intended, before they stepped in to stuff it up BUT that their way is the safer way to do it.

(never mind the finger rubbing, dollar signs and share market...)

[Aquaduct]

Ok I am a bit tired but you have made some great points Momtezuma about how the medical world operates, and the publishing world to boot.

The way I look at evidence is similar to you. I am always going to ask what is in it for the author? And looking at Andy Wakefield, Walene James, Harris Coulter etc. I can't see how they're gaining much for the energy they expend.

I personally can't understand why Amnesiac and some others turn their noses up at websites that have a clear agenda against vaccines, like whale etc. The CDC and other similar websites are just as biased the other way, though they have their uses. I have personally come across some great information on whale and redflags. I don't just slavishly believe everything they say either.

In the end we're asking what is truth? I am a student of Yoga, and I believe that personal experience is the highest truth. Reading books is fine, I still do it, but the deepest truth will always be gained from your own observations. For example, I had a huge reaction to the MMR vaccine when aged 28. It nearly killed me, and I was sick for months. No doctor or scientific study is ever going to convince me that that could not have happened. It did. Period.
Having said that, it was helpful to me to find evidence in books about studies which have linked some of my symptoms to side-effects of the MMR ie. black diarhoea, fever, insomnia, liver problems. That corroborated it for me, but my experience was the fundamental evidence.

I observed my sister got very sick indeed after a meningococcal vaccine was given to her. She had always been incredibly well until that point. She was ill immediately after the shot, totally wiped out for a fortnight. I also met a woman who said she'd had the same shot years ago when aged 3 and had lost the power of speech for 3 weeks. This evidence is also of the highest value to me. I know there are no lies here. People are better able to lie thru books and large collaborative studies. This has been proven.

What we're talking about is wisdom really. Wisdom is the ability to grasp the truth, the eternal fact. The great spiritual master, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar said wisdom comes from knowing yourself, and observing the people around you. This is what I believe. This has been my experience.

[mamakay]

I personally can't understand why Amnesiac and some others turn their noses up at websites that have a clear agenda against vaccines, like whale etc. The CDC and other similar websites are just as biased the other way, though they have their uses. I have personally come across some great information on whale and redflags. I don't just slavishly believe everything they say either.

For me, it's because I've encountered a lot of plain old bad science on such sites, and now I feel like I have to triple check everything I read on them.
Some sites seem more reliable than others, and I will read them. But I don't really believe anything that was written to prove a point. I'll *consider* it, but I have to fact check all aspects twice and rigourously try and see how the theory could be debunked. Because this subject is just too much like a conspiracy theory for me to just believe anything I read about it.
So for me to accept any idea about the harms of vaxes I need to absolutely, positively know I've read the actual research papers myself, and too many "vax sites" don't provide that information. They just say "the blablabla component of blablabla vax does blablabla" and leave it at that. Then, when I go to look it up, I find that that vax doesn't even contain that ingredient in the first place!
The whole thing is like trying to get your political info from Michael Moore and Rush Limbawl. I simply don't trust biased sources with preconcieved notions.

[Aquaduct]

I think the reason they don't put research papers onto their websites is because they're so dry and academic, and few members of the public will read them. Some of the papers I have read are full of statistics which I don't fully understand.
What these sites do often do is post up lengthy desertations by researchers and doctors who are leaders in their fields, like Dr. Andy Wakefield, Dr. Russel Blaylock, Professor Boyd Haley, and many others. These often refer to their findings in a somewhat more readable way, and they are still very solidly scientific. I mean if Andy Wakefield says his research team found the mutant measles virus from the MMR vaccine in the guts of 34 out of 36 children with ulceritive colitis or Crohn's disease, and that Dr. Smith of another such university has replicated the findings, I find that pretty compelling. That makes me sit up and take notice.

The reality is that most people are not going to have the training or the time to read original studies usually, and these websites recognise that. I don't believe that lessens their truthfulness or even their accuracy. Too much emphasis can be given to research papers anyway. Anecdotal evidence is usually denigrated but as the saying goes, one man's anecdotal evidence is another man's case history. To me case histories are more important. They are less liable to tampering, to being conflicted. I admit they can still be misinterpreted. Doctors do that all the time. But if a proper investigation is seen to be done then I think we can have reasonable confidence.

[mamakay]

I think the reason they don't put research papers onto their websites is because they're so dry and academic, and few members of the public will read them.

See, I think more people would take the sites seriously and read all the info on the sites if they provided access to the research that back their claims.

Anecdotal evidence is usually denigrated but as the saying goes, one man's anecdotal evidence is another man's case history. To me case histories are more important. They are less liable to tampering, to being conflicted. I admit they can still be misinterpreted. Doctors do that all the time. But if a proper investigation is seen to be done then I think we can have reasonable confidence.

ITA.

[amnesiac]

See, I think more people would take the sites seriously and read all the info on the sites if they provided access to the research that back their claims.

The reality is that most people are not going to have the training or the time to read original studies usually, and these websites recognise that. I don't believe that lessens their truthfulness or even their accuracy.

Which is why we're having this discussion. Empowering ourselves with tools to be able to weed out some of the garbage. It's not about whether I like those sites or not, it's about how we decide what content is valid & what is not.

[amnesiac]

Originally Posted by Momtezuma Tuatara

Quote:
Originally Posted by ERSsmom
A book I read recently kept claiming that if you get Whooping Cough once you will have life-long immunity. I thought this was wrong so I googled it. I found several state health dept sites that stated that getting WC does not give you life-long immunity, although it may give you immunity for a few years. Because of this discrepancy, I was skeptical of everything else in the book. The author should research everything she includes in her book.

I'm interested in how you decide what a reliable source is.
But see, here is where the crunch problem is. The medical profession used to say that one clinical bout of whooping cough gave life-long immunity.

And actually, it did... to clinical disease, with a proviso about which they had no understanding. That proviso was that every time there was a four yearly outbreak of pertussis your body would "finger" the bacteria again, and the internal immunological hard-drive would say "Ah yes, I remember that", and do a little bolsterring from inside.....The point of the above dribble is that the author of that book, rather than being wrong, was outdated.

ESRsmom was correct in her assessment & the author was incorrect - contracting WC caused by B pertussis once does not mean you can never get it again, it means you may be in the clear for a few years.

Good for you ESRsmom for super fact checking!

[ERSsmom]

Originally Posted by amnesiac

ESRsmom was correct in her assessment & the author was incorrect - contracting WC caused by B pertussis once does not mean you can never get it again, it means you may be in the clear for a few years.

Good for you ESRsmom for super fact checking!

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

deleted

[Aquaduct]

As they used to say in public meetings, "Hear hear!!" I sooooooo agree with the above.

I think I am correct in saying that one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, The Lancet of Britain, is proudly named after the two edged surgical instument which doctors used to use up until 100 or so years ago to open up the veins of gullible clients and bleed out a pint or two of their blood during fevers. It was the doctors sage advice to clients that this would do them the world of good and possibly save their lives by lowering the fever. In this way doctors inadvertently killed thousands upon thousands of people every year.

And as with puerperal fever, there never has been so much as an apology. No public acknowledgement of "Hey, we messed up bigtime!" It has all been swept under the carpet of history and people's short memories.

The medical profession or allopathy as I prefer to call their system of medical practice, is also guilty of using large amounts of mercury for all sorts of conditions, even though it cured nothing, and always poisoned recipients (sometimes to death). They extolled the virtues of mercury for many centuries, and well into the 20th century. Even up until the 1960s the most poisonous non-radioactive natural element on this planet -mercury- was being used for not a few medical conditions in hospitals and in general practice. Few people are aware of this. But I have a 1966 Black's Medical Dictionary which lists recommended uses for various medications with mercury as a major ingredient.

And then of course, we have the criminal use of mercury in many frontline vaccines right up to this day, with consequent autistic spectrum disorders and so on and so forth.

Do you think they could be honourable and responsible enough to admit they stuffed up? No, of course they couldn't. It is business as usual. (Of course there have been honourable exceptions ie. Prof. Robert Mendelsohn, Dr. Stephanie Cave, Russel Blaylock etc. )

[xerxes]

I thought this was a simple point: ERSsmom looked at a book. She found a factual error by the author throughout the book. She rejected the book.

Not sure I see the connection with pooperall fever. Are you saying she should trust this author anyway and believe everything else that is written in the book? IMO it is good to be more skeptical of a writer when he/she makes a blatant error and then repeats it.

ETA: Mercury stuff moved to appropriate thread.

[Mirzam]

Originally Posted by Aquaduct

What we're talking about is wisdom really. Wisdom is the ability to grasp the truth, the eternal fact. The great spiritual master, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar said wisdom comes from knowing yourself, and observing the people around you. This is what I believe. This has been my experience.

Yes, yes, yes.

IMO this wisdom (I call it knowing) is eternal and beyond our "physical" minds. Not that our minds are physical but they are influenced by mass consciousness, conditioning and most importantly fear.

[Aquaduct]

Who is George Galloway? Isn't he that curmedgeonly English MP who's been accused of being Saddam Hussein's agent? What a hoot!

[Mirzam]

Originally Posted by Aquaduct

Who is George Galloway? Isn't he that curmedgeonly English MP who's been accused of being Saddam Hussein's agent? What a hoot!

Yep, he's the one:

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.


Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

Geroge Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow testifying at a US Senate hearing.

http://whatreallyhappened.com/galloway.html

My apologies to the OP for this OT post.

ETA: The man's a Scot, I am not sure he would appreciate being called English!

[Momtezuma Tuatara]

Oh no uccomama, George Galloway is a very good illustration of what we are talking about here.

Someone they would like to make the world think is wrong, had it right.

How did he evaluate the evidence? (rhetorical statement)

[Aquaduct]

The guy was a visionary. He obviously had a backbone and a mind of his own. No wonder Washington and Downing St. want to tarnish him.

[Mirzam]

Originally Posted by Aquaduct

The guy was a visionary. He obviously had a backbone and a mind of his own. No wonder Washington and Downing St. want to tarnish him.

The man knows Iraq and the Middle East. He knew the truth because he took the time to find out for himself and not take the word of his fellow politicians. I don't think he was/is a visionary. MT, you are right, Galloway is an excellent example of what we are talking about in this thread!

[Aquaduct]

I was kind of joking Uccomama. No, he sounds like a man of principle.

By the way I liked what you said about the mind being outside of the physical. This is what I believe. We think by means of our brain, not with our brains. The brain is just a tool of our consciousness.

[amnesiac]

Deborah, I really appreciate you sharing all that information. I had hoped this thread would be full of tips to help newbies find their way & help the rest of us use new strategies to delve deeper, but now that it's just going around in circles I think I'm done with it. Best of luck to everyone in finding the best solutions for your own families.