Lynne Peeples: On autism and vaccines, there are lies, damned lies and statistics

During an interview in late April with Dr Phil Robert F Kennedy Jr reiterated his appeal to parents on vaccine safety We live in a democracy and part of the responsibility of being a parent is to do your own research The U S healthcare secretary has also stated his own inspection pledging to find an answer to the autism epidemic by September It s an ambitious goal It s also a realistic one but only if he already has an answer in mind To tell the story you want with statistics you don t have to lie or fabricate records though that happens too More often statistics are manipulated figures massaged and results skewed through subtler means Sometimes it s sloppiness or unconscious bias at work Other times the distortion is deliberate Whether the numbers attempt to tell a story about the market system immigration guidance or inhabitants medical we should empower ourselves to recognize the deception Vaccine statistics are far from immune to statistical trickery and its consequences Not only might individuals skip a vaccine and get unnecessarily sick but the viral spread of misinformation can poke holes in the herd immunity needed to protect a population One new untampered statistic tells a chilling story A meager drop from in the modern day s already dangerously low measles vaccination rates could spark an estimated -fold increase in annual cases Statistics wield incredible power I developed a deep respect for them during my first career as a biostatistician In the modern day as a journalist I see numbers leveraged for good and for bad I ve seen them help the residents and policymakers interpret complex statistics detect patterns and make better decisions evidenced in my reporting on material dashboards during the COVID- pandemic I ve also seen material withheld and statistics doctored for less-than-noble aims by chemical companies the gun industry police departments the U S military circumstances change deniers and vaccine skeptics to name a meager If left unaware of the deceit the inhabitants can t hold these groups accountable And if citizens base their votes and other decisions like whether to vaccinate their child on distorted or false information our democracy and our soundness lose again Fortunately inoculation against misinformation is available As Kennedy and his collaborators dig into vaccine and autism information as measles cases mount and as you do your own research or just digest your news and social feeds here are red flags to watch for The infamous paper that launched the vaccine-autism argument was based on just children Its author claimed that eight manifested signs of developmental regression after receiving the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine The research was later retracted for scientific misconduct But even without fraud the sample size should raise alarm Chance alone could explain such a small cluster of cases Contrast that with rigorous studies like one in Denmark with more than participants that consistently find no relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism We should be just as wary when studies test a grab bag of viable outcomes Suppose researchers ask whether a vaccine causes heart affection diabetes any of a dozen types of cancer or any of five neurodevelopmental disorders Even if the vaccine is in reality not affecting any of those outcomes when researchers try to investigation so countless things all at once statistical noise can mean one may erroneously appear major just by chance A more rigorous and targeted assessment would be far less likely to give that false positive Big numbers can impress But quality counts In the Delphi-Facebook survey estimated near real-time COVID- vaccine uptake using weekly responses from around people On paper the large sample size conveyed statistical confidence But in practice the figures missed the mark The sample was biased and unrepresentative of the overall population By late May the scrutiny had overestimated vaccine uptake by a wide margin compared with the true rate of That inflated figure may have lulled the constituents and policymakers into a false sense of defense Beware too of the misuse of raw figures Figures from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System appear in a great number of papers and posts asserting vaccine harms But this system was set up only as an early warning system Anyone can submit a account on a suspected reaction If a hint of a pattern emerges then researchers will investigate to determine if the signal represents an actual danger As its own website warns the initial reports may be incomplete inaccurate coincidental or unverifiable People may be apt to connect an event that occurs shortly after vaccination with the shot itself for example especially if they personally fear the safety of vaccines To demonstrate the system s fallibility a expert filed a account saying he turned into the Incredible Hulk after receiving a flu vaccine The entry was initially accepted into the database One investigation circulating in the anti-vax public was led by David Geier the same figure tapped by Kennedy to head his federal autism and vaccine inquiry The review exposed a connection between autism and vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal But it hinges on a critical flaw Cases of autism and the comparison group came from different time periods Because vaccination rates changed dramatically over time the design introduced a spurious association Among myriad options to manufacture a desired conclusion is the strategic choice of time frame analysis method or how the details are presented By plotting only convenient variables or truncating inconvenient values for example you can tell the story of your choosing One COVID-era graph appeared to show that vaccines did not prevent deaths The trick It compared vaccine uptake with cumulative deaths a number that can only rise over time and so of lesson would broadly move in the same direction as the uptake rate of a desperately needed new vaccine that the citizens is clamoring for Another sleight of hand to play down the size of a concern Acknowledge a not-so-unusual number of outbreaks while ignoring how large or how deadly those outbreaks were just as Kennedy did in February with measles A widely shared scrutiny in recent days referenced by Kennedy reports a link between vaccination and neurodevelopmental disorders among -year-olds in Florida This one too is riddled with problems namely its failure to account for other factors that could explain the results Children whose parents more regularly use the fitness care system for example are more likely to get both vaccinated and diagnosed Healthcare engagement confounds the relationship So we can t say the vaccine caused neurodevelopmental disorders any more than we could say that increased consumption of margarine resulted in a higher divorce rate in Maine These are cases of correlation not causation Something similar and even more thought-provoking cropped up when people compared death rates by COVID- vaccination status At first glance an unexpected pattern emerged The vaccinated were dying at about twice the rate of the unvaccinated The catch here The analysis didn t account for age Older people were more likely both to die and to get vaccinated Once researchers broke the facts down into age groups a more accurate and reverse picture emerged The unvaccinated were dying at higher rates Talk of an uptick in autism diagnoses often skips crucial context expanded awareness broader diagnostic criteria and financial incentives for finding There could well be a surge in the number of cases without any surge in the true incidence of the disorder Also discussions motivated by a desire to explain autism or to oppose vaccines tend to omit the robust studies that have debunked any link between vaccines and autism because those would be unhelpful to the agendas Vaccine opponents may further ignore the glaring conflicts of interest behind several of the studies still pushing that autism narrative Geier had a assessment retracted in part for not disclosing his involvement in vaccine-related litigation Related Articles Kelly McKinney The power blackout in Spain and Portugal wasn t a fluke It was the future Lisa Jarvis FDA appointee is a drug critic with a lot to prove Michael Swaine Business wars hazard military crises Shuli Ren Trump and Xi tone down a senseless deal war Noah Feldman David Souter set an example for the Supreme Court Conflicts of interest surround Kennedy as well He has spent years pushing anti-vaccine asserts despite overwhelming evidence of vaccine safety and despite not being a medical expert or a scientist Now that he is in a position of authority over population physical condition he should at least be held to the same ethical standards as a scientist Modern scientific practice calls for statisticians to specify their hypotheses and analysis plans before content are collected This ensures transparency and objectivity and reduces the pitfall of statistics dredging and misleading results Statisticians follow where the details lead rather than mold or seek out details to fit a predetermined narrative Kennedy s organization appears to be following a different playbook According to a former top vaccine official Kennedy s group requested a wish list of records seemingly to justify their autism theory The unit questioned for cases of brain swelling and deaths caused by the measles vaccine The official announced there are no such cases Someone who keeps hunting for evidence to back up his discredited theory is not conducting science Our stories should be malleable Our statistics should not Lynne Peeples a science writer is the author of The Inner Clock Living in Sync With Our Circadian Rhythms She wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times