Christopher Exley Archives – Skeptical Raptor

2019/04/08

Anti-vaccine arguments that don’t convince pro-science humans

There are so many annoying anti-vaccine arguments that make me laugh and cause my rational brain to explode. The anti-vaccine religious acolytes don’t understand one basic thing – we scientists would accept their claims if they presented actual scientific evidence. They haven’t.

Most scientists and skeptics are open-minded to new ideas and evidence. Yes, they may be resistant, especially if the evidence is preliminary. I was in graduate school during the early 1980s when Luis and Walter Alvarez proposed that the mass extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and about 99.99% of life on Earth during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was caused by a huge bolide impact.

When they first proposed it, scientists laughed. Today, it is widely accepted as a scientific fact. But it was accepted because of powerful evidence that kept supporting the original hypothesis, not because of “beliefs.” Being “openminded” doesn’t mean that we accept any silly claim made by random people – it means being openminded to reviewing the evidence, then, determining if that evidence supports the claims being made.

The anti-vaccine religion screams and yells to push their lies about vaccines because they don’t have evidence. It gets tiresome, and some of us just laugh when we hear it. Yesterday, for example, I wrote about how the anti-vaccine pseudoscientist, Christopher Exley, was banned from receiving funding because his research is both incompetent and false. Yet, the anti-vaccine crowd whined that some nefarious Big Pharma conspiracy was keeping Exley from his money.

So I’m going to be a nice old carnivorous dinosaur (remember, birds are dinosaurs) and give advice to the anti-vaxxers – I’m going to list the anti-vaccine arguments that aren’t scientific and are worthless. If you want to convince those of us who value science, don’t use these anti-vaccine arguments. Continue reading “Anti-vaccine arguments that don’t convince pro-science humans”

2019/04/072019/04/08

Christopher Exley, notorious vaccine pseudoscientist, blocked from funding

Christopher Exley, a Professor of Bioinorganic Chemistry at Keele University in Staffordshire, UK, has been blocked from raising funds for his pseudoscientific research. His grant applications were rejected by scientific research councils in the UK.

He then turned to GoFundMe to raise money, and they also rejected him. GoFundMe stated that “campaigns raising money to promote misinformation about vaccines violate GoFundMe’s terms of service and we are removing them.”

Pardon me, while I laugh hysterically. Continue reading “Christopher Exley, notorious vaccine pseudoscientist, blocked from funding”

2018/11/01

Children’s Health Defense anti-vaccine attack on Paul Offit – this again

Maybe you don’t know much about Children’s Health Defense, but it’s a newer anti-vaccine group run by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has become one of the high priests of the anti-vaccine religion. RFK Jr., scion of the Kennedy family who dominated US politics for decades, has gone off the deep end of conspiracies from the assassinations of his father, Robert F. Kennedy, and uncle, John F. Kennedy, to the discredited belief that vaccines cause autism.

Children’s Health Defense, as a proxy for RFK Jr.’s lunatic beliefs about vaccines, decided to utilize ad hominem attacks on Dr. Paul Offit as part of their offensive against vaccines. Why? Because the anti-vaccine crackpots lack any evidence of any of their claims, so the best they can do is attack people with childish name-calling and logical fallacies. If this wasn’t about saving children’s lives with safe and effective vaccines, I’d just laugh at these people. They are ridiculous members of a lunatic fringe.

Although I’m not going to waste your time tearing apart each absurd attack they make on Dr. Offit, I’ll tackle a few. For educational purposes only! Continue reading “Children’s Health Defense anti-vaccine attack on Paul Offit – this again”

2018/05/292018/11/26

Aluminum in vaccines – new paper dismisses anti-vaxxer claims

Trying to have a reasonable discussion with the anti-vaccine religion is usually very difficult. To these militants, scientific evidence is unimportant – well, unless it’s a cherry-picked article from an obscure, predatory journal that has been retracted. Part of the problem is the moving goalposts of the anti-vaccine arguments. First, it was mercury (no mercury in vaccines). Today, the argument is that aluminum in vaccines is dangerous. What next, the water in vaccines causes something because of reasons?

A new paper published recently provides solid evidence that the tiny amount of aluminum in vaccines is biologically irrelevant. Not that a peer-reviewed paper in a top journal would convince most anti-vaccine zealots, since they have a pre-conceived conclusion, and only accept evidence that supports their beliefs. By the way, that’s the very definition of pseudoscience. Continue reading “Aluminum in vaccines – new paper dismisses anti-vaxxer claims”

2018/04/102018/04/11

Anti-vaccine James Lyons-Weiler writes about aluminum and autism

Here we go again. Another anti-vaccine pseudoscientist publishes a paper that calls into question something about vaccines, and the anti-vaccine religion genuflects in their general direction. The anti-vaccine side has nearly zero evidence supporting their claims, so they have to cling to anything they can get. And a new article from James Lyons-Weiler continues that tradition.

The anti-vaccine religion is littered with these false authorities that have few credentials or experience in vaccines, yet, because of a “Ph.D.” after their name, the anti-vaxxers make it appear they speak for millions of scientists. There’s Tetyana Obukhanych, a former immunologist who has published no peer-reviewed articles about vaccines, who has denied all of her scientific education and training, and who makes egregious and simplistic mistakes about vaccines in all of her proclamations.

Christopher Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic are multiple-retracted “researchers” who shill for the anti-vaccine religion by publishing weak and easily critiqued research that doesn’t even stand up to the tiniest of criticism. We’ve often speculated as to why the University of British Columbia, where they do their “research,” hasn’t ended their relationship.

Look, I’m not impressed by credentials and degrees. I don’t care if someone is a janitor or a Ph.D. in immunology at Harvard University. If you deny established scientific consensus based on your whims, cherry picking evidence, or rhetoric, you have nothing. You bring nothing to a scientific discussion. If you want to overturn the scientific consensus on vaccines then you better be an expert in the area of vaccines, and you better have a broad, robust body of evidence that shows problems with the scientific consensus.

Now, it’s time to look at this new false authority in the land of vaccines, James Lyons-Weiler. Is he another false authority and pseudoscientist? Or does his new paper give us something new to examine about vaccines? Yes. No. Continue reading “Anti-vaccine James Lyons-Weiler writes about aluminum and autism”

2018/02/252018/02/26

Anti-vaccine pseudoscientist Christopher Shaw retracted – shocking news

If you hang out around here reading the ruminations of the feathered dinosaur, you’d have read about the anti-vaccine “researchers” who continually get their fake science retracted by journals, even really low-quality ones. This brings us to the fourth publication over two years authored or co-authored by Christopher Shaw and his shoddy anti-vaccine research.

I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that I could probably run a website just writing about the antics and pseudoscience of Christopher Shaw, and his sometimes co-conspirator, Lucija Tomljenovic. In fact, I’ve written about Shaw about 40 times over the past six years – his false facts are perfect fodder for this blog.

But Shaw’s newest foray into retraction has got to be the strangest. It was a letter to the editor that was retracted. Honestly, it’s the first time I’ve heard of it, so lets jump right into the fray. Continue reading “Anti-vaccine pseudoscientist Christopher Shaw retracted – shocking news”

2018/02/142018/02/15

Fake science about Star Trek accepted by predatory journals – anti-vaccine researchers happy

One of my pet peeves, of which there are many, is when a fake science paper is published by a low ranked journal and trumpeted as if it is Nobel Prize-worthy research. You can read about anti-vaccine fake science published in these journals from notorious anti-vaccine “researchers” like Shaw and Tomljenovic, Exley, and Shoenfeld.

One of my pet loves is Star Trek, all versions, all the time. In fact, I occasionally have secret conversations with my fellow Big Pharma shills about Star Trek, in which vaccines are never mentioned. I am a self-confessed Star Trek Nerd, who has watched almost every episode of Star Trek ST: TOS through the current Star Trek: Discovery (see Note 1).

So when I get the opportunity, falling into my lap, to combine Star Trek and the anti-vaccine nonsense, I am happier than a pregnant tribble. And when a fake science paper about the Star Trek universe gets accepted by low ranked predatory journals, ones that are beloved by pseudoscience adherents across the world, it’s what I live for. Continue reading “Fake science about Star Trek accepted by predatory journals – anti-vaccine researchers happy”

2018/01/162018/04/05

Aluminum toxicity in vaccines – here we go again with bad science

This year I got a special birthday gift; someone sent me a piece about vaccine aluminum toxicity written by the noted anti-vaccine activist, J B Handley. In part, it reads:

While you were (hopefully) enjoying the winter holidays, a study was published in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry (it went online on December 27th) that could change the autism debate permanently.

I’d actually already been alerted to the paper, which is linked here. Some blogs of which I am a fan do a tl;dr (too long; didn’t read) summary at the end. I’m going to break with this and do it at the start.

This paper by several authors, including the anti-vaccine Christopher Exley and Romain K Gherardi, published in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry (which has been a subject of this blog before) has one of the worst introductions I have ever read. The first paragraph is basically copy/pasted from others and then twisted to fulfill the anti-vaccine tone of the paper. From there on in it doesn’t get any better.

Many of the references don’t say what the authors want you to think they do. Genuinely, the authors introduce papers which conclude that there is a lack of evidence for causality, but the authors act as if they conclude the opposite.

Many other references are items by the authors – the self reference is rampant. They, apparently and willfully, misrepresent the current state of play regarding the EMA and certain members of the Nordic Cochrane group –it is almost unbelievably poor.

Time to take a look at this paper in detail. Continue reading “Aluminum toxicity in vaccines – here we go again with bad science”

2017/11/302017/12/02

Anti-vaccine pseudoscience – more bad science on autism and aluminum

You’ve got to hand it to the anti-vaccine pseudoscience activists – they are nothing if not dedicated to their religious beliefs. And like the so-called “creation science” religion, which tries to “prove” their evolution denialist beliefs with pseudoscience published in creationist journals, the anti-vaccine religion tries to “prove” that vaccines are dangerous with bad science, pseudoscience, and misinterpreted science.

As of today, I’ve written a dozen or so articles about Christopher Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic, contemptible University of British Columbia anti-vaccine pseudoscience extremists. Shaw and Tomljenovic are well known for pushing garbage science to further their anti-vaccine religion. Of course, their “scientific articles” keep getting retracted, despite being published in low ranked journals whose standards rarely exceed “please use a good spell checker.”

Now, we have a new article trying to push the myth that somehow the tiny amounts of aluminum in vaccines are related to autism. Of course, we have hundreds of real scientific articles published in real scientific journals which have demolished the myth that vaccines cause autism. But these persistent anti-vaccine pseudoscience pushers keep trying. Because one of the central tenets of pseudoscience is to have a pre-ordained conclusion, and find any evidence, irrespective of quality, to support it.

So we’re going to take a look at this new “article.” I always examine anti-vaccine “research” from two perspectives – first, I take a look at the author(s), the journal, and other factors that might have an impact on our critique of the study. Second, I then critique the scientific data, methods, and conclusions. So, here we go, into the fray. Continue reading “Anti-vaccine pseudoscience – more bad science on autism and aluminum”