When science sets out to fail

This is a wonderful analysis by Teresa Binstock who always has insightful and intelligent work that is well worth reading.

What struck me so clearly when reading this piece on yet another flawed study of autism and gut issues is that not only did this study fail - it was specifically designed to fail.

It wasn't that the authors wouldn't have known that retrospective studies are not good at picking up the very information they claimed to be looking for - they knew it and didn't seem to care.

It wasn't as if they were not aware that by muddying the waters with all cases of diarrhoea and constipation no matter how chronic or how transitory, their results would not be worth the paper it took to print them out on. They knew this, admitted it in the article, yet they published anyway.

What were they trying to prove? What were they trying to deflect attention from?

When an average, non-medical parent can see the flaws in something masquerading as science and yet those who have studied science for years claim that the flaws aren't there or simply ignore them, it is time for a scientific revolution to overthrow the current paradigm and to rescue science from the halls of big pharma where she has been imprisoned for long years now.

Gastrointestinal pathologies in autism: Did Mayo's Ibrahim and colleagues err?

In 2009, Samar H. Ibrahim and colleagues at Mayo Clinic published a study summarizing the researchers' glimpse at gastrointestinal pathologies in children with and without autism (1). Question arise: Did the study's methodology have one or more major weaknesses? How valid are the group's findings and interpretations? Is the researchers' article generating misleading impressions?

The Ibrahim et al study was published online on July 27, 2009, in the journal "Pediatrics". On July 28th, 2009, an initial critique was shared by autism parent and physician Bryan Jepson, M.D., author of a fully citationed but readable text Changing the Course of Autism.