Of course. The difference here though is the types of publications and researchers we’re speaking of. That opens up a whole different discussion though.

“I should start off by saying I have no tolerance for fraud in scientific studies. Poor quality controls or errors in the experiments are never a welcome thing, but they still are not in the same world as out and out lying.”

You’re right as well of course. Lying comes in multiple forms and lying by omission is a common form in the MCS arena, but here we enter the nefarious world of organizations like the American Council on Health and Science and Quackwatch, who somehow seem to have managed to influence otherwise respectable people/organizations.

There is also the issue of conflicts of interest and other abuses within the peer review system and journal advertising, articles ghost written by industry reps and “signed” by physicians, as well as the previously linked to BMJ study in a post above. That should be the context I suppose.

Medical science comes with a lot of baggage in the forms of competing interests, money, power, and huge, huge egos. It’s really just another business that hides behind a facade of scientific neutrality. The issue of MCS was never given a chance to be understood before being dismissed and once that happened, those egos made it extremely difficult to backtrack.

        brainfan said:

This is where the “MCS as psychogenic” meme has come from: bought and paid for fraudulent “science”. That they play into the hands of self-fashioned skeptics is just icing on the cake for them.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-scientists-significantly-publish-fake.html

I should start off by saying I have no tolerance for fraud in scientific studies. Poor quality controls or errors in the experiments are never a welcome thing, but they still are not in the same world as out and out lying. Forging data and publishing fradulant papers is just plain unforgivable. Huge amounts of time and money can be wasted on working with data obtained in good faith but that turns out to be fraudulent. And don’t even get me started on Andrew Wakefield – a criminal amongst criminals.

Given the number of scientific papers published in a ten year period in the US is 78 is an astoundingly low number to be retracted for fraud. In fact, I would suspect that, while fraud is probably reasonably uncommon, the real number of fraudulent papers in ten years is far more than 78.

That said, the fact that the US is number one could be taken two ways. It could also be seen as evidence that the US is doing a better job of policing papers and catching those which are fraudulent, forcing them to be retracted.

I don’t know, though. It does not give much context as to what the proportion is for the number of papers published.

        brainfan said:

This is where the “MCS as psychogenic” meme has come from: bought and paid for fraudulent “science”. That they play into the hands of self-fashioned skeptics is just icing on the cake for them.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-scientists-significantly-publish-fake.html

You do realize that this argument cuts both ways….

        brainfan said:

MCS denial is the skeptic’s equivalent of denying the holocaust.

Wow, I can add nothing to that. I’ll let your words speak for themselves.

You claimed that I’m using the tobacco industry example because I don’t have enough substantiation for my primary argument. That is a straw man, but here we are on yet another pointless path.

“However, since you have written
MCS is to the chemical industry as lung cancer is to the tobacco industry.
it’s pretty hard to represent that as anything other than a blatant attempt to paint guilt by association.”

If the chemical industry is using a tactic that was developed by the tobacco industry, it is truth. Just because you’ve got a hair across your ass about it doesn’t mean that pointing it out isn’t appropriate.

“It’s pretty cut and dry. If that’s not enough, however, you follow by adding an association with Big Pharma for good measure. At least you don’t hold back when you attack your targets with this fallacy.”

There IS an association between the chemical industry and the pharmaceutical industry as many of them are owned by the same companies. When a defendant is on trial, the prosecution points to the defendant’s motivation. My point is that there is motivation for both the pharmaceutical industry and the chemical industry to debunk the illness.

“Please go read the links that I posted above so that you might learn that guilt by association is a type of red herring. While you’re at it, you might want to read this, which describes another type of red herring, so that you finally know what it means.”

Mea culpa. It still doesn’t follow that there are guilt by associations in my argument.

“I couldn’t care less about your hypochondriasis or your “contentions,” which is why I have not discussed the substance of your ramblings about MCS nor taken a position one way or another on the topic.”

I mistakenly assumed that you were here to engage in some sort of meaningful discussion related to the web host’s post. That this demonstrates paranoia is a bizarre conclusion.

“Since you keep insisting that this is my purpose, I suppose we shall have to add paranoia to the list of your “charming” qualities.”

What’s charming is the complete inability for some of you people to discuss an issue without indulging your angry biases.

“Since you seem a bit slow on the uptake, please allow me to reiterate.”

That you need to resort to such petty retorts tells far more about you than me.

“I was merely commenting on your poor choice of rhetoric and insincere debating tactics.”

That you ignore my explanations for using this isolated example indicates YOUR insincerity.

“It has been my experience to observe that such tactics — associating something or someone with tobacco companies or “Big” whatever — are the hallmark of a crank trying to score cheap points through an argument that is driven more on emotion than substance.”

Because some are guilty of this tactic, you mistakenly assume that I am using this tactic, therefore motivations must be the same as what you assume their motivations to be. And did I say “big” anything? Is it my fault that tobacco is “big”? Are they now off-limits because they are “big”? This is another attempt at associating me with your bete noirs, the conspiracy theorists (as if people don’t conspire) and the “tin foil hat brigade”.

“Tobacco companies are the Nazi equivalent of the corporate world. Frankly, there’s not much difference between playing the tobacco card and playing the Nazi card.”

MCS denial is the skeptic’s equivalent of denying the holocaust. Now THAT accomplished a lot.

Way to derail a thread though.

        brainfan said:

You’re using a straw man as a red herring.

Heh … now you demonstrate that you don’t know what a straw man is. For me to be setting up a straw man, I would need to misrepresent your position. However, since you have written

MCS is to the chemical industry as lung cancer is to the tobacco industry.

it’s pretty hard to represent that as anything other than a blatant attempt to paint guilt by association. It’s pretty cut and dry. If that’s not enough, however, you follow by adding an association with Big Pharma for good measure. At least you don’t hold back when you attack your targets with this fallacy.

A red herring and guilt by association are not the same thing.

Please go read the links that I posted above so that you might learn that guilt by association is a type of red herring. While you’re at it, you might want to read this, which describes another type of red herring, so that you finally know what it means.

This is why you refuse to discuss the bulk of my contentions …

I couldn’t care less about your hypochondriasis or your “contentions,” which is why I have not discussed the substance of your ramblings about MCS nor taken a position one way or another on the topic. Since you keep insisting that this is my purpose, I suppose we shall have to add paranoia to the list of your “charming” qualities.

Since you seem a bit slow on the uptake, please allow me to reiterate. I was merely commenting on your poor choice of rhetoric and insincere debating tactics. It has been my experience to observe that such tactics — associating something or someone with tobacco companies or “Big” whatever — are the hallmark of a crank trying to score cheap points through an argument that is driven more on emotion than substance.

Tobacco companies are the Nazi equivalent of the corporate world. Frankly, there’s not much difference between playing the tobacco card and playing the Nazi card.

The poster brought this up in response to a case I presented about how a company brought an ineffective, and harmful, product to market, which was presented in response to the idea that everything in modern medicine is doubled-blind tested. This is the nature of just about any long-running discussion. It is not uncommon to branch out in different directions. The fact that I expanded on these expansions of discussion does not refute my arguments.