Dr Michael Fitzpatrick has rubbished that idiot John Briffa's (who Cybertiger worships) support of a hypothesis that rain causes autism.
Dr Fitzpatrick doesn't know the cause of autism or why its prevalence has increased: he seems not to care. He doesn't understand how genetic vulnerability might interact with a variety of possible environmental triggers, including vaccines. Fitzpatrick is scientifically incurious. And he absurdly dismisses a higher rainfall association without giving it another thought. Fitzpatrick and his ilk are a manifest disappointment.
Anthony Cox has also pointed out the flaws in the study; he too is "scienfically incurious".Dr Anthony Cox PhD has hilariously covered the rainfall story with his own brand of scientific incuriosity,
Cybertiger thinks that using long words makes him look clever and important, when actually, he just looks like a twat. You see, all he's doing is using the "open minded", "can think for myself" argument that morons like Truth Seeker use, when people don't agree with him. Just with fancier words. He's trying to imply that his fellow medical professionals are so jaded that they no longer care about cutting edge investigation into new science - when actually, he's just trying to pick petty fights with people who know where to draw the line between clever and stupid. Cybertiger clearly doesn't.
2 comments:
I've noticed that Cybertiger has been very quiet over here of late. I reckon that between NHS Exposed and yourself he's been rattled over his dishonesty regarding conflicts of interest. Badsciencers have always been pretty measured about reporting him to his employers but he can't risk the fact that as more and more people become aware of his bad behaviour, someone might. Interesting to see his outbreak of rational advice over on Jabs re water purification. And now this, a retreat to sober yet pompous musings on his fellow professionals. He's still a twat mind.
The "rain causes autism" paper would have been better off being published in something like Medical Hypotheses, IMHO*. I wrote about Briffa's views on the study on my blog. Basically, he is writing about things that correlate with autism and claiming that we don't know enough about them. I'm starting to think he wants us to prove categorically that each and every thing he mentions is 100% safe and is guaranteed not to cause autism.
"At the current time, we don’t know whether rain can cause autism or not. But the fact of the matter remains that through the delivery of mercury or some other toxin(s), it might."
He's not even consistent. Last time out it was the mercury-free MMR vaccine that might cause autism, this time it is mercury-containing rain. Is it the mercury or the vaccines? He doesn't know - he just likes the bandwagons that happen to be passing at the moment.
Orac and Science-Based Medicine also blogged on the actual paper.
*There was an editorial in the journal "Do These Results Warrant Publication?" http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/162/11/1095162/11/1095
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