The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, retracted a study on February 2nd that linked autism to vaccinations. The study by Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues, originally published in 1998, is titled “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children.” The study was one of the first scientific publications that spurned the dramatic rallying against childhood vaccinations and was one of the direct influences causing many parents to not give their children MMR vaccinations (Dr. Wakefield himself called out for parents to stop giving their children vaccinations for MMR).
Fortunately for parents, children, doctors, researchers, and anyone else who doesn’t buy in to the unsubstantiated, illogical, and downright dangerous surge against vaccinations, the editors of The Lancet and the UK General Medical Council’s Fitness to Practise Panel have announced that elements of the paper
are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation. In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were “consecutively referred” and that investigations were “approved” by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false.
As a result, the paper has been officially retracted.
This, undoubtedly, is a benefit for everyone. Everywhere.
Read the official retraction statement at The Lancet.
Read the original article at The Lancet. If you can’t get to the PDF, read it at Braindeer.
Read a full analysis at the New York Times, JREF, Times, or CNN.
Alternate “life” styles: scientists predict the possibility of a Shadow Biosphere
The possibility of strange forms of not-quite-alien life seems to have just got a whole lot closer to home. Astrobiologists from Arizona State University, Florida, UC Boulder, NASA, Harvard and Australia have recently theorized about a “shadow biosphere” – a biosphere within a biosphere where alternative biochemistry may be thriving in a way that we haven’t yet thought to examine. Such “weird life” may have had, for hundreds of millions of years, their own ecologies right here in our own backyard. Indeed, like Dark Energy and neutrinos, “weird life” may be all around us even now, only in a non-obvious way. Some astrobiologists are now suggesting that “weird life” is just as likely to be found here on Earth as it is in the Martian regolith, the seas of Europa , or certainly the complex bio-hadronistry on the surface of a neutron star.
I have included a link to their full article here: Davies_etal_Astrobio2009.pdf
Now, while I think that shadow organisms and shadow biospheres are certainly cool enough to blog about, please allow me to take the logical next step by citing yet another intriguing astrobiology paper that came out of the Santa Fe Institute. Published nearly a decade ago in an astrobiology related Nature commentary article titled, “Where are the dolphins?” scientists Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart realized (and showed mathematically that it’s already happening here on Earth) that as a civilization advances they begin to use the available electromagnetic spectrum for communication more fully and efficiently until ultimately their radiative emissions are indistinguishable from blackbody radiation. In other words, when we look out into space with telescopes to search for signs of alien life (SETI for example) we will likely mistake it for being just a regular old hot rock! So either three things must be true to find life through a telescope: 1. The civilization is at a very precise moment in its development,2. The civilization wants to be found and so sets aside some broadcast space for a message, 3. We know their decompression algorithm and what frequency band to apply it to.
It’s this last possibility that relates to the shadow biosphere in a philosophical sense. Unless we know how to interpret the signs of such life, we may not be able to distinguish it from the natural background.