RFK Jr likes to make nice sounding claims about "Gold standard science", but he is probably the worst interpreters of scientific data. He will latch onto any study made by random weirdos so long as they write a interesting abstract. It doesn't matter the sample size or methodology or whatever. Even if the study is retracted or disowned by it's original authors, he will go out of the way to frame opposition as industry bias.
His worldview in turn is actually very simple:
- Initial shocking study with contrarian finding = good and groundbreaking.
- Replication study = cover-up job by industry insiders.
In this way, he is almost the Replication crisis made manifest - if he has his way, he will try to undo nearly all of the studies that have any sort of government funding. And if he pulls on this thread long enough, there is no reason to believe he wouldn't consider all medical research as invalid.
Also on Monday, the FDA approved a lesser-known drug, leucovorin, as a treatment for autism, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said during the briefing.
Obviously they're doing evermore stupid things waiting for someone to say "Naaah!" and then everyone has a laugh and slaps each-other on the back and agrees it was a good joke.
Why they picked something that has extremely compelling evidence to the contrary, rather than just saying "ultraprocessed foods" or older parenting age is beyond me. I don't see how this serves their agenda, and clearly isn't grounded in any facts
It looks like maybe the agenda is to make autism the parents' fault. Then those elite, genetically superior upper crust folks can demand that morally inferior parents who damaged their children take on the burden of supporting, and maybe hiding, their mutant offspring.
As an additional bonus, the diagnosis of autism becomes a moral fault of the parents, something to be avoided if possible, hidden if not. Another lever to use on people, like being gay was up to the 1980s, or having African American ancestry was until the 1970s.
They don't care about facts. At this point I think it is fair to say they don't understand what a fact is. They prefer "alternative facts", which is another way of saying they will claim, without evidence, or even with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that anything which aligns with their feelings or beliefs, or serves their purposes, is a fact, reality be damned.
Compelling evidence guarantees opposition from rationally inclined people. Opposition serves as 'negative proof' to the conspiratorially minded, and causes them to circle the wagons in defense of their leaders. Trump gets loyalty and probably money while posturing that he's 'standing up to big pharma'.
At the proclamation, both Trump and Kennedy were the very picture of health and paragons of wellbeing, were they not? And who would doubt the sage medical advice of DJT, who so authoritatively pronounced acetaminophen?
RFK Jr has long suggested that WiFi and cellular radio may be significant factor in autism (and ADHD, allergies, and obesity). I was expecting then that the big autism announcement would either be that or his old fallback of vaccines.
At least with Tylenol there is (if I correctly understood what I heard about this for the 2-3 minutes I had NPR on while driving to the AM/PM for a snack) there is a correlation between autism and use of Tylenol during pregnancy.
The discussion on NPR, which included a researcher who wrote a paper that the government is basing this on I believe, said that there is no evidence that there is causality here. Nearly everyone in the field thinks that it is far more likely that whatever is causing autism might also increase the likelihood of pain during pregnancy, and so the correlation with Tylenol is simply because those mothers turn to a pain reducing drug and Tylenol is the most commonly recommended drug for that.
Also, Trump managed to get through this without somehow finding a way to directly blame autism on the left/Democrats, so that too is way better than I expected.
> there is a correlation between autism and use of Tylenol during pregnancy.
[0] (via [1]) says no - "analyses of matched full sibling pairs found no evidence of increased risk of autism (hazard ratio, 0.98), ADHD (hazard ratio, 0.98), or intellectual disability (hazard ratio, 1.01) associated with acetaminophen use [...] a population-based sample of 2 480 797 children"
There is also no direct evidence that smoking causes lung cancer. There are no randomized controlled trials to establishing smoking is the cause. Nor could we ever feasibly run one. All we know is there is very strongly correlation.
Russ Barkley did a video three weeks ago on I guess that study (or meta study) and it's not just the likely increased pain in mothers with ADHS but as soon as you take in a control group like siblings the correlation just vanishes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJGn4j6QTiw
Trump is going on TV and saying that they don't have autism in cuba because they are too poor to afford tylenol and that we shouldn't have mmr vaccines because there is "too much liquid" in them. It is a clown show.
legitster|5 months ago
His worldview in turn is actually very simple:
- Initial shocking study with contrarian finding = good and groundbreaking.
- Replication study = cover-up job by industry insiders.
In this way, he is almost the Replication crisis made manifest - if he has his way, he will try to undo nearly all of the studies that have any sort of government funding. And if he pulls on this thread long enough, there is no reason to believe he wouldn't consider all medical research as invalid.
JohnFen|5 months ago
Well, not any study. He'll latch on to the ones that support the things he wants to be true.
jacquesm|5 months ago
hmm37|5 months ago
moogly|5 months ago
bmau5|5 months ago
jjgreen|5 months ago
But no-one has.
jimt1234|5 months ago
lawn|5 months ago
ModernMech|5 months ago
Somehow I still ended up autistic.
OutOfHere|5 months ago
I don't think drinking coffee is an issue.
bmau5|5 months ago
bediger4000|5 months ago
As an additional bonus, the diagnosis of autism becomes a moral fault of the parents, something to be avoided if possible, hidden if not. Another lever to use on people, like being gay was up to the 1980s, or having African American ancestry was until the 1970s.
kccoder|5 months ago
moogly|5 months ago
al_borland|5 months ago
anigbrowl|5 months ago
unknown|5 months ago
[deleted]
treetalker|5 months ago
tzs|5 months ago
RFK Jr has long suggested that WiFi and cellular radio may be significant factor in autism (and ADHD, allergies, and obesity). I was expecting then that the big autism announcement would either be that or his old fallback of vaccines.
At least with Tylenol there is (if I correctly understood what I heard about this for the 2-3 minutes I had NPR on while driving to the AM/PM for a snack) there is a correlation between autism and use of Tylenol during pregnancy.
The discussion on NPR, which included a researcher who wrote a paper that the government is basing this on I believe, said that there is no evidence that there is causality here. Nearly everyone in the field thinks that it is far more likely that whatever is causing autism might also increase the likelihood of pain during pregnancy, and so the correlation with Tylenol is simply because those mothers turn to a pain reducing drug and Tylenol is the most commonly recommended drug for that.
Also, Trump managed to get through this without somehow finding a way to directly blame autism on the left/Democrats, so that too is way better than I expected.
zimpenfish|5 months ago
[0] (via [1]) says no - "analyses of matched full sibling pairs found no evidence of increased risk of autism (hazard ratio, 0.98), ADHD (hazard ratio, 0.98), or intellectual disability (hazard ratio, 1.01) associated with acetaminophen use [...] a population-based sample of 2 480 797 children"
[0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2817406
[1] https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/study-reveals-...
joquarky|5 months ago
And if autism is genetic, then the mother might also be more sensitive and request pain relief.
barbacoa|5 months ago
TomK32|5 months ago
Russ Barkley did a video three weeks ago on I guess that study (or meta study) and it's not just the likely increased pain in mothers with ADHS but as soon as you take in a control group like siblings the correlation just vanishes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJGn4j6QTiw
UncleMeat|5 months ago