Nov 12, 2020 09:19 PM
(This post was last modified: Nov 12, 2020 09:20 PM by C C.)
https://www.science20.com/hank_campbell/...tes-251678
EXCERPTS: In the modern world of chemistry, where we can detect parts per billion, trillion, and even quadrillion, we can detect anything we want in anything else. In the modern world of epidemiology, we can also link anything to anything we want, as Harvard School of Public Health does often with its claims that some food or trace chemical is either curing or causing cancer when grant application season rolls around.
And if you use mice, it's truly open season on science the public can trust. [...] Like statistical correlation, mouse studies are to be placed firmly over the in "exploratory" section of science. They may be interesting, they may be worth a follow-up, but they have no human relevance until science shows it. That is why all of the ~200 COVID-19 vaccine candidates will not get FDA emergency authorization based on mouse studies or epidemiology. Those two things can only exclude a positive or negative effect in humans, they cannot show either; biology and chemistry still rule.
Here is how poorly animal studies translate to anything clinical - under 10 percent. And for epidemiology, it's even less relevant, unless you are in a trade group claiming red meat either causes or prevents cancer, both of which have been shown statistically.
Yet if you want to get media attention from corporate journalists, epidemiology and mouse studies are the way to go. You just make some bizarre claim, like that your living room is causing diabetes, and you will get attention. (You can show statistical significance for nearly any speculation. It's easy. I can show, with statistical significance, that coin flips are prejudiced against heads. Or tails. You just need enough data and a desire to only see the result you want.)
A recent paper in Scientific Reports does just that. They "suggest" - because they did no science to show it - that polybrominated diphenyl ethers (a combination of PBDEs in DE-71) in furniture are causing diabetes in humans. Not type 1 diabetes, obviously, but rather the lifestyle form of type 2 diabetes - the one that almost overwhelmingly occurs among obese people. History is not on their side. Brominated flame retardants like PBDEs were used by the ancient Romans to keep their expensive siege towers from being set on fire. We have no evidence any soldiers thought their siege towers were causing obesity. England even issued the first patent for a chemical flame retardant in 1735 and in nearly 300 years no surge in type 2 diabetes happened due to it.
[...] the world of the 1990s was a lot more scientifically naïve than today. We were not yet jaded by $2 billion in lawyer-driven environmental groups that have to create new problems - PM2.5, formaldehyde, BPA, you name it and someone calls it an "endocrine disruptor" - to get us worried about or they are out of business. ... By 2004, PBDEs were out of furniture again for the same reason BPA stopped being used in Manwich cans a few years ago; science is irrelevant when chemophobia in media overrules it. “EPA has not concluded that PBDEs pose an unreasonable risk to human health or the environment,” EPA wrote, but the writing was also on the marketing wall. Anti-science activists had won and reason had to go... (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS: In the modern world of chemistry, where we can detect parts per billion, trillion, and even quadrillion, we can detect anything we want in anything else. In the modern world of epidemiology, we can also link anything to anything we want, as Harvard School of Public Health does often with its claims that some food or trace chemical is either curing or causing cancer when grant application season rolls around.
And if you use mice, it's truly open season on science the public can trust. [...] Like statistical correlation, mouse studies are to be placed firmly over the in "exploratory" section of science. They may be interesting, they may be worth a follow-up, but they have no human relevance until science shows it. That is why all of the ~200 COVID-19 vaccine candidates will not get FDA emergency authorization based on mouse studies or epidemiology. Those two things can only exclude a positive or negative effect in humans, they cannot show either; biology and chemistry still rule.
Here is how poorly animal studies translate to anything clinical - under 10 percent. And for epidemiology, it's even less relevant, unless you are in a trade group claiming red meat either causes or prevents cancer, both of which have been shown statistically.
Yet if you want to get media attention from corporate journalists, epidemiology and mouse studies are the way to go. You just make some bizarre claim, like that your living room is causing diabetes, and you will get attention. (You can show statistical significance for nearly any speculation. It's easy. I can show, with statistical significance, that coin flips are prejudiced against heads. Or tails. You just need enough data and a desire to only see the result you want.)
A recent paper in Scientific Reports does just that. They "suggest" - because they did no science to show it - that polybrominated diphenyl ethers (a combination of PBDEs in DE-71) in furniture are causing diabetes in humans. Not type 1 diabetes, obviously, but rather the lifestyle form of type 2 diabetes - the one that almost overwhelmingly occurs among obese people. History is not on their side. Brominated flame retardants like PBDEs were used by the ancient Romans to keep their expensive siege towers from being set on fire. We have no evidence any soldiers thought their siege towers were causing obesity. England even issued the first patent for a chemical flame retardant in 1735 and in nearly 300 years no surge in type 2 diabetes happened due to it.
[...] the world of the 1990s was a lot more scientifically naïve than today. We were not yet jaded by $2 billion in lawyer-driven environmental groups that have to create new problems - PM2.5, formaldehyde, BPA, you name it and someone calls it an "endocrine disruptor" - to get us worried about or they are out of business. ... By 2004, PBDEs were out of furniture again for the same reason BPA stopped being used in Manwich cans a few years ago; science is irrelevant when chemophobia in media overrules it. “EPA has not concluded that PBDEs pose an unreasonable risk to human health or the environment,” EPA wrote, but the writing was also on the marketing wall. Anti-science activists had won and reason had to go... (MORE - details)