My colleagues are probably freaking out

If you haven’t seen in this in your news or social feed yet, let me be the one to show you. CDC’s own website now states that there is no evidence that vaccines do not cause autism. Sorry for the double negative, but that wording is pretty important.

The CDC page is actually worth a read because it is chock full of scientific paper summaries and citations.

The take-home message is this: There is no evidence excluding vaccines as the cause. The research hasn’t been extensive enough. Could they be the cause? Maybe? Are all vaccines equally causative? Maybe, maybe not. Are they definitively the cause? Not necessarily. Please read my other posts about causality and autism for more consideration on this topic.

But that’s not really the point of this post. The point is that the liberal media and likely academics everywhere are probably looking their marbles over this statement. And to first reiterate, the CDC statement is not extreme - it is just reminding the rest of the world that the research has not been extensive enough to disprove the link between vaccines and autism. But most academics refuse to admit that there is even a possibility of this link. Yes, I’ve heard it from them. I’d give examples but then I’d lose my anonymity. Of course this fits right in with “these potato chips aren’t going to be this color anymore, what a shame.” Or denial of adverse effects associated with vaccines, even though they are listed in the vaccine insert. Or how about “how dare you say that masks don’t work” and then struggle with how to admit that Cochrane, which is an authority on everything else epidemiological, is wrong on that and only that issue in their minds.

Just another reminder that scientists have too much of an ego to admit they were wrong…