The reason for the retraction is odd, to me.

Unless I'm reading this wrong, and I may be, the problem isn't so much that the study's data set was fudged, but that the researcher behaved unethically in getting it.

Which means this is sort of unresolved, and those who believe in (or fear the possibility of) the MMR-autism link will say this was retracted for largely political reasons.

Which might even be true. The left doesn't like the "anti-science" vibe they believe is going on with the MMR-autism link; they have this weird desire to establish scientists as some kind of technocratic fourth branch of government. And they hate when people don't listen to scientists. (Except when scientists say things they disagree with, of course.) And they also hate the idea that vaccine avoidance is a much bigger phenomenon on the right than the left.

On the other hand, a lot of research since then has discredited the paper's theories and claims.

But, as far as the reason for the retraction itself, it is based on "improper" and "unethical" methods, not manipulated or fraudulent ones.

The medical journal The Lancet on Tuesday retracted a controversial 1998 paper that linked the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism.

The 12-year-old study linked autism with the MMR vaccine. The research subsequently had been discredited.

Last week, the study's lead author, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, was found to have acted unethically in conducting the research.

The General Medical Council, which oversees doctors in Britain, said that "there was a biased selection of patients in The Lancet paper" and that his "conduct in this regard was dishonest and irresponsible."

The panel found that Wakefield subjected some children in the study to various invasive medical procedures such as colonoscopies and MRI scans. He also paid children for blood samples for research purposes at his son's birthday party, an act that "showed a callous disregard" for the "distress and pain" of the children, the panel said.

The Lancet, of course, claims that a million Iraqis were killed by the US in the war, or something. It was also a study.

It's not that the right is anti-science. Not at all. There are a lot of scientists (and engineers, and doctors) who are on the right.

The problem is that the left has a nasty habit of politicizing science. They own the grant process, for example. As has been said, if you want to study squirrel poop, you can get your grant only if you pitch your study as the effect of global warming on squirrel poop.

The left wants us to pretend we don't know this, and that every statement issuing from a scientific source (that they agree with) should be accepted uncritically.

Thanks to Slublog, on his Twitter feed.

Posted by: Ace at 10:12 AM | Comments (104)
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Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how are you enjoying the race?

For incumbent Democratic Senator Blanche Lambert Lincoln, the opponents are interchangeable at this point in her bid for reelection in Arkansas. New Rasmussen Reports polling in the state finds her stuck in the mid-30s against any of five Republican opponents.

Her GOP rivals, including Congressman John Boozman who is expected to enter the race on Saturday, all earn roughly 50% of the vote against the two-term Democrat.

...Boozman, the newest entrant in the race, runs strongest among likely voters in Arkansas for now, beating Lincoln by 19 points, 54% to 35%. State Senator Gilbert Baker also leads Lincoln by 19, 52% to 33%. State Senate Minority Leader Kim Hendren posts a 51% to 35% lead over the incumbent.

PPP has similar numbers.

If we've learned nothing else this last year it's that 9 months is an eternity in politics but baring the eventual Republican nominee turning up with the proverbial dead girl/ live boy in his bed, you have to think Lincoln is done.

Related enough...Marco Rubio is trying to raise $787,000.00 as part of a 'Stimulus Bomb' fundraiser.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:31 AM | Comments (96)
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I think this is right. But I don't know the limits of what is possible -- and what the Democrats, with their handpicked parliamentarian, will decide is now possible -- in the Senate.

People like O'Donnell and Chris Matthews have a reason to push this idea: They believe the Democratic Party is headed towards catastrophe and are trying to stop this.

On the other hand, though, a lot of other Democrats are transfixed by a notion that passing some sort of bill is their least-bad option at this point.

Here are the advantages of passing one of the most unpopular bills in history:

1) They appease the nutroots, which, as usual, views this purely as a partisan spectator sport, and just want a win, or, rather, just want the despised "Rethuglikkkans" to lose. Although most of them are unhappy with the bill, they are even more unhappy that that the "Repukes" might win out on this.

2) Even though the bill is unpopular, passing it ends, to a large degree, the debate. The debate is killing Democrats. Every day they are talking about health care is a day they are losing independents and energizing the right -- and depressing the nutroots left, too, because the nutroots left kinda hates the bill almost as much as we do. Passing something -- anything -- would at least, to some extent, put the question in the past rather than the here-and-now.

There is an aphorism I always mention: It is easier to beg forgiveness than to secure permission. And it's true -- presenting someone with a fait accompli and then asking for forgiveness after the fact does work a bit better than trying to convince that person to agree to something he doesn't want. Not much better, but better.

Health care would continue to be an issue, as Republicans attempt to repeal it or restrict it by amendments every week, but it wouldn't be as big an issue. And Democrats want this issue to go away. Just go away. And I think some of them believe it's better to take the hit on it in one burst than continue the drip-drip-drip.

3) Democrats have built for themselves the ultimate wedge issue. This splits liberals and independents, and Democrats need both. They can either play to the liberals, or play to the independents, but not both, and they can't win without both.

So, confronted with this unwinnable situation, who do they play to? The liberal base. Why? Because the liberal base donates money to them, while independents mainly just vote. They are going to lose one bloc of votes or the other, but what they don't want to lose is their precious fatcat donations from Hollywood celebrities.

Besides, independents are always blowing one way or the other, and I am guessing have much shorter memories than partisans. Partisans like the nutroots -- or, frankly, like me and you -- never forget.

Now, that's why I fear these lunatics might actually go ahead and detonate the bomb they've created.

So I take some comfort in hyperpartisan hack Lawrence O'Donnell's insistence that this is all kabuki. All a dumb-show for the DUmmies.

Lawrence O’Donnell, the Democratic Senate Finance Committee staff director during the ’93-’94 health care debate, said we’re now witnessing reform’s death throes – and Democrats know it. The party will not be able to pass another reform bill through the Senate, period.

“Pelosi said that, ‘We don’t have the votes for passing the Senate bill’ and that should have just ended it. Any discussion of another scenario is juvenile,” he said. “It’s ridiculous.”

Democrats knew they lost reform with the Massachusetts election and some of them like Rep. Barney Frank essentially said so. “The first reaction to the Massachusetts election was the honest reaction,” O’Donnell said. Frank later walked back his comments.

But since Election Night, he said, Democrats have moved into “full bluff mode.”

“We’re absolutely in full fake cheerleading mode. I think Nancy Pelosi has absolutely no moves left. I think she knows that now. I think Harry Reid knows that. And that’s why they don’t bring it up,” he said. “They had a Senate leadership press conference (Thursday) and it was as if (reporters) were asking about World War I” when they asked about reform.

O’Donnell attributes the theatrics to the need to deal with a liberal base that will go bonkers if Democrats quit on reform. And the cue cards are nothing new. He pointed to Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer’s statements during the fall that the Senate would pass the public option even though “he’s smart enough to know they were never going to get it.”

“No one who went on television was free to say anything realistic,” he said.

I hope he's right.

Posted by: Ace at 09:12 AM | Comments (89)
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This past year, not to put too fine a point on it.

Some of it was ground gained by Headline News and CNN, and they all still suck wind behind O'Reilly (not a fan but whatever), whose show was the only cable news program to grow it's audience in the same time period (55%, even with boycott threats and all).

After a while shrill gets pretty tiresome (not to me, I actually find him entertaining again). I mean, how do you top shrieky hysteria and all those stern angry lectures night after night? By playing hard left the only game he has is to hold on to what he's got, and he's doing a piss-poor job of it if he loses almost half of em in the first year of Obama's administration.

With these shifting political fortunes, you run the risk of becoming the fan-boy of failure.

Which I'm guessing leads to more bitterness and contempt, not less but what the hell do I know?

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 08:16 AM | Comments (55)
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Geraghty says the Administration's plan for joblessness might be called "The Audacity of No Hope."

Posted by: Ace at 07:56 AM | Comments (149)
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I think I saw this first noted by James Taranto -- Obama, by refusing to admit any difference between trials of war criminal illegal combatants and citizen criminals, is accomplishing not one but two despicable outcomes.

The outcome he intends is to treat illegal combatants more sweetly and gently.

The outcome he doesn't intend -- but which he is engendering anyhow -- is to treat citizen suspects with less constitutional rights than they've ever had in history.

Few judges will, say, demand that KSM be released into the public a free man due to the serious constitutional violations the government inflicted on him. Violations, that is, if you postulate from the outset he had full constitutional rights of a citizen criminal. If you don't postulate that -- if you postulate he was owed a lesser standard due to the fact he was an illegal combatant -- then there weren't any violations (or at least far fewer).

Now, if a judge won't spring KSM for waterboarding -- surely a "shock the conscience" bit of coercion if performed in a police station house -- then a judge must necessarily bless it as permissible for a run-of-the-mill US citizen suspect, because that is, of course, Obama categorizes KSM.

Assuming the judge does not want immediate calls for his impeachment, he will find some nonsense explanation as to why it's okay to waterboard run-of-the-mill citizen suspects in some (rare) situations. Now, I don't know if any judges will actually follow that precedent, but that precedent will be on the books. In some cases -- the law is never very precise about what these cases are -- it's permissible for interrogators to strap a citizen suspect to a board and drip water into his mouth until he squeals about his confederates.

In the panty bomber case, Mad Maxipad was interrogated for a brief spell (50 minutes) and then... read his Miranda rights.

Let me get this straight. First they interrogate the suspect. Then, after he talks, they tell him he has the right to remain silent. (More like: he had the right to remain silent.)

If this account is correct, itÂ’s clear that the Miranda rights are being read purely for show. Like KSMÂ’s trial, Obama wants to give terrorists who wage war against this country the appearance of due process, by conferring on them procedural protections to which they are not entitled.

This makes a mockery of the process.

It does indeed, and in order to to make a show of being nice to terrorists, Obama is weakening the constitutional protections that the rest of us have as part of our American birthright.

Fuzzy thinking. They refuse to admit a bright-line distinction, a bright-line demarcation, between the Panty Bomber and all of you, so the line between how the government treats both of you becomes quite fuzzy itself. They'll treat Mad Maxipad somewhat like a normal citizen suspect... and that means they've created the precedent to treat normal citizen suspects somewhat like a terrorist.

Some might take solace in the notion that while Obama refuses to say on paper that only terrorists deserve this special not-quite-constitutional treatment, no prosecutor would ever use these techniques on a normal suspect and then plead the Panty Bomber's case as precedent.

Well... there is precedent for the shady use of precedent. The government created RICO for one purpose -- to go after the mob. RICO's a bit sketchy, really, in that someone at the heart of a broader conspiracy (a mafia family) can be charged for crimes committed without his knowledge by his coconspirators (his soldiers). Usually -- well, like, always -- the law requires actual intent and knowledge to convict someone of a crime. RICO sort of jettisoned that in special circumstances because, well, look: If you're in the mob, fuck you. You know what your buddies are doing even if you don't know what they are doing.

But the point is that RICO -- which one commentator quipped was believed to be understood as not to be used on anyone whose name did not end in a vowel -- then started to be used in all sorts of decidedly non-mafia situations. There was nothing on paper that required the law be limited to La Cosa Nostra, and within years, it was being used to target, well, Operation Rescue, for example. (I think the civil version of RICO was used here, but I forget.)

The point is: Either the government has the power to do something to a suspect or it does not. Either the Constitution forbids a certain practice or it does not.

Bush, the supposed idiot, established a bright-line distinction between citizen suspects and illegal combatants. Bush, the fascist cretin who couldn't pronounce "nuclear," set up an analytical structure wherein it was clear that citizen suspects were owed the full panoply of constitutional protections, and only terrorist illegal combatants were to be treated with lesser protections.

But Obama the Genius With the Nicely Creased Trousers has created a system wherein Mad Maxipad is sorta like me, as far as the law goes, and I, unfortunately, am sorta like him.

And instead of there being a bright-line distinction between us, I sort of have to trust that the Obama Administration will be restrained by its own conscience and judgment, because there isn't any strong paper command about this any longer.

And how are they doing so far?

Well, gee: If Breitbart's reportage is true, James O'Keefe was denied a lawyer for a full 28 hours.

Seems a pretty big departure from constitutional norms, doesn't it?

But, you know, just as Mad Maxipad is sort of a citizen deserving some but not all citizen rights, James O'Keefe is now sort of a terrorist also deserving some but not all citizen rights.

Which rights are still guaranteed? Which can be suspended in some situations? Who knows. It's all fuzzy.

And this, we are told, is progress. This, we are told, is an affirmation of the Constitution. This, we are told, should reassure us.

This, it is understood, should impress... someone.

But who is this meant to impress?

Posted by: Ace at 07:39 AM | Comments (102)
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Workforce? Shrikforce. Whatever.

The era of big government has returned with a vengeance, in the form of the largest federal work force in modern history.

The Obama administration says the government will grow to 2.15 million employees this year, topping 2 million for the first time since President Clinton declared that "the era of big government is over" and joined forces with a Republican-led Congress in the 1990s to pare back the federal work force.

Most of the increases are on the civilian side, which will grow by 153,000 workers, to 1.43 million people, in fiscal 2010.

The expansion could provide more ammunition to those arguing that the government is trying to do too much under President Obama.

"I'm shocked that the 'tea party' hasn't focused on it yet, and the Obama administration only has a thin sliver of time to deal more directly with it, I believe," said Paul C. Light, who studies the federal bureaucracy as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor at New York University. "When you talk about big government, you're talking about a big employer."

Posted by: Ace at 07:09 AM | Comments (81)
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Don't drive angry!

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:23 AM | Comments (173)
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As always, Mr. Van Voorhees has captured the "essence" of the moment from the conservative perspective like no mere mortal can.

...Mr. Obama proved himself heir apparent to the Wizard of Altamont. Coiling, menacing, prowling, pouting, our Jumpin' Jack Flash-in-Chief worked the majority side of the hall into a frenzy, like some beautiful petulant electric cobra panther in a Brooks Brothers 3-button suit. And when he unleashed his climactic campaign finance j'accuse at his Republican foes and the assembled Supreme Court, I was fully hoping a House member would lung through and beat Justice Alito senseless with a tire iron....

...So after a mere year, Obama has crashed and plummeted lower than any first year administration in polling history. His “let me be perfectly clear” and “make no mistake about it” are the equivalent now of the serial teenage filler “Ya know.”...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 08:54 PM | Comments (120)
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Welcome all to the start of a new week. Lots o'stuff ahead.

Pooping in Space and Shit Storms
Everything you've always wondered about and more than you ever wanted to know about how the astronauts do their business in space. Here's how they do it on the shuttle. And more about ISS toilet issues here. And no this is not a comet - it's what it looks like when they flush on the shuttle.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:01 PM | Comments (667)
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