I have been unwavering on this one point – there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). They are simply unrelated, based on high quality evidence published in respected peer-reviewed journals across the world. To dispute this conclusion, using only low quality evidence published in predatory and low impact factor journals, is the epitome of science denialism.

There are some interesting early results from a study, published in Nature, that is examining brain development in infants who are at risk for autism spectrum disorder. The study hasn't uncovered any new information about what may cause autism, but it did confirm that the MMR vaccine is unrelated to autism. Throw this study onto the mountain of evidence that completely debunks that myth.

The ongoing study's results indicates that changes in the brain in early infancy may be predictive of an autism diagnosis at age 2 in children who have higher odds of autism because an older sibling has been diagnosed with ASD. The researchers took MRI images of the brains of children at higher risk at ages 6, 12, and 24 months, along with administering a test at age 24 months that assists in the diagnosis of autism along with another test that evaluates social skills.

The early results (the final paper will come out within a year or two) suggests that rapid growth of the surface of the cerebrum from ages 6-12 months preceded an increase in brain volume at age 12-24 months in children at risk for ASD and who were diagnosed with ASD at 24 months. Based on this cortical surface growth, the researchers were able to predict an ASD diagnosis in 81% of high risk children who eventually were diagnosed with ASD.

Again, this study didn't provide us with any information about possible causality for ASD – it provides us some evidence of predictive diagnostic methods. Moreover, the study had a relatively low study population, and we really need repeated studies to confirm the value of this study.

Emily Willingham, writing in Forbes, does a rather thorough review of the study for those interested in the predictive ability of the study. She says this about what this study says about any relationship between the MMR vaccine and an ASD diagnosis:

Finally, these changes before age 12 months that are associated with a later autism diagnosis precede the timing of administration of the MMR vaccine. This vaccine, readers may recall, is the one that true-believer anti-vaccine activists consistently promote as causative in autism. According to the vaccination schedule, it is administered at age 12 months. These latest detected changes arise before that age, but the rapid growth associated with them kicks in right at about age 12 months, once again illustrating that coincidence of events doesn’t always mean their association.

Dr. Willingham states that the changes that precede a diagnosis of autism appear well before the first administration of the vaccine. The first MMR vaccination just happens to be coincidental to the rapid growth that is associated with ASD. Remember correlation doesn't imply causation, especially now that we have evidence that the brain changes indicated in ASD occur prior to administration of the MMR vaccine.

I know that the "true-believer anti-vaccine activists" will be unconvinced by this evidence, and that is sad. There is simply no evidence that MMR vaccine and autism are related. In fact, evidence suggest that they are not related.

The MMR vaccine saves lives, so let's just protect our children with it.

Key citations

• Hazlett HC, Gu H, Munsell BC, Kim SH, Styner M, Wolff JJ, Elison JT, Swanson MR, Zhu H, Botteron KN, Collins DL, Constantino JN, Dager SR, Estes AM, Evans AC, Fonov VS, Gerig G, Kostopoulos P, McKinstry RC, Pandey J, Paterson S, Pruett JR, Schultz RT, Shaw DW, Zwaigenbaum L, Piven J; IBIS Network.; Clinical Sites.; Data Coordinating Center.; Image Processing Core.; Statistical Analysis.. Early brain development in infants at high risk for autism spectrum disorder. Nature. 2017 Feb 15;542(7641):348-351. doi: 10.1038/nature21369. PubMed PMID: 28202961.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Robert De Niro just had a press conference to push their anti-vaccine bullshit on the public. This time, they’re offering US$100,000 to anyone who can show that mercury in vaccines are safe. Well, they can write me the check today, since there is NO mercury (really, there never was) in vaccines, so based on their lame accusations, it’s safe.

I’m starting to think that the anti-vaccine forces think that the wind is blowing in their direction. This so-called press conference was held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, an important venue for announcements. The National Press Club ought to be embarrassed – how could a prestigious institution allow such junk “news” at their site. But that’s a story for another day.

Kennedy and De Niro – pushing anti-vaccine bullshit

Let me remind you about the participants in this travesty. Let’s start with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has sold out the left by sidling up to Donald Trump with respect to vaccines – Trump, after he’s done selling out the country to the Soviets (errr, Russians), is planning to establish a commission on vaccine safety. Trump may or may not have offered RFK Jr. the chairmanship of the commission. You never know with Trump.

RFK Jr. has a long history of being a vaccine denier (despite his claims that he really isn’t) – he even pushes the myth that the CDC somehow profits mightily from its vaccine patents. But he really pushes this trope about mercury –

In 2005, he published an article titled “Deadly Immunity,” in both Rolling Stone and Salon, alleging that the mercury-based chemical thimerosal, which was once but is no longer used as a preservative in children’s vaccines, causes mercury poisoning and in turn autism. There is no evidence to support this view. The consensus position of the medical community is that thimerosal does not cause mercury poisoning in children, and in any case the symptoms for mercury poisoning and autism are radically different. A comprehensive review by a committee of the Institute of Medicine in 2004, the year before Kennedy’s article, concluded that “the body of epidemiological evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.”

By the way, RFK Jr.’s article at Salon was quickly retracted, after Salon was forced to publish a series of corrections that disputed most of Kennedy’s claims.

As for Robert De Niro, unless you are closely involved with the anti-vaccine movement, you probably think he’s a famous award-winning actor. Well, he became a mouthpiece for anti-vaccine bullshit pushers when a controversy arose over the fraudumentary Vaxxed, which was being featured at De Niro’s Tribeca Film Festival. The fraudumentary was eventually pulled from the schedule because of the controversy. But after it was pulled, De Niro stepped forward to claim:

There’s a lot going on that I still don’t understand, but it makes me question the whole thing, and the whole vaccine issue is a real one. It’s big money. So it did get attention. I was happy about that. And I talked about another movie called Trace Amounts that I saw and spoke about it a lot, that people should see it, and it’s there. Something is there with vaccines, because they’re not tested in some ways the way other medicines are, and they’re just taken for granted and mandated in some states. And people do get sick from it. Not everybody, but certain people are sensitive, like anything, penicillin.

Speaking of Trace Amounts, Dorit Rubinstein Reiss wrote a comprehensive critique of this fraudumentary. The film’s story is best described by Professor Reiss:

The movie, Trace Amounts, opens with the story of Eric Gladen, one of the directors, whose health suddenly and unexplainably deteriorated. Distressed by his very serious symptoms, Mr. Gladen took to the Internet and researched them, finally arriving at the conclusion that he was poisoned by mercury. He also created a timeline and arrived at the conclusion that his symptoms started immediately after he received a tetanus vaccination that contained thimerosal (also known as thiomersal outside of the USA or, generically, ethyl mercury).

A search on the Internet convinced him that thimerosal in vaccines can cause his symptoms. He chose to follow a specific chelation protocol and apparently found a doctor willing to cooperate. His symptoms improved temporarily, and he believed chelation worked.

When his health deteriorated again, his doctor suggested thinking about other sources of exposure to mercury (there is no indication the doctor reconsidered that maybe the diagnosis of mercury poisoning was in error). Gladen concluded the return of his symptoms came from being exposed to mercury fumes from a broken lightbulb. Although further chelation did not seem to work, Mr. Gladen remained convinced that his symptoms are due to mercury poisoning, and he also concluded that his symptoms resemble autism.

So then, mercury.

It’s always about mercury

So, Kennedy and De Niro are pushing their anti-vaccine bullshit based on the element mercury. Unfortunately for their narrative, mercury has not and is not in any vaccines anywhere in the world. In fact, mercury is a nasty element that certainly does have some severe neurological effects, but it’s not relevant to vaccines.

What this anti-vaccine gang tries to sell is that thimerosal (or, if you’re outside of the USA, thiomersal) is equivalent to mercury. This would be true if we completely ignored all that we know about chemistry.

Thiomersal is an anti-bacterial preservative that is used in many medical products (including, at one time, most vaccines). It was used in vaccines to prevent cross contamination of multi-dose vials (they usually had 10 doses). Today, most vaccines are in single-use pre-filled syringes, so preservatives are not used.

Thiomersal, the chemical, contains one mercury atom attached to an ethyl group, or CH2CH3, which generally makes it soluble in water and to have it’s anti-bacterial effect. Thiomersal is an “ethyl mercury” – to consider it “mercury” would be similar to considering table salt, NaCl, a form of poisonous chlorine gas. That ignores basic chemistry.

Generally, thiomersal remains in the ethyl mercury form, and is cleared out of the body within a couple of weeks. Yes, thiomersal is toxic, but it’s important to realize that the dose makes the poison – and the dose of thiomersal in vaccines was so far below the toxic dose, that it’s beyond implausible to think that the dose would have any biological effect, long or short term. And it is not elemental mercury (which would be dangerous).

There is a form of organic mercury that is dangerous – methyl mercury, which is widespread in our environment. If you were to be worried about mercury, the amount in fish you eat is far more dangerous and in higher concentrations than you would find in the form in vaccines. If all childhood vaccines contained thiomersal, and they don’t, it wouldn’t come close to the amount of mercury found in one can of tuna fish.

Maybe you agree that the dose is low, but still think that thiomersal in vaccines causes something, like autism. Well, there is simply no evidence that supports this belief. Again, Professor Reiss looked at the evidence for a link between thiomersal and autism in her review of Trace Amounts:

In addition to trying to dismiss some of the data contradicting its point of view, the misleading picture it makes is compounded by glaring omissions. The movie completely ignores the many other studies from all around the world that examined the link between thimerosal and autism and found none. If we accept that the CDC is engaged in a conspiracy to hide a link between thimerosal and autism, would we say that:

The U.K. is part of the conspiracy, since this 14,000 children study also found no link?  Nor did this study. 

Canada is part of the conspiracy, since this large-scale study found no link? 

Iceland is part of the conspiracy, since although thimerosal was removed from the vaccines in 1991, ASD rates have continued to increase since then (and administration of influenza vaccines, which may contain thimerosal, is not recommended to children or pregnant women?):

Japan is part of the conspiracy, since this recent study also found no link?

Poland is part of the conspiracy, since this recent study found no link? Or in an earlier Polish study.

In other words, the scientific evidence, and only evidence matters – not anecdotes, articles in low quality journals, or YouTube videos. And the evidence is overwhelming that thiomersal has no link to autism or other neurological disorders. These are large, well-designed studies that are near the top of the hierarchy of scientific evidence.

Let me sum it up about mercury:

• It is not linked to autism
• Thiomersal is not mercury
• Importantly, except for multi-use vials of some flu vaccines, there is no thiomersal in any vaccine on the market

The anti-vaccine bullshit meter reads very high with this one.

The nonsense press conference

If you are so interested, you can view the full press conference on the World Mercury Project Facebook Page. Make sure you’re wearing your skeptical hat if you are inclined to watch this thing. Here are some highlights:

“On the occasion of our announcement of the World Mercury Project’s $100K challenge, we want to address America’s reporters, journalists, columnists, editors, network anchors, on-air doctors and news division producers….

Despite the cascade of recent science confirming that thimerosal is a potent neurotoxin that damages children’s brains, the American media has fiercely defended the orthodoxy that mercury-based vaccines are safe. We believe that even a meagre effort at homework will expose that contention as unsupported by science. In just the past month, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) review confirmed thimerosal’s profound neurotoxicity and a Yale University study connected vaccines to neurological illnesses including OCD, anorexia and tics…

Journalists, we have discovered—even science and health journalists—don’t always read the science! On the vaccine issues, many of them have let government and industry officials tell them what the science supposedly says. Instead of questioning, digging and investigating, journalists, too often, have taken the easy course of repeating the safety assurances of the pharmaceutical industry and the regulators at CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, which they have good reason to doubt.”

First of all, the CDC has not confirmed thimerosal’s “profound neurotoxicity.” In fact, the CDC states that thiomersal is safe in vaccines. Kennedy is so filled with his own myth-making, he can’t even state a truth.

And as for the “Yale University study,” I’m always skeptical when someone trying to push pseudoscience uses the educational institution as an appeal to authority, let’s take a quick look. It was published in Frontiers in Psychiatry, whose publisher is considered a “predatory publisher,” that is, you have to pay to publish in the journal. Maybe you don’t care about that, but it is indicative of “research” that is so bad that it can’t make it into prestigious journals. In fact, if this study provided us good evidence about risks of vaccines, it would be published in prestigious journals. It’s too important.

I think it’s important to look at this “research” and compare it to the body of work that contradicts it. Cherry picking one study is not real science. If this were a good study, and we’ll get to that, it would need to be added to evidence for and against the safety of vaccines. And right now, this study would be overwhelmed by all of the others that show no link, some of which we’ve described in the previous section of this post.

But those are more meta-level issues with the article.

Lucky for me, the eccentric Orac reviewed this article in detail. Let’s just jump to Orac’s conclusion (though the whole article is a good read):

There are so many dodgy things about this paper that I could continue to go on, but for purposes of a wrap-up, what you need to know is that, no, it doesn’t show that vaccines cause anorexia nervosa or tics, or the other neurological disorders linked to them; that it isn’t even good evidence of a correlation between vaccines and these conditions; that it’s funded by two of the authors and the wife of one of the authors; that one of the authors has a history of writing antivaccine articles for Medical Hypotheses; and, finally, that the other author is chairman of the board of directors for a lyme disease charity that appears to be heavily into chronic lyme disease woo. Basically, it’s bad epidemiology and statistics carried out by mostly non-epidemiologists and non-statisticians. Indeed, it’s so bad that I was surprised not to see someone like Andrew Wakefield, Mark Geier, or Christopher Shaw associated with it. How something this bad could be published by Yale faculty (plus non-Yale faculty listed as affiliated with Yale) is beyond me. When I decided to look at this paper, I hit the jackpot in terms of—shall we say?—teaching opportunities in critical thinking.

From my standpoint, I was concerned about the quality of the database used (a commercial marketing tool, rather than an unbiased medical records database), the credentials of the authors (none appear to be epidemiologists, who know how to design these studies), and the statistics. The statistics themselves, a form of p-hacking, a form of statistical manipulation that ignores basic principles like correcting for confounding variables and establishing biological plausibility. If you look through the data, it shows that vaccinations are correlated with broken bones. Yes, it does.

It is a junk study. It doesn’t rise to the level of good evidence, just more manipulated statistics that support the pre-conceived conclusions of the anti-vaccine crowd.

The TL;DR version

Robert F Kennedy Jr. and Robert De Niro are back at it – pushing anti-vaccine bullshit and nonsense. They get it wrong on “mercury.” They get it wrong on links between vaccines and neurological disorders (there are none). They get it wrong on everything. But because Donald Trump thinks vaccines are bad, the anti-vaccine forces think they’ve got momentum on their side.

I hope they’re wrong.

Key citations

• Andrews N, Miller E, Grant A, Stowe J, Osborne V, Taylor B. Thimerosal exposure in infants and developmental disorders: a retrospective cohort study in the United kingdom does not support a causal association. Pediatrics. 2004 Sep;114(3):584-91. PubMed PMID: 15342825.
• Bernard S, Enayati A, Redwood L, Roger H, Binstock T. Autism: a novel form of mercury poisoning. Med Hypotheses. 2001 Apr;56(4):462-71. Review. PubMed PMID: 11339848.
• Fombonne E, Zakarian R, Bennett A, Meng L, McLean-Heywood D. Pervasive developmental disorders in Montreal, Quebec, Canada: prevalence and links with immunizations. Pediatrics. 2006 Jul;118(1):e139-50. PubMed PMID: 16818529.
• Håberg SE, Trogstad L, Gunnes N, Wilcox AJ, Gjessing HK, Samuelsen SO, Skrondal A, Cappelen I, Engeland A, Aavitsland P, Madsen S, Buajordet I, Furu K, Nafstad P, Vollset SE, Feiring B, Nøkleby H, Magnus P, Stoltenberg C. Risk of fetal death after pandemic influenza virus infection or vaccination. N Engl J Med. 2013 Jan 24;368(4):333-40. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1207210. Epub 2013 Jan 16. PubMed PMID: 23323868; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3602844.
• Heron J, Golding J; ALSPAC Study Team. Thimerosal exposure in infants and developmental disorders: a prospective cohort study in the United kingdom does not support a causal association. Pediatrics. 2004 Sep;114(3):577-83. PubMed PMID: 15342824.
• Legge A, Dodds L, MacDonald NE, Scott J, McNeil S. Rates and determinants of seasonal influenza vaccination in pregnancy and association with neonatal outcomes. CMAJ. 2014 Mar 4;186(4):E157-64. doi: 10.1503/cmaj.130499. Epub 2014 Jan 6. PubMed PMID: 24396098; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3940592.
• Leslie DL, Kobre RA, Richmand BJ, Aktan Guloksuz S, Leckman JF. Temporal Association of Certain Neuropsychiatric Disorders Following Vaccination of Children and Adolescents: A Pilot Case-Control Study. Front Psychiatry. 2017 Jan 19;8:3. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2017.00003. PubMed PMID: 28154539; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC5244035.
• Madsen KM, Lauritsen MB, Pedersen CB, Thorsen P, Plesner AM, Andersen PH, Mortensen PB. Thimerosal and the occurrence of autism: negative ecological evidence from Danish population-based data. Pediatrics. 2003 Sep;112(3 Pt 1):604-6. PubMed PMID: 12949291.
• McMillan M, Porritt K, Kralik D, Costi L, Marshall H. Influenza vaccination during pregnancy: a systematic review of fetal death, spontaneous abortion, and congenital malformation safety outcomes. Vaccine. 2015 Apr 27;33(18):2108-17. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2015.02.068. Epub 2015 Mar 8. Review. PubMed PMID: 25758932.
• Miles JH, Takahashi TN. Lack of association between Rh status, Rh immune globulin in pregnancy and autism. Am J Med Genet A. 2007 Jul 1;143A(13):1397-407. PubMed PMID: 17508426.
• Mrozek-Budzyn D, Majewska R, Kiełtyka A, Augustyniak M. [Lack of association between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism]. Przegl Epidemiol. 2011;65(3):491-5. Polish. PubMed PMID: 22184954.
• Mrozek-Budzyn D, Majewska R, Kiełtyka A. Early exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines and children’s cognitive development. A 9-year prospective birth cohort study in Poland. Eur J Pediatr. 2015 Mar;174(3):383-91. doi: 10.1007/s00431-014-2412-5. Epub 2014 Sep 5. PubMed PMID: 25185528; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4334107.
• Nelson KB, Bauman ML. Thimerosal and autism? Pediatrics. 2003 Mar;111(3):674-9. Review. PubMed PMID: 12612255.
• Price CS, Thompson WW, Goodson B, Weintraub ES, Croen LA, Hinrichsen VL, Marcy M, Robertson A, Eriksen E, Lewis E, Bernal P, Shay D, Davis RL, DeStefano F. Prenatal and infant exposure to thimerosal from vaccines and immunoglobulins and risk of autism. Pediatrics. 2010 Oct;126(4):656-64. doi: 10.1542/peds.2010-0309. Epub 2010 Sep 13. PubMed PMID: 20837594.
• Saemundsen E, Magnússon P, Georgsdóttir I, Egilsson E, Rafnsson V. Prevalence of autism spectrum disorders in an Icelandic birth cohort. BMJ Open. 2013 Jun 20;3(6). pii: e002748. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2013-002748. PubMed PMID: 23788511; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3693420.
• Thompson WW, Price C, Goodson B, Shay DK, Benson P, Hinrichsen VL, Lewis E, Eriksen E, Ray P, Marcy SM, Dunn J, Jackson LA, Lieu TA, Black S, Stewart G, Weintraub ES, Davis RL, DeStefano F; Vaccine Safety Datalink Team. Early thimerosal exposure and neuropsychological outcomes at 7 to 10 years. N Engl J Med. 2007 Sep 27;357(13):1281-92. PubMed PMID: 17898097.
• Uno Y, Uchiyama T, Kurosawa M, Aleksic B, Ozaki N. Early exposure to the combined measles-mumps-rubella vaccine and thimerosal-containing vaccines and risk of autism spectrum disorder. Vaccine. 2015 May 15;33(21):2511-6. doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2014.12.036. Epub 2015 Jan 3. PubMed PMID: 25562790.
• Verstraeten T, Davis RL, DeStefano F, Lieu TA, Rhodes PH, Black SB, Shinefield H, Chen RT; Vaccine Safety Datalink Team. Safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines: a two-phased study of computerized health maintenance organization databases.Pediatrics. 2003 Nov;112(5):1039-48. Erratum in: Pediatrics. 2004 Jan;113(1):184. PubMed PMID: 14595043.

From Donald Trump to Sean Hannity to Harold Hamm to Sen.

Jim Inhofe (R-Exxon), one of the favorite global warming science denial idiocies is "Ha ... if there's so much warming, why's there snow outside."  Jim Inhofe famously had his grandchildren make an igloo mocking Al Gore and more famously wanted to start a snowball fight in the Senate.

It is now February 2017, just less than two years after the above video and this prominent example of Jim Inhofe's anti-science mania. (As Alec Baldwin put it about Inhofe, "Is there a bigger oil whore than Jim Inhofe?") In those two years, we had 2015 hotter than 2014 and then 2016 hotter than 2015.  The world is warming -- despite Inhofe's big snowball.

There is a 4A weather / climate emergency

• The Arctic is experiencing massive temperature fluctuations, with record high temperatures.
• Australia and much of the Americas are experiencing record heat.
• The Antarctic has ice missing in action and what might be the largest ice shaving in world history.

When it comes to America, for example, Oklahoma is experience record heat for Valentines Day and this has nothing to do with Oklahomans romantic passion. It is the middle of February and the thermometer is hitting 100F.

 TO REPEAT:

           IT IS THE MIDDLE OF FEBRUARY.

                  OKLAHOMA is 100F.

                          THIS IS A SERIOUS SIGN OF CLIMATE CHANGE.

Oklahoma is represented by one of the loudest climate science denialists in the U.S. Senate, a Senator who has received more fossil fuel contributions to his campaigns than almost any other Member of Congress. The products of these firms are a serious contributor to humanity's ever-mounting greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions. And, continued denial of basic climate science (and of the scientific consensus about climate change) is inhibiting action to slow (and reverse) the warming fostering 100F days in Oklahoma in the middle of winter.

In the interim, Oklahoma needs Jim Inhofe's snowball a lot more than the Senate floor.

Generally, when I write about vaccines, it’s about protecting children’s lives from vaccine preventable diseases. That itself is a noble goal for vaccines. But in case you didn’t know, there is also a CDC schedule for adult vaccines, which is as important to adults as they are to children.

Vaccines have one purpose – to protect us and those whom we love from potentially deadly and debilitating diseases. Many of us in the blogosphere have talked about the children’s schedule a lot, often to debunk claims of people who are ignorant of science, and think that the children’s vaccine schedule is causing undue harm. Yeah our intellectually deficient president, Donald Trump, thinks he knows more than the CDC, but that’s a problem shared by many vaccine deniers.

One adult vaccine I push regularly is the flu vaccine. It protects adults, pregnant women, the elderly, children, and healthy young adults from a severe infection that hospitalizes and kills more people every year than you’d think. Because flu is not really a serious disease, in some people’s minds, a lot of people decide that they don’t need the vaccine. They’d be wrong.

Just in case you were wondering, there is more to adult vaccines than just flu vaccines. There are several other vaccines indicated for adult use, including those adults with underlying health issues like diabetes, HIV and heart disease – unfortunately, the uptake for adult vaccines is depressingly low. Let’s take at the low uptake and the recommended adult vaccines schedule.

Uptake of adult vaccines

Unfortunately, in the most recent review of adult uptake of vaccines, the news is not good. Here are the CDC’s estimates of rates of uptake of adult vaccines during 2014:

• Tdap vaccine for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis (whooping cough) – uptake is around 20% for adults older than 19 and above. Being protect against these diseases is important not only for the adult, but for children. For example, an adult can transmit the pertussis infection to children who have not been vaccinated or who have a less than optimal response to the vaccine. If I were a parent of a baby who had not yet been vaccinated against pertussis, I would be reluctant to expose her to adults who were not vaccinated recently.
• Herpes zoster (or shingles) vaccine – shingles is a serious, debilitating disease afflicting those who have had chickenpox in the past, maybe years earlier. The chickenpox virus, Varicella zoster, hides from the immune system after a bout of the disease, to show up decades later to cause a more serious disease. It is unknown what causes shingles to suddenly appear, but the only way to prevent it is to be vaccinated. Sadly, the herpes zoster vaccine uptake was around 27.9% for adults older than 60 years, putting elderly patients at risk of the infection.
• Flu vaccine – the coverage for the seasonal influenza vaccine was around 43.2% for adults aged 19 or older years. Considering the dangers of the flu, something that is dismissed by vaccine deniers everywhere, this rate is shockingly low.
• Pneumococcal vaccination – the coverage for this serious disease was only 20.3% for individuals 19-64 years and at high risk to the disease. This is a deadly disease, and coverage should be much higher. There was some slightly better news which showed that around 61.3% of adults aged over 65 years old were vaccinated, though it would be much better if the rate was >90%.
• Td (the tetanus-diphtheria only version of Tdap) vaccine – the uptake for adults aged 19 and older was 62.2%. It seems that physicians stress vaccinations against tetanus for anyone who has had a large cut, which keeps the coverage of the vaccine a bit higher than most.
• Hepatitis A vaccine – the uptake for this vaccine among adults 19 years or older was 9.)%, one of the worst uptakes for adult vaccines.
• Hepatitis B vaccine – uptake for adults aged 19 or older was 24.5%. Over 90% of adults with hepatitis B infection become chronically ill, and the disease is indicated in cirrhosis and liver cancer.
• HPV (human papillomavirus) vaccine – uptake among adults aged 19–26 years was 40.2% for females and 8.2% for males. Considering this vaccine (along with the hepatitis B vaccine) are two of the handful of actual, evidence-based, methods to reduce the risk of cancer, it’s upsetting that up take is so low. If you do nothing else with regards to the adult schedule for vaccines, get the HPV and hepatitis B vaccinations. Then, if you’re getting those two, get the rest of the vaccines.

But the news is worse. Predictably, adults without health insurance were significantly less likely than those with health insurance to get most vaccines. Of course, vaccination coverage is a part of Obamacare, so it’s possible the rate of vaccination will go up. But even among adults who had health insurance and access to healthcare 23.8-88.8% reported not receiving the recommended adult vaccinations. That’s just unacceptable.

CDC recommended adult vaccines schedule

The CDC has established vaccine schedules for adults by age and by health condition (full size chart, pdf) – I’m a solid pro-vaccine person, and I had no clue what vaccines were required for adults. In fact, recently I took this chart to my primary care physician, who seemed surprised by some of the vaccines on there (like I said, I was too, and I focus on this stuff). Since my health insurance explicitly covers all vaccines recommended by the CDC, I got caught up on Hep A and B, MMR, HiB, meningococcal and pneumococcal vaccines. Some of the recommended vaccines, like Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b), might be a surprising adult vaccine recommendation for many who follow vaccines.

My arm hurts, but so far, I’m still alive with no tail growing out of the top of my head. But I am a warrior against vaccine preventable diseases. Come at me pneumococcus…my immune system will kick your bacterial butt.

I know many of us spend much of our vaccine advocacy supporting the lives of children, by protecting them from vaccine preventable diseases. However, we should not ignore what we’re doing to save the lives of our adults. Vaccines are important for adults, not just to protect our lives from these diseases, but it also helps protect others who may not be vaccinated or who are more susceptible to a disease they might catch from you. Yes, you need to be protected against some childhood diseases like measles, which are making a comeback lately thanks to the anti-vaccine movement, because they can cause harm to you and your family.

Go get caught up on your adult vaccines. Because vaccines save lives. My physician gave me a lollipop afterwards, so I think it was worth it.

Citations

• Williams WW, Lu PJ, O’Halloran A, Kim DK, Grohskopf LA, Pilishvili T, Skoff TH, Nelson NP, Harpaz R, Markowitz LE, Rodriguez-Lainz A, Bridges CB; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Surveillance of Vaccination Coverage Among Adult Populations – United States, 2014. MMWR Surveill Summ. 2016 Feb 5;65(1):1-36. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.ss6501a1. PubMed PMID: 26844596.

There’s an editorial in Forbes that spells it out: supporting science is a political act these days. Emily Willingham has five reasons why it matters. She’s taking issue with those who think Science should be above the fray, should be above politics. In an ideal world based on rational thought, that might be a tenable hope — but that’s not true where we live today, in Trump World.

Here’s the list — Read The Whole Thing for the details and links. 

1. Scientific research in this country is under political threat.

2. Scientific understanding in this country is under political threat, beginning with our earliest education.

3. The political repercussions of the threats to science will differentially affect people who have different identities that they bring to the table.

4. In the current climate, staking a claim to an intellectual framework that relies on facts, critical thinking and evidence-seeking is a political act.

5. The repercussions of stifling scientific advancement in this country are inherently political, from how they affect the healthcare of this nation to how we will be able to respond to threats inside and out.

Want to do something? You can start by going to The March For Science website and signing up for more information. You can find local marches near you, or organize your own. There will be no lack of opportunity to resist — find something you can do. The world is made by the people who show up for the job.

Last Friday [Feb. 3] Orcas George published a diary on the then-latest news from Fukushima that reached the rec list -

Fukushima Reactor #2 pressure vessel breached, rising to "unimaginable" levels of radiation.

The issue was news reports in the Japanese press and The Guardian about a video probe entry into the unit-2 containment’s pedestal at the CRD rail - a metal grate catwalk leading from a containment vessel entry hatch called the "hot cell" that leads to the pedestal supporting the reactor vessel. The upper portion of the pedestal houses the control rod drive [CRD] machinery. The probe was able to enter the pedestal at the CRD inspection level floor (also metal grating) 10.5 feet above the containment floor, and managed to reach the middle before radiation interference prevented further usable video. Before the video failed it captured a 2-meter wide melt-hole in the CRD floor grating, as well as a lot of corium residue littering the entire area. Estimating the radiation level over the hole in the center of the pedestal by the amount of radiation interference with the probe's video, a level of 530 Sv/hr is what they came up with.

Previous instrument penetration of the unit-2 containment vessel in 2013 from a higher level measured radiation levels of between 17 and 36 Sv/hr along the CRD catwalk but outside the pedestal, leading to an estimate of what the highest level "should" be in the pedestal of 73 Sv/hr. So the robot development consortium created for this kind of work at Fukushima — the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning [IRID] — created an instrumentation and tool-wielding robot for the planned pedestal entry that could withstand a 75 Sv/hr radiation level for at least 10 hours. Unfortunately, it cannot withstand a 530 Sv/hr radiation level for more than a couple of hours (and I think they’re wildly overconfident on that).

TEPCO and IRID announced they might have to wait for a tougher robot, but then decided that investigation of the hole and what might be underneath it was too important in the quest to find out where the melted fuel went when it came out of the bottom of the reactor vessel during the meltdown. So they decided that they'd send the new 75 Sv/hr-hardened robot in anyway late this week or early next week to do what it can before the radiation kills it. In order to give that robot — "Scorpion" — as extended a working life as possible in that extreme environment, they sent a 'cleaning robot' into the pedestal overnight (today in Japan, which is now into tomorrow) to water-blast, hammer and remove as much corium debris from the floor grating as possible.

Fukushima Unit 2 High Radiation Damages New Robot

The poor cleaning robot was gravely 'injured' by the high radiation level after working only 1 meter into its planned 5 meter cleaning routine. Again, it was a radiation-caused camera failure. TEPCO was able to retrieve the robot, so it was luckier than other robots used in various operations at the facility's three total reactor meltdowns, which had to be abandoned as just more radioactive debris.

TEPCO is again re-thinking the Scorpion robot's planned entry, questioning how much useful data it can return before it too dies, and even whether they could retrieve it at all - making whatever data it might have gathered unaccessible forever.

It would appear that the bulk of unit-2's corium still remains inside the containment. Specifically, it is for the most part inside the pedestal. Because TEPCO found corium residue (and an undetermined amount of corium) in/on one of the torus downcomers in 2012 and high contamination of the water flooding the torus room (basement level, below containment), it would appear some of the corium on the pedestal floor exited the floor-level opening and flowed to the nearest downcomer vent and through it into the suppression pool. This would be the big "thump" TEPCO described as having occurred very early in the disaster from deep in the bowels of the plant. The "bowels" of the plant is the torus suppression pool.

To get an idea of what this would look like, and how the molten corium is likely distributed, check out a "model meltdown" experiment conducted by the SimplyInfo.org research team back in 2014. In this experiment the stand-in core material is lead. While it's not too hard to get lead to melt, it's not precisely like nuclear reactor fuel because it doesn't carry its own heat source around with it in the form of elemental decay. So there will be differences in viscosity and distance traveled. Still, this experiment actually does provide a fair model of the unit-2 conditions now 'discovered' by TEPCO. The lead you see flowing out of the 'pedestal door' of the model would at Fukushima have been more viscous (more like glass than lead) and very well could have reached the wall of the containment structure where the downcomer vents are located.

Hopefully at some point TEPCO will have a good idea of where unit-2's corium went, and find that there's little or none still missing in action. That would make cleanup of this particular plant easier to plan, if cleanup is what they plan to do. Whether or not they ever actually DO any cleanup is a whole other question, the answer to which I am not investing the least bit of confidence in.

At any rate, there were more than 500 comments to Orcas George's rec-listed diary last Friday, so I thought there might be some folks interested in the followup to last week's near-panic inducing "Surprise" radiation level. Those interested will probably not be surprised again that the actual level inside the pedestal - NOT close to the middle - is quite a bit higher than the 530 Sv/hr estimate too. One of these days TEPCO might even figure out their little formula for estimating radiation levels by radiation interference with their probe/robot cameras does not come usefully close to reality.

More Links for the Interested -

SimplyInfo.org Unit-2 Extended Report 2015

Fukushima Corium Research Experiment Results (Glass Model)

I’ve written boatloads of articles about cancer, most of which say “this or that doesn’t cause cancer,” and that “there’s only a handful of good ways to prevent it.” To be honest, if I see any news report that makes a claim that something prevents or causes cancer, I’m immediately going into full skeptic mode. Recently, I’ve seen a few stories that claim that there is a link between high fructose corn syrup and cancer, so I thought I’d dig into the science

Honestly, I don’t get the issues with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Part of my brain thinks that, as we’ve seen with monosodium glutamate (MSG), people just get scared of a chemical name, rather than making an evidence-based analysis of what we’re really eating. For example, “high fructose” sounds like there’s too much of evil fructose, and it will certainly cause some health problem. It must! Except, the evidence says otherwise.

I think an article by the loathsome and much ridiculed David “Avocado” Wolfe perfectly summarizes some of the pseudoscience surrounding HFCS and cancer – apparently converting corn syrup into high fructose corn syrup magically turns it into a cancer-causing poison. Now most of you will just ignore what Wolfe says about anything because he lacks any science knowledge in his writing – but maybe I reach a couple of people who saw that article and want more scientific evidence about it. Let’s look into it.

What are sugars?

OK, we need to start with science. Just because it has a long complicated name, high fructose corn syrup is just a sugar. I’ve written a detailed article about HFCS, “High fructose corn syrup – don’t be afraid, it’s just sugar,” if you want the gory scientific details of HFCS and some of the myths about its health effects. But let me summarize the science here.

First, we need to define what is meant by “sugar” in a biological sense. And no, it’s not just that white stuff you put in your coffee.

There are over 20 individual, naturally-found sugars, called monosaccharides, meaning they are the simplest sugar molecules, the basic unit of all carbohydrates. Of all of those 20 monosaccharides, only 4 play any significant role in human nutrition: glucose, fructose, galactose, and ribose (which has a very minor nutritional role, though a major one as the backbone of DNA and RNA). Got that? These four monosaccharides are probably the only ones that can be absorbed and metabolized by human physiology.

There are other monosaccharides found in nature that can be consumed, but they either just feed the gut flora, or are enzymatically converted into one of the four basic sugars in the digestive tract.

Now there are a many more sugars that you can consume. Disaccharides, which are sugars made of two covalently bound monosaccharides, are quite common nutritionally. For example, sucrose – a disaccharide made of one molecule of glucose bound to one molecule of fructose – is one of the most commonly consumed disaccharides. When you eat it, the digestive tract breaks it down into its constituent sugars, fructose and glucose. There are many disaccharides that you consume, like lactose and maltose, which are also broken down by enzymes in the gut into one of the four simple sugars that our body can absorb.

Complex carbohydrates, or starches, are called polysaccharides – they are long chains of monosaccharides, sometimes up to thousands of them. Some carbohydrates can be broken down by the body into its constituent sugars, but some are indigestible. These indigestible carbohydrates are sometimes broken down by the gut bacteria, but not always. Dietary fiber are mostly indigestible (even by bacteria) polysaccharides.

Let me repeat this – humans can only absorb monosaccharides, exclusively glucose, fructose, galactose and ribose. In other words, all of those disaccharides and polysaccharides that you consume in your food must be broken down into the constituent monosaccharide before it has any usefulness for a human. For example, the gut has a variety of different enzymes that break down these starches and disaccharides – so sucrose itself cannot be absorbed, but it is broken down by sucrase into glucose and fructose, then absorbed.

There is one more crucial point to note about these sugars, which will be important as we move along with this story. Fructose is 1.73 times more sweet than sucrose despite having the same exact caloric content. So technically, you could use about 58% less fructose than sucrose to get the same sweetness. You’re probably seeing where this is going, but stay tuned.

In case you fall for the naturalistic fallacy, that is, “natural” sugar is better than all other sugars, you could be missing a key point – all monosaccharides are exactly the same, no matter the source. Glucose, fructose, galactose or ribose, whether produced by a plant, an animal, a bacteria, or a manufacturing facility in Iowa, are exactly the same molecule. They are all made of the same exact carbons, hydrogens and oxygens. Fructose in an apple is no different than the fructose in HFCS. The fructose and glucose in pure sugar cane is no different than the fructose and glucose in HFCS.

Not to beat this point into a pulp, but I cannot believe the number of people who think that there are different fructose molecules depending on where you get.

This is one of the major misconceptions of the pseudoscience of the natural food world, that somehow a sugar from a living organism is magically different from a sugar from a manufacturing plant. I can make fructose in a test tube with the right starting materials. I can also get fructose from honey, fruits, and just about any other living plant or animal. But all of those fructose molecules are indistinguishable by modern chemistry techniques or by living organisms. If you consume fructose from sugar cane the body will react and absorb it in the same way as if you consumed HFCS. So please don’t endow HFCS with some special properties that it simply lacks in the real world.

What is high fructose corn syrup?

Just to add some specificity to this discussion, HFCS itself consists of 24% water, and the rest fructose and glucose. The water just makes the fructose and glucose into a syrup, so you could dry out the water and have nothing left but dried fructose and glucose. Once again, nothing magical or special about this.

One more thing. “High” fructose corn syrup isn’t really all that high in fructose. HFCS is about 55% fructose and 42% glucose, which is only 5 percentage points higher than the amount of fructose in table sugar, sucrose. That is probably not biologically significant. Frankly, whoever invented the name HFCS ought to be reprimanded. But there’s more. The HFCS used in some beverages and foods is really only 42% fructose (and 53% glucose), which is really low fructose corn syrup to be clear.

There’s another thing about the somewhat high fructose version – since fructose is almost twice as sweet tasting as sucrose, actually less HFCS is necessary in a beverage to create the same amount of sweetness. Those who buy into the anecdotes that sugary drinks made with real cane sugar is “better for you,” actually you’re consuming more sugar per drink, which is demonstrably less safe over a period of time.

What about high fructose corn syrup and cancer?

Before we start, let’s remember a few things about cancer:

1. There are over 200-250 different cancers. Each of these cancers have a different etiology, pathophysiology, and treatment. Lumping all cancers together as one disease completely mischaracterizes the disease. So if you’re going to claim that HFCS, or anything else, causes cancer, my question is which cancer (followed by, what’s the evidence).
2. There are really only a few things that significantly lower your risk of cancer – quitting smoking is the major one. But staying out of the sun (and tanning beds), getting vaccinated against Hepatitis B and HPV, keeping a healthy weight, get some exercise, and eating a balanced diet all help to significantly reduce your risk.
3. Sugars are not related to cancer. Now, it’s possible that reducing sugar consumption will help you maintain a healthy weight (which means being pretty skinny, to be honest), which could lead one could argue there is a link between sugar and cancer, but it’s an indirect link.

So that’s the two minute class on cancer. It should be useful as we look at the potential risks of correlation between high fructose corn syrup and cancer.

In David Wolfe’s article I mentioned above, he makes this incredible claim (amongst so many):

Research published by the American Association for Cancer Research found that the fructose in high fructose corn syrup promotes cancer growth. Specifically, it promotes pancreatic cancer. The study found that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose and induce rapid reproduction of pancreatic cancer cells. This research shows that when it comes to cancer prevention and treatment, HFCS should be avoided at all costs.

Wolfe is referring to an article published in Cancer Research, “Fructose induces transketolase flux to promote pancreatic cancer growth.” The researchers concluded that:

Therefore, fructose is a particularly significant dietary sugar component with important implications for patients with cancer, particularly given the significant dietary change that has occurred in human fructose consumption since the mid-20th century. Our findings provide important insights into recent epidemiologic studies that have identified refined fructose as an independent risk factor for pancreatic cancer, and identify fructose-mediated actions as a novel therapeutic cancer target.

Let’s discuss this article, starting at the meta level. It is a primary study in a test tube. On the hierarchy of scientific evidence, it’s pretty low down the list. As far as I can tell, the research has not been repeated in nearly seven years, a severe indictment on the validity of the study.

Moreover, the study did not show that fructose caused cancer, which, if it did, we’d pretty much have to give up eating, given the ubiquitous nature of the sugar across all foods. The article is attempting to claim that fructose is an important sugar sugar for cancer metabolism. Finally, and most importantly, the proliferation of these pancreatic cancer cells seemed to be the same in both high glucose and high fructose growth medium. And I was really bothered by the concentration of fructose in that medium. It seems very high, much higher than we would see in blood levels of a normal adult, unless they drank HFCS straight from the bottle for a few hours. And at that point, I’d be concerned that such a person would have other issues.

There are other studies, outside of the one Wolfe mentioned, that looked at high fructose diets and cancer. Some show that cancer cells metabolize glucose into fructose to “feed” itself. Some show that fructose has no effect on cancer growth.

But there are no epidemiological studies that show an increased risk from HFCS and any type of cancer. In fact the best study I could find showed that there was no link between high sucrose (which is 50% fructose) consumption and gastrointestinal cancer. None.

Now, as I wrote previously, HFCS is not really not linked to any health issue other than those that are caused by high consumption of any sugar. Trying to make HFCS into an evil “chemical” ignores other issues with excess sugar consumption. About the best I can say about high fructose corn syrup and cancer is that reducing sugar consumption may lead to lower weight, which has been shown to reduce cancer (broadly speaking) risk.

But there’s no fructose in natural foods!

Uh, no. And this has got to be a key point. If you think you can avoid fructose by avoiding HFCS, you’d be so wrong.

Let’s look at a few popular foods for people trying to avoid HFCS:

• Honey: about 17% water, with almost all the remainder being sugars. The main sugars are fructose 38%, glucose 31%, maltose 7%, sucrose 1.3%, other sugars 1.5%. In other words, honey could be considered a “high fructose” type of sweetener.
• Maple syrup:  about 60% sugar, with that sugar being 95% sucrose, 4% glucose and 1% fructose. It is also half fructose, typical of most “natural” sugars.
• Apples: over 10% sugar, 57% fructose, 23% glucose and 20% sucrose. This is really high fructose.
• Peaches: 8.4% sugar, 57% sucrose, 23% glucose and 18% fructose. Again, this is just a tiny bit less than half fructose.
• Pears: 9.8% sugar, 64% fructose, 28% glucose and 8% sucrose. If we were going to name the sugars in pears, we would go with “extremely high fructose.”
• Grapes: 15% sugar, with the sugars being 53% fructose and 47% glucose. And once more, fairly high levels of fructose.

So if you buy into the fact that HFCS is the same as all sugars, but you are scared of the fructose component, well that’s not very logical, given the high fructose levels in most foods. It’s pretty much impossible to avoid, as long as you eat anything made of carbohydrates. I guess you could switch to a paleo diet – or not.

The TL;DR version

1. HFCS is not really all that high in fructose, it’s only 55% indistinguishable from 50% fructose in table sugar.
2. Fructose is common in many different foods, some with a lot higher amount than found in your typical HFCS soda.
3. As far as we can tell, there is no evidence of a link between high fructose corn syrup and cancer. In fact there is some evidence that dismiss a link between them.

Key citations:

• Liu H, Huang D, McArthur DL, Boros LG, Nissen N, Heaney AP. Fructose induces transketolase flux to promote pancreatic cancer growth. Cancer Res. 2010 Aug 1;70(15):6368-76. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-09-4615. PubMed PMID: 20647326.
• Wang Z, Uchida K, Ohnaka K, Morita M, Toyomura K, Kono S, Ueki T, Tanaka M, Kakeji Y, Maehara Y, Okamura T, Ikejiri K, Futami K, Maekawa T, Yasunami Y, Takenaka K, Ichimiya H, Terasaka R. Sugars, sucrose and colorectal cancer risk: the Fukuoka colorectal cancer study. Scand J Gastroenterol. 2014 May;49(5):581-8. doi: 10.3109/00365521.2013.822091. PubMed PMID: 24716480; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4025586.

Take a good look at the front page of today’s Daily Mail.  Yes, children, this august institution is now to be our nation’s primary science source, driving the well-being of the planet and all who dwell upon it:

The House Science Committee today erupted in an ecstatic tweetstorm when the Daily Mail screamed this morning that “ClimateGate 2” had been uncovered:  Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data:

The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris Agreement on climate change.

A high-level whistleblower has told this newspaper that America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) breached its own rules on scientific integrity when it published the sensational but flawed report, aimed at making the maximum possible impact on world leaders including Barack Obama and David Cameron at the UN climate conference in Paris in 2015.

The report claimed that the ‘pause’ or ‘slowdown’ in global warming in the period since 1998 – revealed by UN scientists in 2013 – never existed, and that world temperatures had been rising faster than scientists expected. Launched by NOAA with a public relations fanfare, it was splashed across the world’s media, and cited repeatedly by politicians and policy makers.

But the whistleblower, Dr John Bates, a top NOAA scientist with an impeccable reputation, has shown The Mail on Sunday irrefutable evidence that the paper was based on misleading, ‘unverified’ data.

It was never subjected to NOAA’s rigorous internal evaluation process – which Dr Bates devised.

His vehement objections to the publication of the faulty data were overridden by his NOAA superiors in what he describes as a ‘blatant attempt to intensify the impact’ of what became known as the Pausebuster paper.

His disclosures are likely to stiffen President Trump’s determination to enact his pledges to reverse his predecessor’s ‘green’ policies, and to withdraw from the Paris deal – so triggering an intense political row.

The scientific community is outraged, and response has been swift.  Zeke Hausfather, climate scientist and energy systems analyst at Berkeley Earth, who worked on providing independent verification of the data Rose attacks, writes at CarbonBrief:

What [Rose] fails to mention is that the new NOAA results have been validated by independent data from satellites, buoys and Argo floats and that many other independent groups, including Berkeley Earth and the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre, get effectively the same results.

... Rose’s claim that NOAA’s results “can never be verified” is patently incorrect, as we just published a paper independently verifying the most important part of NOAA’s results.

...Rose’s article presents a deeply misleading graph where he shows an arbitrary offset between NOAA’s data and the Hadley land/ocean dataset. This is an artifact of the use of different baselines...This comparison ends up being spurious, because each record uses a different baseline period to define their temperature anomaly.

Peter Thorne, climate scientist for the Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units, writes:

I have been involved in and am a co-author upon all relevant underlying papers to Karl et al., 2015.

The 'whistle blower' is John Bates who was not involved in any aspect of the work…  John Bates never participated in any of the numerous technical meetings on the land or marine data I have participated in at NOAA NCEI either in person or remotely. This shows in his reputed (I am taking the journalist at their word that these are directly attributable quotes) mis-representation of the processes that actually occured. In some cases these mis-representations are publically verifiable.

Victor Venema, climate scientist who studies climate variability for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), writes today:

The [global warming] "pause" is based on bad statistics and cherry-picking a specific period, which is bad "science". With good statistics, there is no evidence of any trend change.

…

Rose gets some suggestive quotes from an apparently disgruntled retired NOAA employee. The quotes themselves seem to be likely inconsequential procedural complaints, the corresponding insinuations seem to come from Rose. 

I thought journalism had a rule that claims by a source need to be confirmed by at least a second source. I am missing any confirmation.

... It sounds as if he made a set of procedures for his climate satellite data, which he really liked, and wanted other groups in NOAA to use it as well. Was frustrated when others did not prioritize enough updating their existing procedures to his.

Each of the above scientists then proceeds to patiently and factually rebut Rose’s and Bates’ claims, point by point, graph by graph.  I encourage you to check out the links to see what the debate is about.

But there seems little point in the general public debating the scientific details.  And it’s probably not the priority.  Scientists were also refuting Bates’ claims in detail on climate change contrarian Judith Curry’s blog, where Bates personally posted his arguments.  But commenter “cerescokid” broke through in frustration and summarized the dark magnitude of the situation perfectly… and ominously:

Forget Rose… The story is not about what Rose may or may not have said right or wrong. And it is not about the particulars of what Bates said properly or not.

The public can’t understand the details. And they don’t want to get into the weeds.

The story and the 2nd and 3rd derivative of the story is that a whistleblower, from the inside and not just any whistleblower but one fro the epicenter of the climate establishment. This has more significance, not scientifically, but public perception wise than anything that Judith or Pielke or Lindzencan say. Bates is from the government.

This is going to be a seminal moment because of the headline value. Every skeptic, politician or otherwise, will get their 15 minutes of fame, again not because of the actual issues surrounding what Bates has said but rather who has come out from the shadows. The original story will get lost. The future stories will be the great divergence between what the climate establishment really knows versus what they they think they know. And that is Judith’s uncertainty monster.

Anyone who thinks this is about Rose or about the specifics of Bates statements doesn’t understand the dynamics that will overtake what is being discussed here. Talk about chaos theory.

I agree, this is a seminal moment.  How appropriate it comes to us via the Daily Mail, which pull-no-punches RationalWiki describes as “a reactionary, neo-fascist tabloid rag masquerading as "traditional values.”  

David Rose has a long history of writing discredited articles for the Daily Mail for years attacking climate scientists.  The UK National Weather Service has been forced to repeatedly debunk his claims.  Columbia Journalism Review describes Rose’s work as “outrageous” “pseudoscience.”  Rose is so known for this garbage that Discover Magazine dubbed an award for bad science reporting the “David Rose Award, thanks to his “flawed and distorted climate reporting.”  In 2013, Media Matters named the Daily Mail “Climate Change Misinformer Of The Year,” noting that its claims had been repeated by U.S. Congressmen and dozens of U.S. news outlets.  

Dana Nuccitelli published a 2013 piece in the Guardian titled “Arctic sea ice delusions strike the Mail on Sunday and Telegraph,” writing:

When it comes to climate science reporting, the Mail on Sunday and Telegraph are only reliable in the sense that you can rely on them to usually get the science wrong… Based on their history of shoddy reporting, the safest course of action when reading a climate article in the Mail on Sunday or Telegraph is to assume they're misrepresentations or falsehoods until you can verify the facts therein for yourself.

Other past takedowns:

• With Climate Journalism Like This, Who Needs Fiction? (2013)
• Flatly wrong global warming denial (2012)
• David Rose's climate science writing shows he has not learned from previous mistakes (2010)

The highly respected American Geophysical Union, on whose board Bates once sat, rebuked Bates for taking his data management concerns to a tabloid, refuted some of Bates’ and Rose’s claims, and linked to two of the above scientific rebuttals:

As to the merits – or lack thereof – of the allegations made in John Bates’ post about data mismanagement, within NOAA, that discussion is and will continue to unfold in dialogue among scientists, such as in this article by Zeke Hausfather from Berkeley Earth and this blog post from the Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units.

...

AGU believes that the merits of the Karl et al. (2015) should be and have been discussed in appropriate peer-reviewed scientific journals. We note that the main results of that study have since been independently replicated by later work. In the meantime, we will continue to stand up for the credibility of climate science, the freedom of scientists to conduct and communicate their science.

... We are closely monitoring how this will play out among policymakers and influencers. For example, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology issued a misleading press release. These types of statements by policymakers that attempt to take one study/dispute and blow it out of proportion are both unhelpful and misleading. We will be working with the science committee to demonstrate the scientific consensus on climate change and to encourage them not to interfere with the scientific process.

Rose is so delusional he managed to find validation in the AGU’s response, tweeting “AGU is taking John Bates's revelation that NOAA breached its own data rules with Pausebuster paper seriously.”

Sigh.

And it begins.  The Republican-led House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology lost its mind in glee in a tweetstorm:

You may count on Trump successfully using this tabloid report to shape planetary policy for our future.

Good job, Dr. Bates.  You deliberately picked the most trashy, destructive strategy imaginable to settle your score over professional slights.  But you knew that’s what sells in the era of Trump, so you wasted no time capitalizing on that.  Hope you’re enjoying having the attention and influence that you feel always eluded you.  In your bitter retirement you’ve rendered your entire career meaningless, laid waste to your scientific legacy, and screwed us all.

Science enhances the moral value of life, because it furthers a love of truth and reverence—love of truth displaying itself in the constant endeavor to arrive at a more exact knowledge of the world of mind and matter around us, and reverence, because every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being. ~ Max Planck

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge. ~ Carl Sagan

 Falsity in intellectual action is intellectual immorality ~ Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. ~ Richard Feynman
 

March for Science Washington, DC

Right now the link above doesn’t have much information. There is a place to donate. I know people have had a lot of calls on their pocketbooks lately, but permits do cost money. That’s something I have to confess I hadn’t really thought about. I give myself a pat on the back for showing up and two pats for making my own sign, but I’ve never contributed any cash. I think I will at least have to throw in a few bucks to help support my local march.

I’m sure I have left out many. If you know of a local group I have omitted, please leave that in a comment and I will add it. In some cases, I could only find a state group. In others, there was a state group as well as individual cities’ pages, groups, or events.

European researchers spin off sister marches for science in at least eight countries

I’m a journalist at the science/tech/culture site Inverse.com. Here’s a long excerpt of my new feature story about the rapid rise of online tools meant to resist Trump and take back the Democratic Party.

This intensely partisan election season saw more armchair activists than ever, with Twitter and Facebook providing easy outlets for aggrieved citizens to make their cases to friends and family. But, as Democrats found out in November, tossing digital notes into closed ecosystems does little to sway voters or lawmakers. Physical demonstrations and phone calls make a bigger difference.

Bella Pori knows this from experience. She remembers sitting in senate offices on Capitol Hill a few years back, sifting through angry messages from fired-up constituents. And though she worked for Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Tom Udall (D-CO), both reliable progressives, both felt the heat.

“The right has done such a good job of creating an angry and loud base. I’ve seen the mail that comes in from groups that I don’t agree with, and I was like, ‘Why don’t we do this? Why don’t we have the same level of outreach?’” Pori says. “We did notice those emails and it forced them to put out statements and sometimes changed votes.”

After Donald Trump’s improbable election victory in November, she decided that it was time to build an infrastructure for progressive pressure and protest. And so Pori, who now works as an aide to a New York State Assemblyman, teamed up with two friends to create CallThemIn.com, a site that allows people to quickly search for their senator’s’ office numbers and provides short scripts about three core issues: Protecting Obamacare, preventing tax cuts for the rich, and blocking Republican appointments. When Port launched Call Them In, it became one of a growing number of tools created to assist shaken members of the left who are determined to resist the Trump administration agenda.

Pori co-founded the site with a PR strategist and a full-time software engineer, creating the sort of new team that has become common in the months after the election. While protests from the left are nothing new, the collaboration with developers marks an important new chapter.

The tech industry’s corporate leadership PACs gave more to Republican candidates than Democratic candidates this year, and CEOs have for the most part worked to play nice with the Trump administration (pushback on the immigration order not withstanding).

At the same time, programming is no longer a niche skill, and developers and engineers now come from all walks of life. It is an increasingly diverse field, leading to an undercurrent of attitudinal change.

Nick O’Neill, who works in the Bay Area as a mobile developer, and his wife Rebecca Kaufman spent the last few weeks of election season in Las Vegas, volunteering for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. A Trump victory didn’t seem all that likely, but they didn’t want to regret their complacency in the case of a major upset. And though they were able to avoid feelings of personal guilt in the aftermath of Trump’s victory, O’Neill and Kaufman still haven’t slept easy; instead, they’ve spent nights and weekends working on Calls.org, another call tool that has helped swamp congressional phone lines over the last few weeks.

O’Neill and Kaufman tapped their network of friends and colleagues to build out an extensive site in just a few months. The almost instant explosion of executive actions and legislative moves since Trump’s January 20th inauguration — from the first steps toward Obamacare repeal to cabinet nominees to the so-called “Muslim ban” — the sites purpose clarified its purpose and potential importance. In the two weeks since 5Calls launched, activists have used it to make well over 360,000 calls to their representatives, voicing opinions on everything from a border wall to the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

“Some friends put together the design, some others put together a logo, some other volunteers have helped out along the way with some of the coding,” O’Neill explained. “It’s definitely a volunteer effort, and that continues today, because we’re all open-source, and we’re really trying to get people involved.”

...

For the most part, all of these organizations are operating outside the control of the Democratic Party. There are groups such as Run for Something and Swing Left, which work to explicitly elect Democrats, but by and large the agenda is more progressive than purely partisan. As Senate Democrats publicly struggle to develop a coherent strategy, many of the calls being made through the new sites are meant to pressure them into firm opposition to Trump’s agenda.

“I don’t know what the Democratic party is doing,” Moser said. “They certainly haven’t contacted me at all. I don’t know what they’re doing to organize actions or responses. They’re spending a lot of time on their election for the DNC.”

For the rest of the story, please visit Inverse.com. The more widely it’s read, the more I can write about these issues!

Radiation at Fukushima Reactor #2

Radiation levels inside a damaged reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station are at their highest since the plant suffered a triple meltdown almost six years ago.

The facility’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), said atmospheric readings as high as 530 sieverts an hour had been recorded inside the containment vessel of reactor No 2,...

The recent reading, described by some experts as “unimaginable”, is far higher than the previous record of 73 sieverts an hour in that part of the reactor.

A single dose of one sievert is enough to cause radiation sickness and nausea; 5 sieverts would kill half those exposed to it within a month, and a single dose of 10 sieverts would prove fatal within weeks.

Tepco also said image analysis had revealed a hole in metal grating beneath the same reactor’s pressure vessel. The one-metre-wide hole was probably created by nuclear fuel that melted and then penetrated the vessel after the tsunami knocked out Fukushima Daiichi’s back-up cooling system....

Not too much to add to this.   They are not saying that the core has escaped the containment vessel and are claiming that no radiation has escaped the reactor, but later in the article admit that they don’t really know where the core is.   If it is true that radiation levels are rising, that is probably not a good thing.

 One of the scariest parts is that in the age of Trump, this is relegated to back page news.

Edit: Fixed link.  Thanks.