Hmm, doesn't it feel like we were just freaking out about a pile of overinterpreted or under-reported science stories last week? I'll be adding more later in the afternoon.
- This week's lead story [uh, heh?] is the same as last week's, only better/worse: When the kid was born there in 2004, Washington DC was in the middle of discovering it had the highest recorded levels of lead in drinking water in US history. After reporting last week that hundreds, maybe thousands of kids in the official study did, in fact, have dangerously high blood lead levels, the Washington Post now says that the chief outside expert had a contract with the water agency granting them approval on anything he published. And that in the peers in his peer-review demanded he change his unfounded, "Nothing to see here, folks" conclusion before publication--and it somehow slipped his mind. The things you forget for $750,000... [washpost]
- Also from the Post: judges in Vaccine Court [seriously] handed down coordinated rulings in three leading cases that basically eviscerate the scientific and medical basis for the whole vaccines-cause-autism movement. A vacctivist lawyer said the cases will go on, arguing, basically, that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You know, maybe when you wake up, and the best you can do is channel Donald Rumsfeld on WMD's, it's time to find another coverup. Aspartame, perhaps. [washpost, read the 650+ pages of decisions in pdf]
- Unfortunately, there's no mystery about what's causing 84 infant deaths linked to My Pikin Teething Formula in Nigeria: anti-freeze. Yow. [punchng via dt reader dt]
The anti-vaxxers need to spend more time reading up on the dangers of DHMO.
It took me SO LONG to get the DHMO thing! Heh. A worthy freakout topic for sure.