"Real data" would involve double-blind trials and a large sample size. Anything else is anecdotal evidence (which might be used to inform the question of a study, but is not a study unto itself).
I don't know how many other parents you know, but I'd guess that's it in the range of n=36 (based on an average of 40 friends in adulthood and a parental rate of 90%). If you talked with people over the internet about this in parenting forums, there is an implicit selection bias towards people who believe there is something wrong with their children (more people will seek out such information who think they need help than those who think their children are okay). All of these biases and limited sample sizes mean that your experience isn't objective enough to count as "real data" -- and even if it was you'd be proving a correlation not causation (that requires even more rigor).
I don't actually have an opinion either way, but I just wanted to point out that it would be a good idea to look up clinical studies on the topic with large sample sizes and review your position from there (maybe they back up your position, maybe they don't -- but ignoring them and stating that anecdotes from raising a child is the only valid form of evidence is incredibly unscientific).
Experience is "real data". Nothing could be more "real". To imply that real life experience is anything less is obstinate, and ignorant.
Let's look at some of that "real data" being talked about here:
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Pediatrics. 1991 Nov;88(5):960-6.
"Effects of sugar on aggressive and inattentive behavior in children with attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity and normal children:
17 subjects with attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity compared with 9 age-matched control subjects"
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Seriously, if that's all we've got for "real data" on this subject that's just bullshit, and really old bullshit too.
Since that study was published the amount of sugar consumed per day has increased close to 30%. Do you think if they increased the amount of sugar they gave those kids by 30% in would have affected the results?
That's what we're dealing with today, everyday, and most every kid.
I have far more personal clinical experience than those who conducted that study done 27 years ago, both in the number of children observed and the total hours spent observing them, and it's far more up to date.
I've also spoken with dozens of mothers who've confirmed those observations during this past decade alone, and the previous two as well, and none of us had any outside influences motivating us like those who take corporate funding to study just a handful of kids for a few weeks at most.
I'll say the same thing I told those Physicians who denied there was such a thing as postpartum psychosis back in 1985, "you don't know shit about this".
It wasn't until "Andrea Yates" that the connection was made on that. Between the time I pointed it out and 2001 they all didn't do a damned thing to learn more, and they ignored everyone like me who tried to enlighten them.
That is what is happening here, right now.
Read the damned article linked above and do some follow up on it. This is a serious problem, and kids getting hyperactive is not the most serious aspect of it. It's way worse than that.
> Experience is "real data". Nothing could be more "real". To imply that real life experience is anything less is obstinate, and ignorant.
Experiences are coloured by your personal opinions, emotions, retrospective reasoning, and so on. Yes, it's "real" -- but it's not objective or useful data in the context of discussion about a scientific argument (this is why I scare-quoted it in my response -- all data is "real" unless you literally fabricated it, but data being "real" isn't the only consideration).
You can base your life on what you feel is important, I'm just saying that (on the whole) clinical studies are by far the most effective way of discovering whether a hypothesis stands up to scrutiny.
> Do you think if they increased the amount of sugar they gave those kids by 30% in would have affected the results?
You were talking about Red 40, not sugar (and you dismissed out-of-hand that the problem wasn't caffeine).
But in any case, I never said that sugar (or Red 40) wasn't bad for children (sugar is obviously awful for humans in general, and that has been known since the 1950s with John Yudkin's work), I was saying that arguing it from purely anecdotal evidence weakens your argument needlessly.
On the Wikipedia article for Red 40 I saw a study from 2011 by the FDA that showed a possible link between Red 40 consumption and hyperactivity, but also that further testing was needed (I can't download the PDF of the study -- it's missing from the FDA website). I think pointing people to that would be a better way to argue than to argue from anecdotes.
> I've also spoken with dozens of mothers who've confirmed those observations during this past decade alone
I guess I was in the right ball-park with n=32. How did you confirm these observations? How are you sure that they didn't have a preconceived view on what caused their experiences? Did you ask questions that might have lead them to a different answer (as we know, polling questions can be written to find either result)?
While I do appreciate you wanting to find out information "from the horse's mouth", you need to consider whether you added any bias in your research. This is why double-blind trials exist, and is why you need to have a rigorous experimental design if you want to prove something.
Would you accept the argument that "I've spoken to with dozens of mothers who've confirmed that their children became autistic after being vaccinated"? Of course not. Just because "sugar is bad for children" is probably true (and "vaccines cause autism" is categorically false) doesn't mean it should be subject to less scrutiny as an argument.
Hey, I agree that double blind trials would be great, but I have to point out again that many of the studies others here are citing have huge issues. One linked here was from 1994 and to consider that as proof there is no link completely disregards the increase in consumption of both Red 40 and sugar by close to 30% and it ignores what the author of the article linked here has exposed and that's she's just getting started with her review of that data.
To leap to a "bias" in what I've observed and pointed out is a pretty far leap. I have no profit motive at all. I'm not selling anything here or getting paid to offer a conclusion, and neither were any of the mothers I've discussed this with, and the sample size is at least several times larger than the study I linked to above, and more current.
And I also pointed out another very insightful personal experience with how "Professionals" will ignore those who provide insight that is fact based when it doesn't jive with their archaic teachings.
This thread is a fine example of that. No one seemed to take into account the increased consumption of both sugar and Red 40 when citing those old studies that are being reviewed by the author. It's not unfair to say it is the data they're using is skewed to to their bias.
As far as mother's saying that vaccines triggered autism in their children, I won't leap to deny there's a link. This is not an issue I've looked into much so I don't have an opinion to offer, but my experience is that it's wise to listen to mothers who have experience and those in the health care industry have a very long history of ignoring them when they should have been listening.
All that said, I have very much enjoyed discussing this with you and appreciate you taking the time to share your insights with me. It's rare to see anyone come back to these conversations here.
> To leap to a "bias" in what I've observed and pointed out is a pretty far leap. I have no profit motive at all.
A bias doesn't mean you're being paid -- a bias just means you have a preconceived view on a topic (or are primed to have a certain view on a topic based on your other personal views).
Being paid in order to present a particular view (as though it was your own) is called corruption, not bias.
> and the sample size is at least several times larger than the study I linked to above
Both sample sizes are tiny. The study you linked to above (in my view) isn't good science -- it would've been trivial to find more children to take part in the study (and thus a small sample size seems quite fishy). But ~40 mothers also isn't a large enough sample size.
> As far as mother's saying that vaccines triggered autism in their children, I won't leap to deny there's a link. This is not an issue I've looked into much so I don't have an opinion to offer
I will -- there is absolutely no link. This has been shown by hundreds of studies, and the only available counter-evidence is a study from the 1998 which was written by a doctor (Andrew Wakefield) that later lost his medical license because his study was fraudulent. There is no link, and I would recommend not wasting any energy being open-minded about the prospect.
The reason autism rates in children have increased is because we now classify more people as autistic and have a greater understanding of high-functioning autism (since our understanding of autism has improved in the past few decades).
> my experience is that it's wise to listen to mothers who have experience and those in the health care industry have a very long history of ignoring them when they should have been listening.
Mothers are incredibly risk-averse when it comes to their childrens' safety -- this is obviously understandable and important (it's an aspect of our evolutionary biology). But being incredibly risk-averse can also make you incredibly susceptible to fearmongering (which the prevalence of homeschooling and concerning decrease in vaccinations have proven).
I understand the appeal of "mother's intuition", but it really isn't conclusive enough to make decisions about child health (other than the mother's own children). And let's not forget that mothers don't all agree on everything -- so which mothers should be trusted on which topics? This is why you need objective trials (and I agree that the trial you linked above isn't good -- the need for trials isn't invalidated if the current trails are bad or inconclusive).
>a bias just means you have a preconceived view on a topic
Yes, but is it not also bias to leap to a conclusion someone is bias because they don't agree with the status quo?
> But ~40 mothers also isn't a large enough sample size.
I've spoken with many more than that over the past three decades, but I've yet to see a significantly larger sample size in any of the studies on sugar or Red 40.
>Being paid [..] is called corruption, not bias.
Of course it is, except when it's not disclosed. That is part of what the article linked here addresses. Some of those studies have been taken as being uncorrupted for decades now and that has very much influenced the current beliefs on the subject.
> I will -- there is absolutely no link
Well, I've heard too many stories about mom's taking their children to get vaccinated and describing the effects as "It's like the very next day or two their lights just went out".
I have no personal experience with this, but I won't dismiss that. There are so many variables that could affect this that it would be imprudent to do so, and those that sell vaccines are highly motivated to ignore those who've brought it up.
It's so easy to assume we know everything. It's human nature in fact to delude ourselves this way. Considering how much we do not know about how gut bugs interact with almost everything we are exposed to, that alone provides more than enough reason to avoid concrete statements like "there is absolutely no link" and doing so is most certainly proof of bias.
It's a huge leap to ignore those who witness these effects and again I can draw from my own personal experience when my first wife's doctors told me "there is absolutely no link between women having a child and psychosis". And that happened not just once, but twice.
All of her doctors, everyone of them, were arrogantly and insistently dead assed wrong and now we know they were all wrong beyond any doubt. How many moms do you think they all ignored before they finally saw the light?
It was 1 to 2 out of every 1,000 deliveries. An abortion can trigger it too.
So, if you preconceive those same odds could never apply to vaccines and autism because only 1 or 2 out of every 1,000 mom's say that was the cause you may well be wrong for a very long time even while a preventative treatment is staring you in the face.
> Yes, but is it not also bias to leap to a conclusion someone is bias because they don't agree with the status quo?
I don't think "tu quoque" is a civil way of having a discussion. I didn't use bias as a slur, I was trying to help you argue better (and I explained why you or the mothers you talked to might have a bias -- and it wasn't because you "didn't agree with the status quo"). You appear to be using it as a slur towards me (in a way, saying "tu quoque"), for no real reason.
> Well, I've heard too many stories about mom's taking their children to get vaccinated and describing the effects as "It's like the very next day or two their lights just went out".
And this is exactly the reason why studies are better than anecdotal evidence. There are countless studies by many independent sources that show beyond any reasonable doubt that vaccines are an unmitigated good (one of the greatest medical marvels in history, alongside penicillin or the understanding of germ theory). But that's apparently not sufficient because some mothers of autistic children think that it was vaccines that caused their child's condition.
You know what can really make your child's "lights go out"? Dying. That's what whooping cough, measles, rubella, retrovirus, polio, and any other number of diseases did to countless children before we started vaccinating them. I think that pretending that autism (which is incredibly likely to not be caused by vaccines) is much worse than death (which we _know_ can be a direct outcome of many serious childhood illnesses) is a quite unethical viewpoint.
> that alone provides more than enough reason to avoid concrete statements like "there is absolutely no link" and doing so is most certainly proof of bias.
Would you say that belief in evolution or climate change or gravity is a proof of bias? My view is based on the overwhelming scientific evidence, where studies were carried out in response to a bunch of baseless fearmongering that has without a doubt directly killed children.
You're right that we can't know anything, but entertaining an incredibly improbable outcome (that all of those studies were wrong) and allowing it to affect your life (and the life of your children) is just playing to the fearmongers. It's like saying that you can technically win the lottery -- you can technically win, but the likelihood is so low that you shouldn't base any of your life decisions on that fact.
If there was a study tomorrow that showed that there was a concrete link, and it was good science, then I would accept it and would happily eat crow. But the likelihood is so infinitesimally small that it's not worth entertaining the idea in a normal conversation.
I didn't even imply that one shouldn't vaccinate their children.
I really don't know how you took that from anything I've wrote, except that you read it with a very strong bias.
I focused on not dismissing moms who say vaccinations did affect their children.
>I don't think "tu quoque" is a civil way of having a discussion.
Actually, I was addressing the overarching approach to being stuck in a state of understanding that results in refusing to look for more knowledge.
You denying there is any potential for any link at all isn't really based on your personal experience with mother's who've claimed it was the cause. It's based on statistical data you are aware of, but that's all. You not atypical in believing that data is conclusive. That is the "status quo", is it not?
But statistical data is really only a snapshot of a fixed set of data points in time. In terms of human biology there is far more that we do not know than what we do know. The truth is the data we have right now on how the human organism functions isn't even close to complete, nor fully understood, and still quite dispersed and not easily accessible.
I'd like to think studies on the potential ill effects of vaccinating all children should be a priority and listening to mothers who've said their children experienced serious issues should be at the very top of that list of data collected and studied.
And again, to be perfectly clear, I still have not said or implied that one shouldn't vaccinate their children.
It's pretty cowardly to accuse someone of urging "mothers to not vaccinate" and then delete the accusation by editing your comments after they've pointed out they've not done that.
You could've stood up and apologized, but you didn't. You slunk in and hid what you said and slunk away instead.
Is like that how it works?