Thursday, December 8, 2011

Why a Biased Pseudo-Skeptic and False Scientist Should Not Publish a Scientific Review on a Subject He Knows Nothing About.

Some of you may be wondering why I’ve been so quiet lately. In all honesty, I’ve been busy. However, that does not stop me from doing research on various subjects, nor does it exclude me from finding an interesting research article and waiting to see what happens.

Early last month, a new study was released that correlated a link between aluminium adjuvants in vaccines and a surprising number of auto-immune disorders, including Autism. You can read the abstract of the study here.

I waited and watched to see who would try to discredit this study, and how they would try to do it. Our good “doctor” David H. Gorski was the one, and he did not disappoint. Now, I get to have fun picking apart his rambling and monotonous diatribe.

People wonder why I accuse Dr Gorski of pseudo-science and crankery. The answer is simple; he pretends to be a knowledgeable scientist, when in fact, he has no training or legitimate background in many of the subjects he discusses, all while giving the impression that he does. Not only that, but as you’ll see from the below deconstruction, he falls into the exact same traps and fallacies that he accuses others of. Allow me to demonstrate.

In his rambling and spittle-flecked rant entitled And global warming is caused by the decrease in the number of pirates or: Why an inorganic chemistry journal should not publish a vaccine epidemiology paper, he begins with a mocking dissertation on how much fun he’s been having with “anti-vaccine cranks” over the past few days. Observe:

“In my eagerness to pivot back to an area of my interest after having had a little fun with anti-vaccine cranks, I ignored a paper to which several of my readers referred me over the last few days. Many of them had first become aware of it when everybody's favorite smugly condescending anti-vaccine crank, Ginger Taylor, started pimping it on her blog.”

While he smugly and condescendingly does the same. Continuing:

“Before that, it apparently popped up on the only anti-vaccine site almost as loony as Age of Autism, namely SaneVax, and it wasn't long before this paper started making the rounds of the anti-vaccine crankosphere, showing up at Gaia Health, and then just yesterday the anti-vaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism. It was at that point that I decided that I had made a mistake in not taking a look at this article; so I was more than happy to do so.”

I’m sure you can all see what he’s doing here and I’ll allow you the opportunity to read that paragraph again, knowing that he is attempting to color his readers’ opinions on what the article will contain. Poisoning the well, anyone?

He duplicates the abstract, and then follows with this:

“I thought I knew all the major quackery websites out there, but somehow I had never come across this one before. It appears to be a doozy, posting a glowing review of the anti-vaccine movie whose misinformation and pseudoscience I deconstructed three weeks ago, attacks on Brian Deer for his exposing Andrew Wakefield for the fraud he is, and, in a classic case of crank magnetism, a heapin' helpin' of anthropogenic global warming denialism.

Already, things aren't looking too good.”

Indeed, Dave, they are not. Look here, my friends. He further attempts to color his readers’ opinions on what the article actually contains, not even bothering to discuss the actual science. Moving on:

Still, I pride myself on always going straight to the source when examining studies like this that are being bandied about the anti-vaccine underground. Who knows? Maybe I'll find something to change my mind. True, it's highly unlikely, but you never know (Gambolputty – Oh, dear…I got a lovely chuckle out of that one!). I was, however, curious just who the authors are. Christopher Shaw, I had heard of before. He was featured in the anti-vaccine propaganda movie The Greater Good and gave a talk at the anti-vaccine conference in Jamaica featuring Andrew Wakefield in January. His co-author Lucija Tomljenovic is apparently a postdoctoral fellow who was also a speaker at that very conference, giving two talks there.”

More of what I mentioned above. And that is just the introduction! Not only that, but we have a heaping helping of an ad hominem fallacy and guilt by association mixed in, don’t we?

Already, we see that he has established that he is biased against the paper. A real scientist would read the paper objectively, not with the antagonistic bias we see here.

So let's get to the meat of the article, such as it is. Personally, after reading it a thought kept going through my head, namely that chemistry journals (particularly journals devoted to inorganic chemistry) probably shouldn't be publishing medical articles. The editors and peer reviewers, so enamored with an apparently strong correlation, fell for the oldest crank gambit in the book: Confusing correlation with causation. Perhaps the most irritating part of the article is how Tomljenovic and Shaw misuse and abuse Hill's criteria, a famous set of nine criteria postulated by Sir Austin Bradford-Hill for assessing the plausibility and likelihood of a particular correlation indicating causation. I discussed Bradford-Hill's criteria before when Andrew Weil also misused and abused them.”

Finally, he starts discussing his interpretation of the science. Notice his sneering contempt for a legitimate research journal. Can anyone see the huge and glaring error he made in the above paragraph? Don’t scroll down until you can see what it is.

That’s right. He accuses the authors of the article of confusing correlation with causation. Let’s look at the relevant sentences that state what the authors concluded, shall we?

“The application of the Hill's criteria to these data indicates that the correlation between Al in vaccines and ASD may be causal. Because children represent a fraction of the population most at risk for complications following exposure to Al, a more rigorous evaluation of Al adjuvant safety seems warranted.

The emphasis is mine. It’s interesting…they say that the correlation requires more study, and that the correlation may be causal, not that it is causal. Notice how he twists and manipulates what is actually said in the conclusion. In any study that comes to this sort of correlation/conclusion, it is an excellent idea to study the correlation more concretely. His invocation and interpretation of the Bradford-Hill criteria will be approached further down. Keep in mind that Gorski’s interpretation of the criteria is, in his monochromatic view, the only interpretation that matters. Let us continue.

Perhaps the silliest aspect of this article is Table I, in which Tomljenovic and Shaw try to convince you that the inflammatory aspects of various autoimmune diseases share aspects with inflammation provoked by aluminum adjuvants. Of course, I'd be shocked if some autoimmune diseases didn't share some aspects of inflammation provoked by aluminum adjuvants or even vaccines in general. Inflammation is a common process that can be provoked by many things. I could tell you that the cytokine profiles that Tomljenovic and Shaw point to as being so "similar" to cytokine profiles due to aluminum adjuvants are the same sorts of cytokine profiles that result from almost any sort of injury. If, for example, as a surgeon I cut open your abdomen in order to rearrange your anatomy for therapeutic intent, I bet I could find studies with cytokine profiles that I could tenuously compare to cytokine profiles due to vaccination with aluminum-containing vaccines.”

This is an interesting argument. However, the fact that these markers were present is cause for concern. These markers should not be present in anyone if vaccines were as safe as Mr Gorski would like you to be brainwashed to believe. The authors even go so far as to provide links to previous studies that corroborate their reasoning. I’ll get to those shortly. For now, we will continue with Gorski’s analysis.

In fact, perusing the chart I'm struck by how tenuous the resemblances between inflammation due to autoimmune diseases and inflammation due to aluminum adjuvants is. Presumably this is the best these two could come up with, and their best just isn't all that convincing. None of this stops the not-so-dynamic duo from including autism and Gulf War Syndrome on their list. The latter they characterize as being "specifically recognized as 'Autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants," which is news to me given that I thought the emerging consensus was that Gulf War Syndrome probably doesn't exist as a single distinct syndrome but rather as many health problems with different etiologes, much less is it recognized as some sort of autoimmune syndrome caused by vaccine adjuvants. After all, none of the anthrax vaccines soldiers received prior to going to the Gulf used squalene adjuvants. Meanwhile, autism spectrum disorders are listed in the chart as being "linked to Al-adjuvanted vaccines." I suppose that's true in the literal sense in that anti-vaccine activists have linked ASDs to Al-adjuvanted vaccines, but what Tomlijenovic and Shaw are doing is what lawyers like to call assuming "facts not in evidence." Again, there is no solid evidence linking vaccines, whether Al-adjvanted or not, to autism, and several large epidemiological studies that have utterly failed to find a link between vaccines and autism. Where were the peer reviewers here?”

Ok, this will take a little bit of time to deconstruct. Bear with me here.

Let’s begin with GWS, or Gulf War Syndrome. He states that none of the vaccines given to veterans before going to the Persian Gulf contained squalene-based adjuvants. He gives no reference to this, of course, but fortunately I was able to track down what he was talking about, which was an IOM funded study released in 2006. What he fails to mention (or deliberately omits) is that an FDA investigation in 1999 found 5 specific lots of Anthrax vaccines that contained squalene adjuvants. So, there is some controversy there.

However, let’s give Gorski the benefit of the doubt and say that his statement is somewhat true. Even if we take that position, then the authors’ statement is also true in that there has been evidence of adjuvants having been linked to GWS and autoimmune disorders in gulf war veterans.

Taking this position, then we can also say that there has been some data linking autoimmune dysfunctions in autistic children and that these dysfunctions have been linked to vaccines. Need I mention a certain beautiful little redhead we all know and love?

The "evidence" in the paper consists mainly of Tomlijenovic and Shaw comparing increasing ASD prevalence to the increasing number of vaccines in vaccine schedules in various countries, their argument being that increasing doses of aluminum through vaccines correlates with increasing prevalence of ASD. Basically, they collected data on ASD diagnoses for children from ages 6-21, from 1991-2008 from the US Department of Education Annual Reports for ASD prevalence. Next, they tried to correlate the autism prevalence in this group with the cumulative aluminum dosage they received before age 6 through the pediatric vaccination schedule. They then basically did the most simplistic analysis imaginable, plotting the minimum, mean, and maximum aluminum exposures against ASD prevalence. Can you say "ecological fallacy"? Sure, I knew you could.”

It’s fortunate that the authors used very simplistic means to plot their data. It clearly and succinctly shows a distinct correlation that in no way can be refuted. Dave attempts to do this in the most hilarious and hypocritical way; by invoking the Ecological Fallacy. He’s even kind enough to define that for us.

“To recap, because I haven't had to discuss it in a while, the ecological fallacy can occur when an epidemiological analysis is carried out on group level data rather than individual-level data. In other words, when the group is the unit of analysis, the chances of finding a false positive correlation go way, way up”

Can any of you think of any epidemiological studies released by the CDC and the Pharmaceutical industry that falls into this fallacy? Can you say all of them? Sure, I knew you could.

Add to this the fact that, for all the authors' claims that they controlled for confounding factors, by falling for the ecological fallacy they allowed huge confounders into their analysis. Even worse, they appeared to make no attempt to control for birth cohort other than to remove vaccines from their calculations that hadn't been introduced into the schedule at the time the children were vaccinated. (How nice of them.) In any case, although the diagnostic criteria used for autism and ASDs were set in 1994 in the DSM-IV, screening in schools, increased availability of services, and decreasing stigma to a diagnosis of autism led to an explosion in autism diagnoses. The way to control for this would have been to examine much more narrowly defined birth cohorts. They didn't. They used a single 15-year period. They also did nothing more than look for a linear correlation between aluminum dose and autism prevalence, citing r = 0.92, instead of calculating r2. The authors are incredibly impressed by this (and apparently so were the reviewers), even though it's not so hard to produce high Pearson coefficients for a lot of seeming correlations that in fact don't have anything to do with each other. The most heinous example I can recall is a ham-handed attempt to correlate abortion rates with breast cancer incidence.”

This is a somewhat absurd argument, isn’t it? This is a single correlative study that looks at a particular hypothesis and investigates correlations between a potential cause and effect. It is certainly not uncommon for such a preliminary study to congregate such data into a single cohort. In fact, plotting the data year by year (as was done here…I’ll post the chart shortly) reduces the chance of the same statistical manipulations that we saw in the Madsen studies. Here’s the chart:

image

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Hard to refute the numbers, yes?

Given how common papers like this are from anti-vaccinationists are, I sometimes think it would be fun to play a game I'd like to call "Name That Correlation!" What other correlations with the increase in autism diagnoses can we find over the last 20 or 30 years? Let's see. Personal computer use has been rising since the 1980s. Perhaps that's the cause of autism! More similar to Tomlijenovic and Shaw's time frame, Internet use has exploded since the early 1990s. Back in 1990, few people had Internet access or e-mail addresses. (As hooked in as I am now, believe it or not, I didn't have Internet access back then, either.) Now almost everyone does, and Internet access has become truly mobile via smartphones like the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android handsets. I bet a nice correlation between Internet usage and autism diagnoses could be constructed. Come to think of it, mobile phones, although first introduced in the 1980s, didn't really begin to take off until the mid-1990s. In the early 1990s, mobile phones were uncommon because they were so expensive and coverage was very spotty. Now, the nearly everybody owns one. The time frame of Tomlijenovic and Shaw's study fits the time frame of the rise of mobile phone use almost perfectly!”

Funny he should say this. My friends and I have created a game that is quite similar. We take these studies that show a correlation between vaccines and autism, and then take bets to see who will be most accurate with how the pseudo-skeptics and false scientists will attempt to refute it. The most humourous aspect of Gorski’s comment is his attempt to refute the evidence based on other things that could be responsible. The problem is, internet usage and cell phones have never been known to cause encephalitic reactions in children within hours of usage. I can certainly think of something that has, though. Can’t you?

Finally, Tomlijenovic and Shaw misuse and abuse Bradford-Hill's criteria. For example, they list criteria numbers one and two as being satisfied for aluminum and autism. Those are strength and consistency. The problem with these criteria is that they aren't supposed to be evaluated by one study. They conclude their association is strong because they have a high Pearson correlation coefficient, but their study is an outlier. It's not correct to say that the correlation is strong based on the totality of the evidence. Ditto for consistency, as, again, their study is an outlier, and, quite frankly, citing DeLong's execrably embarrassing study as a study that found a correlation between vaccine uptake and autism does not help their case. They also try to convince readers that one of Bradford-Hill's other criteria, such as biological rationale and coherence, have been met because of their attempt to make the tortuous vague resemblances between cytokine profiles they constructed seem like strong evidence for biological plausibility. Even worse, they try to use their confusion of correlation with causation as an argument that there is a temporal relationship between the purported cause and the effect. No, it's not. In fact, they have not convincingly met any of Bradford-Hill's criteria, much less eight out of nine.”

Ah, we finally get to Gorski’s biased interpretation of the Bradford-Hill criteria. I’ll give him the point that criteria one and two should not be determined by just one study, however, the Bradford-Hill criteria do not specify that the study shouldn’t be an outlier; this appears to be Dave’s own interpretation. But let’s go one step further and evaluate what is stated in the study.

Under Strength, they say that the association is statistically significant (consistent with the Bradford-Hill criteria for strength (here)). Looking at their data, then this falls within the criteria, so they’ve marked it as a “Yes”

Under Consistency, they say that several studies have found an association between vaccines and autism (true). Following the criteria (replication in other studies), then this is also given a “Yes.”

They gave sufficient reason for biological rationale in that there is a demonstrable association between auto-immune dysfunctions and cytokine response (this is a verification of Dr Poling’s work).

Here’s the table that shows how the authors demonstrated the Bradford-Hills criteria:

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It’s clear to me that Mr Gorski does not like the results of this study. In fact, it’s quite clear that he began his analysis without an objective mind and used his own bias and misinterpretation of the Bradford-Hills criteria to make his own judgment on what the article is actually saying. For example, he repeatedly accuses the authors of confusing correlation with causation, when the authors do nothing of the sort. They clearly state that Aluminium adjuvants may be associated with autism and auto-immune disorders and give statistics and data to show how they came to this conclusion. I always enjoy how Dave likes to build strawmen and put words in peoples’ mouths.

In conclusion, I’d like to give you a definition of a pseudo-scientist and a crank.

  1. Cranks overestimate their own knowledge and ability, and underestimate that of acknowledged experts. (Gorski gives the firm impression that he’s an expert, and he dismisses anyone who disagrees with his view, despite them being real experts)
  2. Cranks insist that their alleged discoveries are urgently important. (Gorski insists that all scientists agree with him, and any scientists who does not agree with him is not a real scientist)
  3. Cranks rarely if ever acknowledge any error, no matter how trivial. (Self explanatory)
  4. Cranks love to talk about their own beliefs, often in inappropriate social situations, but they tend to be bad listeners, and often appear to be uninterested in anyone else's experience or opinions. (How often does he blog? And the last half is self explanatory.)

I’d also like to add another; a crank dismisses evidence that does not conform to their pet theory, or evidence that they dislike. They will attack this evidence with an unmitigated rage.

Doesn’t this sound familiar? Any questions as to why I say David H. Gorski is a crank and a quack?

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

An Anti-science Slimeball Destroys an Immature and Witless Concept

I don’t often get to write on my blog. I’m sure most of you can understand this. The majority of us have jobs and other duties that require our time and effort, things that are far more important that blogging several times a day (I’m sure you can all tell that last dig was pointed at a certain doctor we all know and despise). However, I did promise that I would maintain this page and continue to point out the hypocrisies, lies, and general nastiness of those who are pseudo-skeptics and false scientists. People new to this debate need to see what type of people they are dealing with.

Such is the case for Dr Gorski’s latest childish screed entitled An anti-vaccine activist destroys my irony meter. Oh, where to begin? There’s so much irony and hypocrisy in this article…

Apparently, Jake Crosby was evicted from a recent conference where Seth Mnookin was holding a presentation. When the question and answer period came around, Jake took his turn, grabbing the microphone and asking a challenging question to Mr Mnookin about some of the more recent revelations concerning Dr Wakefield. Instead of answering the questions, Mr Mnookin asked for Mr Crosby’s removal.

Jake wrote an article about it on AoA, of course. He told his side of the story, and gave the reason that he thought he was removed. Several commenters offered their support of Jake, praising him for his tenacity.

Fast forward a little bit, and we have Orac and his bumlickers discussing this removal. Here’s what he has to say:

While I'm having a bit of fun with the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism, I notice that its Boy Wonder Jake Crosby, the one-trick pony whose trick is playing "six degrees of separation" in order to try to link anyone who supports the science of vaccines with big pharma, the CDC, the FDA, or any other company or regulatory agency he doesn't like, has a new post up at AoA. In it he complains about being kicked out of a conference, the Research Ethics Book Group Lunch and Book Signing at the annual Advancing Ethical Research Conference held by Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIMR). The book being discussed was The Panic Virus by Seth Mnookin. From previous times when Jake has tried to ask what he calls "challenging questions," the impression that I keep getting is that he tends to ramble a lot and monopolize the microphone, rather like the the Royal Rife guy did at the Trottier Symposium where I was a speaker in 2010.”

I mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. Pseudo-skeptics and false scientists don’t like it when you question them. They don’t like to be challenged; they hate to be contradicted. Anything that falls outside of their safe, happy little pseudo religion is heresy and should be shunned. Any person who speaks against them gets the treatment that Jake received in the comment above. Any scientist who disagrees with the false scientists are excommunicated, thrown from the fold and ridiculed endlessly. You do not question the consensus!!!

Whatever happened (and I'd love to hear Seth's version or an account from someone who was at the lunch of what really happened, given Jake's propensity to see things only in a way that makes him seem like a persecuted iconoclast and hero), Jake was apparently asked to leave. None of this is particularly remarkable, given that he was parroting the same nonsense about David Lewis having "exonerated" Andrew Wakefield that AoA has been pushing. In fact, I wasn't even going to mention Jake's post, given that getting himself kicked out of such conferences has apparently become an essential part of his anti-vaccine schtick.”

Much like getting kicked out of Autism One conferences is an essential part of his buddy Ken Reibel’s anti-science schtick. It’s ok when pseudo-skeptics do it, though, because they are doing it in the defense of the Holy Science! He doesn’t even bother to question whether or not there was a legitimate reason for Jake’s removal; he merely assumes that Jake was being disruptive and deserved to get kicked out. Of course, with no evidence. Oh, sure, he says he wants to hear the other side of the story. But the funny thing is, even if others corroborate Mr Crosby’s story, he’ll still say that Jake deserved it. Why? See my mantra above; you do not question or challenge the consensus!!!

Dear Dave then goes off on a rant about a comment made by Ginger Taylor. Essentially, she says that those who speak the truth are unafraid of the truth, and they welcome challengers and those who disagree with them to debate it with them. He begins:

“What caught my eye was a comment after Jake's post by everybody's favorite example of someone who thinks far more of her knowledge of science than any objective measure could justify, Ginger Taylor

David is of the firm belief that if you are not of the elite priesthood that he belongs to, then you have no right to speak your mind against The Doctrine.

Let's see. If what Ginger says is the case, then one of her favorite anti-vaccine conferences Autism One must not love truth. In fact, the it must hate truth. After all, its organizers have kicked out people who disagree with its anti-vaccine message each of the last four years. Let's see. It was Ken Reibel in 2008, Chicago Tribune reporter Trine Tsouderos in 2009, a department of health employee from a western state and an independent filmmaker in 2010, and Ken Reibel (again) and Jamie Berstein in 2011. During the last of these, the organizer of Autism One brought in the Lombard, IL police to expel Ken and Jamie. It was a case of massive overkill in the name of trying to prevent discussion and debate with someone who disagrees with them and knows how to dismantle their arguments.

Truly, my irony meter has been fried, fricasseed, and melted to the point of vaporizing. To hear Jake whine about being asked to leave a conference and then to see Ginger opining in her usual nauseatingly self-congratulatory smug fashion about how "lovers of truth" like her and her buddies in the anti-vaccine movement don't do this sort of thing were just too much for it. I wonder if there's some sort of titanium protective case I can buy for the next one.”

Oh dear…the irony meter comment. The good doctor is, one can assume, an adult. And yet, he repeatedly spews this nonsensical and immature garbage. It’s quite humourous, actually. But it does make me question his sanity.

However, since the good doctor was so kind as to provide us with links to his drivel (personally, I believe that he constantly links to himself due to his narcissistic ego masturbation), let me get to the point of this article. This has to do with what Orac and his arsekissers have to say about kicking people out of conferences.

Orac has this to say:

Remember how I've said time and time again that the anti-vaccine movement is very much like a religion, a cult even? One of the key attributes of religion is an intolerance for heretics, apostates, and unbelievers. The usual approach to unbelievers is either to try to convert them and then, failing that, to shun them (fortunately in most civilized countries Inquisition-like reactions are no longer common) or to skip the attempt to convert them and jump straight to the shunning. More evidence of just how true that is was presented on a silver platter to me at the anti-vaccine quackfest Autism One that will be wrapping up today in Lombard, IL.”

Wait a second…did you just read that? Why, yes, he did! He just admitted that Seth Mnookin is anti-vaccine! Why? Because Seth was intolerant of Jake as an unbeliever. He couldn’t convert Mr Crosby, so he shunned them. And, since Dr Gorski agrees with this policy when it applies to pseudo-skeptics and false scientists, then by his very definition of a crank, that makes him anti-vaccine by default.

Good job, David!

“As I've said time and time again. Despite the claims of the anti-vaccine movement and the sponsors of Autism One (which, as you recall, include Generation Rescue) this is not the behavior of an intellectually honest and open movement that wants to persuade based on science and reason. It is the behavior of a group that has something to hide, that prefers shunning and expelling those who aren't afraid to criticize it to open engagement and attempts to persuade based on the evidence. It is also the behavior of a group that thinks its members can't stand up to challenges and therefore need to be protected from criticism or contrary views”

Oh, thanks for clearing that up, Dave. So, you admit that Seth,and by association you (and your pseudo-skeptic community) are also being intellectually dishonest.

Hey, don’t look at me; I’m merely holding him to the same standards as he holds those he labels as pseudo-science or anti-vaccine.

“[T]he behavior of the conference organizers is indicative of fear, fear of being seen doing what they do, saying what they say, and selling what they sell. Scientific meetings are not like this. Skeptical meetings are not like this either; indeed, at last year's TAM, a moon hoax believer managed to get to the front of the line to challenge Adam Savage about the Mythbusters episode on moon hoaxers. He was not expelled; in fact, Savage respectfully answered him and he was later seen at various other events at TAM. At the Lorne Trottier Symposium last year, a believer in Royal Rife quackery asked about it. The panel only started to ask him to leave after the man wore out his welcome by dominating and monopolizing the question and answer session to the point where people waiting in line behind him were denied an opportunity to ask their questions due to time constraints. In other words, he got his say and was not asked to leave until he had reached the point of showing an extreme lack of consideration for his fellow audience members waiting to ask questions of the panel.”

So, he admits that real scientists do not kick people out of conferences for disagreeing with them. In fact, they welcome debate and disagreement. So, Orac is admitting that Seth Mnookin is not a real scientist (I agree), and that he (Mr Gorski)is also not a real scientists because he is agreeing with Seth kicking Mr Crosby from the presentation. Thanks for clearing that up, Mr Gorski!

Given this behavior, all I can ask is: What is Autism One afraid of[?]”

Yes, given this behaviour, what are Mr Mnookin and Mr Gorski afraid of? Are they afraid that they could be wrong about something? Oh, the horror!

I promised myself I would never do this. I promised myself that I would refrain from using one of Orac’s childish nerdisms that my good friend Craig bastardised. But I must…I absolutely have to.

The Hypocrisy! It Burns with the stupidity of a Thousand Oracs!!