Meryl Dorey, AVN & Damned Statistics Pt II

This is a follow-up to my previous article discussing Meryl Dorey's apparent failure to grasp simple statistical concepts and the misinformation that results from that failure.

In a recent comment posted on the Australian Vaccination Network blog, Meryl Dorey linked to a news article about Whooping Cough vaccination rates in California. Dorey noted that she'd also posted a comment on the news website and she included the following statistics...

There are 10,000 unvaccinated children in California – a state with a population of over 36,000,000. That means that less than .03% of California’s population is opting out of vaccination. 

Dorey goes on to argue that the numbers of willingly unvaccinated children is so low as to be trivial compared to the numbers for whom vaccination is ineffective. But was she using statistics correctly this time?

As I've mentioned before, I'm so scientist or statistician so I welcome corrections in either calculations, data or approach. What I provide here is a layman's summary.

My first instinct was that Dorey had made a glaring error by conflating two entirely different data sets - unvaccinated children vs entire population - at the very least because she'd failed to supply data about the known vaccination status of those who aren't "children".

With her 0.03% statistic, she'd effectively said that those 10,000 kids were the only unvaccinated people in the entire state of California.

You cannot simply take one figure showing childhood vaccination numbers and then draw a whole-of-population statistic from it. It would be like saying - if there are two black rabbits at the zoo and there are 10,000 animals in total at that zoo, then only .02% of the zoo's animals are black. But the first statistic tells us nothing about what other animals might also be black. What about the panthers and monkeys and seals and yaks? And how many rabbits are there altogether? What percentage of the rabbits are black? That's something we might like to know but we can't calculate it without more information.

For her "10,000 children" figure to be of any use, we need to know how many "children" (of similar demographic) there are in California, not how many people. Using "under fives" as my starting point, since we're talking vaccination, I found a few websites that suggest the number of "children" in California is around 3 million. That's much less than the 36 million that Dorey used. So immediately we can see that her calculation was out by around a factor of 10 (ten).

At this point I still hadn't read the article Dorey had linked to, I was just running numbers based on what she'd written in her comment. When I did read the news item, the statistical murder scene looked much worse.

From the article (my bolding)...

Our media partner, the Watchdog Institute, crunched the numbers for kindergartners entering California schools in 2009. The number entering kindergarten with so-called “personal belief exemptions” against vaccines hit 10,280 last year.

I'll forgive Dorey the rounding-down since the additional 280 kids wouldn't make any real difference to the calculation she was doing. But what is really important is what data set was really being measured in the article - and that was "the number [of children] entering kindergarten... in 2009".

Kids entering kindie in one specific year is a much smaller number than all kids under five. With this new information, it was clear that even my calculation was going to be far too generous in favour of unvaccinated kids. At a wild guess, I'd have to assume that around one fifth of kids aged five and under would be entering kindergarten in any given year (and that's assuming all kids of eligible age go to kindie in California).

So from our figure of 3 million kids under five, we should only be expecting around 600,000 of them to be old enough for kindergarten. With just a tiny bit of effort, and correct reading of the text in question, I've slimmed Dorey's population figure by a factor of 35,400,000 people. That's over 35 million people that should not have been included in her "calculation".

With our new information we find that those 10,000 unvaccinated kids represent around 1.5% of kids of kindergarten age in California. That's 50 (fifty) times higher than the rate Dorey "calculated". We could probably extrapolate this to suggest around 1.5% of all kids under five are likely to be unvaccinated.

So, is that as bad as it gets? Of course not.

Firstly, the news article also noted that the "exemption" rate was as high as 50% of kindie kids in one school and 45% and 39% in two others. If your kids were in those classes then whole-of-population vaccination rates are meaningless - your kids are at serious risk. But I'll ignore that for now, just as Dorey did.

Just before I hit POST, I thought I'd take a look to see if kindergarten is compulsory in California. Since I've mentioned it, you can probably guess the answer - no it isn't compulsory.

Given that, we can make a (fairly safe) assumption that a percentage of those kids who don't attend are also unvaccinated. That means the real number of unvaccinated kindie-aged kids in California is likely to be much higher than the 10,280 mentioned in the news item.

Considering that up-to-date immunisation records are required for entry to California kindergartens, I think we can safely assume many parents of unvaccinated kids just wouldn't bother with it.

If we also consider that a good percentage of those parents who seek a "conscientious objection" to vaccination seem also to believe in conspiracy theories in which the world's governments are hell-bent on making our children sick for the sake of pharmaceutical profits, you might wonder if they'd risk sending their kids to kindie when it's not compulsory. I suspect that 1.5% figure for unvaccinated kids probably pales in comparison to the reality.

This got me looking still further and with one search I find that the California vaccination rate in children is probably closer, on average, to 76%. That would mean 24% of Californian kids are not vaccinated for one reason or another - that's 800 times greater than Dorey's suggested figure. Some of those kids will have legitimate medical reasons, some others will have parents who think health is delivered by magic and taken away by lizard people with microchips.

Once again, I'm not a statistician. It's also late. If I've made an alarming error, please point it out so I can fix it asap.

UPDATE:

It appears the actual numbers for kindie attendance in California are closer to 430,000. That increases my 1.5% figure to 2.3% (76 times Dorey's figure) and that still doesn't tell us anything about the rate of "personal belief exemption" outside of kindergarten. No matter how you look at it, Meryl Dorey's 0.03% figure was beyond incorrect. For someone who does claim to be able to crunch the numbers to the extent that she can supposedly re-interpret scientific papers and draw conclusions different to those drawn by the experts who wrote them, it is unforgivable that she puts such nonsense out in public then claims to be offering parents information they can use to make a decision on vaccinating their kids. Such "information" is dangerously misleading.

Meryl Dorey, AVN: Letter to editor

The Southern Highland News has published a letter from Meryl Dorey in which she claims the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) is being attacked unfairly. She featured the letter on her blog about two weeks ago where she said she'd sent it to newspapers and magazines across Australia.

Today she has called upon her blog followers to go to the news website and post a supporting comment. A quick look suggests that they've got a job ahead of them if they hope to counter the rational comments already published in opposition to the anti-vaccination message spread by Dorey and the AVN. If you are a supporter of vaccination and are concerned by the misinformation spread by the AVN, then you might like to add your own comment at the SH News site too. Comments are still open at time of writing this.

In the letter, you'll note that Dorey has again denied supporting conspiracies such as reptilian aliens and mind control-chips and blames health crusader Ken McLeod for spreading what she calls "ridiculous lies". I have dealt with these claims before and explained why it is fair to draw a conclusion that the AVN might support reptilian-overlord and mind-control-chip conspiracy theories in relation to vaccination.

Dorey also writes that "136 of 139 pharmaceutical and vaccine manufacturing facilities in Australia have failed their TGA audits" and claims that this fact merited no mention in the press. In fact, The Australian covered the article over a month ago, well before Dorey sent off her letters. Here's part of what The Australian wrote...

The federal government's Therapeutic Goods Administration yesterday revealed that only three of the 139 labs it audited last financial year were problem-free.

"Deficiencies were identified in 136 of the 139 sites manufacturing medicines, requiring corrective action by the manufacturer," a TGA spokeswoman told The Australian. "All identified deficiencies are corrected following audit, with some requiring follow-up audits to verify and confirm that implementation has been effective."

So, far from "failing" audits, some deficiencies were found and all deficiencies were corrected. Since details of the deficiencies haven't been released, we could either assume that these companies had engaged in evil cover-ups of major failings in their production and testing systems, or that they used the wrong colour biro in making certain notes. We just don't know - but you can probably assume what conclusions the AVN would draw.

Maybe the micro-chips were sourced from a third-party Korean manufacturer instead of from an Illuminati-preferred supplier. Yes, that was probably it.

Another story published at Pharmacy News tries to paper over the controversy by claiming the issues are more likely to be administrative (where can you buy purple biros at short notice anyway?) but I think we can be sure, based solely on its name, that Pharmacy News would be run by the Illuminati. They are presumably part of the conspiracy.

Seriously, the micro-chip idea holds more sway since the TGA, a government body and therefore controlled by Big Pharma, wouldn't be interested in ensuring pharma companies comply safety regulations. According to groups like the AVN, vaccines are intended perpetuate illness - so why would a company producing crappy product be castigated for it? That wouldn't make sense, neither would penalties for sloppy book keeping. But ordering the wrong micro chips - THAT would be potentially disastrous when the day arrived for our Lizard overlords to finally take control of the world.

That must be it. I can't see how it could be anything else.

MORE:

See the vaccination poll here. Dorey has asked her followers to tilt it so it's only fair vaccine supporters counter any effect they might have. Currently the poll is 71% in favour of vaccination. If anyone has a direct line to PZ Myers, it might be worth letting him know too.

ABC: Meryl Dorey was wrong. The proof is in!

I haven't promoted The Skeptic Zone podcast for quite while but the time has come to send you there again.

Although I rarely get to listen to it due to my download limits, it's obvious the Aussie team have been hard at work and have attracted some big names in science and sceptical circles. Recent podcasts have featured the likes of Banachek, Captain Disillusion and Dr Phil Plait. It is definitely a world-class, quality product.

This week's episode, #96, is an absolute cracker. It is a must-listen for anyone who's been following the antics of the Australian Vaccination Network's Meryl Dorey.

I recently discussed Ms Dorey's refusal to accept that she'd fed inaccurate and misleading information to ABC Radio host, Katya Quigley. In that article I showed that, even without access to a recording of the segement, it was clear from the data on the AVN's blog that she was wrong. The host had used data supplied by Ms Dorey and the ABC complaints department had ultimately ruled that the data was both inaccurate and misleading.

But Meryl Dorey is still refusing to accept that the error was hers. In a comment on her blog just two days ago, Ms Dorey questioned why the McCaffery's, who lost their baby girl to pertussis, continue to say the AVN supplied the ABC with misleading data (my bolding)...

I do feel that the McCafferys have fallen prey to some pretty vicious types who show their kind, caring and completely false faces to this family looking for answer as to why their beautiful baby died whilst showing their true, vicious side to the rest of the world. The McCafferys are either so filled with grief they are not able to see this or they simply choose not to for their own reasons – I’m not sure? It does make me wonder however when they continue to say things that are patently untrue such as stating that I tried to obtain Dana’s medical records (as you so rightly put it – that was not what I did nor would I have been able to had I wanted to) and that the ABC found that I had provided misleading information when again, they know that this is untrue.

The simple fact is that the McCaffery's are right and Dorey is wrong. If there was ever any doubt then The Skeptic Zone episode #96 should clear it up once and for all. Dr Rachie has a recording of the segment in question.

On her own blog, Meryl Dorey has stated that she supplied Katya Quigley with figures for 1991 but claims that Ms Quigley must have said they were for 2001 and that the ABC ruled against Ms Quigley for getting it wrong.

I dealt with this in my article, without benefit of the audio from the segment, but Dr Rachie puts it well and truly to rest in this podcast.

Contrary to what Meryl Dorey says, Katya Quigley did not claim she had pertussis figures from 2001. She said she had figures from 1991 and that they were supplied by the AVN.

However, the fact is that the specific figure in question, 71.6%, was from 2001, not 1991. Dorey got it wrong and ultimately, intentionally or by mistake, mislead Katya Quigley with it. Unequivocal proof is now in.

Listen to the segment. Dr Rachie clearly and succinctly deals with a bunch of other fundamental questions surrounding the AVN's deceptive use of statistics.

Meryl Dorey owes the McCafferys yet another apology. It would be great if she could supply one with some amount of sincerity and no "but" attached to it.


MORE:

I will echo the message to Meryl Dorey from the Vaccination Awareness and Information Service: "Please, leave the McCaffery family alone"

Meryl Dorey, AVN & Damned Statistics

Before I get on to the statistical part of this discussion, let me share this with you.

In a comment today on her blog, Meryl Dorey (aka shotinfo) wrote the following...

Logic is what is important here and what we are trying to bring to this issue. A logical approach to looking at whether or not vaccination is in the public interest or in the interest on the individual.

Those who approach this in an accusatory, over-emotinal way, leave logic far behind.

Yesterday, a link was posted on the Australian Vaccination Network's Facebook page to a video by a Dr Rebecca Carley (a sort-of female David Icke - without the lizard people). The video is entitled "Vaccines - The True Weapons of Mass Destruction Part 1 of 15 ".

(I'm glad I took the screenshot because it seems to have disappeared from the AVN Facebook page now)

I'd never heard of Dr Carley so naturally I did some searching. I discovered that she's had her medical licence revoked due to mental impairment and gained a reputation for urinating and defecating on herself in front of some police officers - but if that doesn't concern you, then here's her home page (where you'll of course find the cause of - and cure for - all diseases.)

I didn't even bother to watch the Youtube clip Dorey linked to but seriously, if you're wondering if Dr Carley is someone you want to trust, just click the link above and take a look at her website. You don't even need to read it. Just look at it. When you've recovered, come back and we can talk statistics, AVN-style.

Are you back? By linking to her video, the AVN appears to suggest Rebecca Carley is a credible source of information on vaccination - someone parents should listen to if they want "balance". What do you think? Impressed?

How long do you think it will be before Dorey starts denying the AVN ever supported Carley's rambling conspiracy theories -  just as she denies ever supporting David Icke's Illuminati theories?


STATISTICS:

Statistics and probabilities are often confusing. Most people just don't get them. I'm no superstar at them either but I am able, occasionally, to spot fundamental flaws in someone's statistical interpretations or applications.

Enter Meryl Dorey.

I mentioned some time ago about an online comment in which Dorey had used syllogistic "reasoning" to completely misinterpret a fairly simple statistic. Here it is again in a nutshell (my emphasis)...

ann wrote:

March 24, 2010 at 2:00 pm

I would really like to know how Dr. Offit explains the mumps outbreak going on right now in New York in New Jersey, where AN AVERAGE 88 PERCENT OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE MUMPS HAVE BEEN FULLY VACCINATED and in some cases with the children, 93 percent have been fully vaccinated (those figures come straight from the CDC,which is considering thinking about adding another booster to the series.) For all the possible dangers of the MMR, it’s pretty obvious it doesn’t work!!

shotinfo replied:

March 24, 2010 at 3:13 pm

You make an excellent point! With any other form of treatment, failure of the therapy in 88% of those who received it would lead to its withdrawal. Such a spectacular failure of a vaccine however simply leads to calls for more vaccinations. There is no logic or science in this – simply a need to protect profits.

(NOTE: see 88% update at end of article*)

Of course Ann never said that 88% of vaccinated people got mumps. Meryl made that up, either deliberately or due to an inability to understand simple statistics. It's difficult to see how it could be a mistake because if 88% of vaccinated people really were getting mumps then I think we'd notice. Surely Dorey can see that the vast majority of people she meets every day aren't suffering with mumps?

That was back in March but Dorey is still at it with her oft-repeated assertion that if something isn't 100% reliable then it simply doesn't work (my bolding)...

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, eh? According to the latest information on this outbreak, there is NO difference in the number of cases between areas with high or low vaccination rates and once again, most of those getting whooping cough are fully vaccinated. The vaccine isn’t working – why is that so hard for ‘scientists’ to understand?

Let's mess with some hypothetical numbers to see if she's right...

• Let's assume a population of 100,000 kids. 
• Let's assume 95% of them are vaccinated.
• Let's assume 2000 of the total population of kids are infected with pertussis.
• Now, let's assume 80% of those who get infected are vaccinated.

So, 1600 vaccinated kids were infected with pertussis. 400 unvaccinated kids also caught it. Four times as many infected kids were vaccinated.

Using Dorey's simplistic approach we can just say that the majority of sufferers were vaccinated and, therefore, vaccines don't work. But is that the full story?

Those 1600 kids who were infected came from the 95,000 vaccinated kids. So only 1.68% of vaccinated kids were infected.

The other 400 infected kids came from the 5000 unvaccinated kids. So 8% of the unvaccinated population became infected.

Now we have a much clearer picture of whether the vaccine had any impact. While less than 2% of vaccinated kids became infected, almost five times that percentage of unvaccinated kids were infected.

To put it another way, over 98% of the vaccinated kids were not infected. Not bad considering no one claims vaccination to be 100% effective.

To make it clearer still...

• one in 60 vaccinated kids was infected 
• one in 12 unvaccinated kids was infected 

 In other words, based on this example, an unvaccinated kid is five times more likely to catch the (potentially fatal) infection.

Note that this is a simplistic analysis of a hypothetical situation but illustrates the problem with Dorey's continued insistence that most infected kids are vaccinated. Using her silly approach to statistics we could just as easily say that the majority of kids who did NOT get infected were vaccinated. I don't think you'll see Dorey make that point, however.

Without specific data showing that vaccinated kids are actually proportionally more susceptible to infection than unvaccinated kids, it's safe to assume that the reason more vaccinated kids are infected is because there are many, many, many times more kids in that group. For that same reason, more vaccinated kids will have red hair, more will die before age 35, more will go to prison, more of them will buy Toyotas and Holdens and Hondas and BMWs. And more vaccinated kids will grow up with an exceptionally poor grasp of statistics. None of this, however, will happen BECAUSE they were vaccinated but because there are vastly more of them in the first place.

Dorey further insists that, because some vaccinated kids do not gain immunity, vaccines don't work. This is just plain idiotic. It's difficult to even see it as a simple error in logic. It's patently silly.

Some people die wearing seat belts. Some even die because they were wearing a seat belt! Some people survive traffic accidents without wearing seat belts. Does this mean seat belts don't work and are instead "weapons of mass destruction" made only for profit? I wonder if Dorey lets her kids wear seat belts?

Some people die wearing parachutes. Some people survive plane crashes without wearing a parachute. Does this mean parachutes simply don't work?

Air bags? Safety helmets? The same arguments apply. All these things are made by companies for profit. All are sold on the basis that they will save lives. All fail in some circumstances and some have been implicated as the cause of death in extraordinary cases. None of them has a 100% success rating - nothing does - but, statistically, logically, they work.

Meryl Dorey's approach to statistics is not logical.


*88% UPDATE

I'm not a reader of scientific data but I think the 88% figure was misinterpreted in the first place, by Ann. Here's the CDC report. What it actually says is... "Among the patients for whom vaccination status was reported, 88% had received at least 1 dose of mumps-containing vaccine, and 75% had received 2 doses". The attached table shows that only 64% of the sufferers were known to be vaccinated and 14% of those were not fully vaccinated. This makes my hypothetical scenario somewhat generously in favour of the unvaccinated.

MORE:

You can read more about Dr Rebecca Carley at the Millenium Project.

More in this AVN series:
Meryl Dorey, AVN & Lizard People
Meryl Dorey, AVN & ABC Radio
Meryl Dorey, AVN & Pertussis Test

Meryl Dorey, AVN & Pertussis test

When baby Dana McCaffery was reported to have died from Whooping Cough (pertussis), Meryl Dorey of the Australian Vaccination Network (an anti-vaccination group) contacted Paul Corben at the North Coast Area Health Service to ask how Dana was diagnosed.

In her blog post titled "A grieving family and baseless accusations", Dorey wrote (my bolding)...

Due to the uncertainty – in my mind at least – about how a whooping cough diagnosis could be made so quickly and also the correlation of Dana’s reported symptoms and treatments, I felt that these were important questions to clear up and it was my right to ask these questions – anyone could have.

The NCAHS told me that Dana’s death was determined by using a ‘quick test’. At that time, I was unfamiliar with this type of test but subsequent research has shown me that this is a test which gives false positives up to 100% of the time.

I'll largely ignore the rather bizarre "up to 100% of the time" statistic since I have absolutely no idea what it's supposed to mean. I could humorously assume it means that every case where the test fails amounts to 100% failure rate in those cases. But seriously, it's meaningless since even a 1% overall failure rate qualifies as "up to 100%".

I am more interested in Dorey's doubt that pertussis infection could be diagnosed so quickly. Her doubt was so strong that it drove her to seek specific, private, information about the diagnosis of Dana McCaffery the day before the baby girl's funeral on March 13, 2009.

And yet, in a comment she wrote under another of her own blog articles, Dorey tells the story of her own family's brush with something she says was whooping cough (my bolding)...

When I got home, my mother in law was on antibiotics and within a few days, my kids started to cough. We went to the doctor for a diagnosis and received it but we refused the antibiotics because we knew that it did nothing once the symptoms had appeared – and it might have suppressed their immune systems and made the disease last longer.

And this is what intrigues me - for two reasons.

The first is that it contradicts what Dorey told a TV reporter following Dana's death. Rachael Dunlop transcribes that part of the show for us (my bolding)...

When reporter Rebecca Maddern asked [Meryl Dorey]; “What if one of your children got whooping cough? (to which she responded they had), “And did you seek help from the medical profession?”, she offered;

“No, we treated whooping cough homeopathically and none of us were sick for more than 2 weeks. My vaccinated children got it and my unvaccinated children got it. And none of us were sick for more than 2 weeks and it was nothing more than a bad cough”.

So here, in May 2009, Dorey said she did not seek help from the medical profession in respect of what she claimed was whooping cough. And yet, in her recent blog comment she says it was diagnosed by a doctor. She does go on to say she refused antibiotics so perhaps that what she meant when she said she didn't seek professional help. She really isn't very clear at all so I guess we're just supposed to take her story at face value and still accept that she had a right to doubt the McCaffery's story to the point of invading their privacy.

But the second thing that intrigues me, and this one has had me perplexed since I first read it over a week ago, is that she claims her family "went to the doctor for a diagnosis and received it". They are her exact words. She took her kids, who had just started to cough, to the doctor and, apparently simply, got a diagnosis of whooping cough.

But in the "Grieving Family" article, Dorey wrote of Dana McCaffery (my bolding)...

She was diagnosed with whooping cough within a day or two of when she was admitted to hospital when a whooping cough diagnosis generally takes 10-14 days to produce a positive result.

So, at some time in the past, before Dana McCaffery died of whooping cough, Dorey took her own unwell family to a doctor, asked for a diagnosis and was told they had whooping cough (by her account it sounds more like it was a typical seasonal cough that cleared in the same time typical seasonal coughs tend to clear - but let's assume, for now, that she's right).

Despite this seemingly-instant whooping cough diagnosis for her own family (and she makes no mention of any test whatsoever or of waiting a fortnight for results), Dorey later harbours serious doubts about the diagnosis of a three-week old baby who died from the disease.

Like so many things I read on the AVN blog, Dorey's anecdotes and concerns appear to directly contradict each other. They make no sense at all and one could be forgiven for thinking she's just trying anything she can to dismiss the cause of Dana McCaffery's death as anything other than whooping cough.

For the record, Toni McCaffery clarified the situation last week in response to Dorey's "Grieving Family" article...

Yes, Dana had the PCR test. My doctor called with the positive diagnosis and we drove straight to hospital. Thank goodness this test is so quick and reliable as it means quick treatment, and means people can be treated earlier with antibiotics so they don’t infect others. This statement tears my heart out and is so offensive. My daughter did not survive another 10 days !!! Fact. Dana had Pertussis – end of story and no-one should be stating otherwise. She had blood tests every half hour in hospital for goodness sake, so yes we have toxicology results to prove she had Whooping Cough. It satisfied the Coroner, that should be enough for anyone.

Will it be enough for Meryl Dorey and her supporters? It seems doubtful.

Meryl Dorey, AVN & ABC Radio

Today, on the AVN blog, Meryl Dorey has once again raised the issue of a complaint lodged with ABC Radio by the parents of a baby who died from Whooping Cough last year.

Part of the recent HCCC ruling against the AVN mentioned the fact that the organisation used misleading statistics in relation to pertussis (whooping cough). Dorey writes...

I believe this accusation was regarding a complaint that the McCaffery’s filed against me with the ABC after an interview I did with Katya Quigley, from ABC Radio.

She goes on to replay the events for her readers, including copies of correspondence she believes vindicates both the AVN and herself.

I must state up front that I have not heard the radio segment in question but I've seen Dorey refer to this issue several times and repeatedly question why the McCaffery's continue to claim she supplied misleading information to the ABC when, she says, they know that's not true.

What follows is my attempt to understand the truth of the situation based almost entirely on information provided by Dorey.

First, Dorey provides a copy of her "original correspondence" with the producer of the radio show. Here's one part of that correspondence...

A summary of the following information is that in 1991, Australia had a whooping cough vaccination rate of 71.6% and 318 cases reported nationwide. Last year (2008), for the first time, our whooping cough vaccination rate was in excess of 95% – the stage at which we have been told the disease will disappear. Instead, we had 14,522 cases last year – the highest on record – and this year is already over 19,000 without any decline in vaccination. [my bolding]

Take note:

• Meryl told the ABC that in 1991 the vaccination rate was 71.6%

She included a chart of vaccination rates with that correspondence  (I've highlighted parts of it in red)...

click to view larger

The first thing we see is that (unless I'm seriously misunderstanding the chart) none of the figures provided are specifically for 1991. There are 1995 figures in which the "1991 schedule" applied but the vaccination rate that year was just 68%. However, the 71.6% figure does appear in the year 2001. Maybe Dorey made a mistake and meant to write 2001?

It's also worth noting that each set of figures was based on different vaccination schedules.

Apparently based on Dorey's correspondence, ABC Radio host Katya Quigley raised the vaccination rate issue in an on-air discussion with the McCaffery's paeditrician. The McCaffery's filed a complaint in response.

The ABC ruling, which upheld the complaint, can be found here...

The complaint was upheld on two counts of inaccuracy in relation to statistical information referred to in the segment. The presenter referred to statistics which suggested that whilst the rates of vaccination had increased, the number of cases had also substantially increased in the period 1991 to 2008. The statistics were drawn from different data sets and related to different groups of children. Although each individual statistic was in and of itself accurate and drawn from a verifiable Government source, the comparative manner in which they were presented was misleading. Further, the first vaccination rate statistic was for the year 2001 but was presented as a vaccination rate for 1991. [my bolding]

So, it appears from this ruling that Quigley presented the first statistic (presumably 71.6%) as being from 1991 but the ABC, like me, determined that it was actually from 2001, ten years later. Recall too that Dorey had written in her correspondence that the 71.6% figure was from 1991.

So:

• Dorey wrote "1991"
• Quigley said, on air, "1991"
• ABC says "2001" and upholds complaint

Easy. But does Dorey see it this way? Apparently not.

In today's blog post, Dorey includes a copy of a letter from a Gary Goldman Ph.D (Computer Science). Even though he's supporting the AVN case, he also makes note of the fact the figures do not apply to 1991 but, unlike the ABC, decides to use the 1989-1990 figures to make his arguments. He does this despite the fact Dorey had specifically quoted a vaccination rate of 71.6%, not a simple 71% as entered in the 1989-90 column.

Dorey doesn't even seem to notice his "correction".

Looking further back in time, in an article posted on July 30 tastefully entitled "A grieving family and baseless accusations", Dorey wrote...

The McCafferys claimed that I had provided incorrect information to the ABC, but the final outcome of the ABC’s investigation of this issue stated that the journalist had actually made a mistake when she was speaking – the error was not mine.

Despite providing information to the McCafferys in this regard, and also having my information peer-reviewed by Dr Gary Goldman, a reviewer for such publications as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association, to this day, the McCafferys continue to claim that I provided incorrect or misleading information to the ABC.

(I'm going to ignore the implication that a Doctor of Computer Science checking an item about vaccination written by a Google Schooled "Mom" amounts to "peer review". Although it's possible, I guess, that both are equally qualified in this area.)

By my reading of the publicly available information (mostly provided or linked-to by Dorey), the ABC found that the "1991" figure was incorrect. Since Dorey supplied it and attributed it to 1991, it seems fair to conclude she supplied incorrect information to the ABC.

The ABC further found that it was wrong to compare the two data sets, 2001 and 2008 although Dorey had apparently supplied them for that purpose. Again, it seems fair to conclude she also supplied misleading information to the ABC.

So, does Dorey see it this clearly? No. In fact, in her latest blog article, just before posting the copy of her original correspondence she writes...

Apparently, during this interview, Katya referred to the whooping cough rate in Australia in 2001 when I had specifically indicated that the time period we were discussing was 1991.

Oops. That's as wrong as wrong can be. It's not even close to what the ABC wrote in their ruling.

The ruling by the ABC couldn't be any clearer. Katya Quigley attributed the statistics to 1991, as Dorey had in her correspondence. But the ABC determined that the figures were actually for 2001. Had Quigley ignored Dorey's statement and correctly quoted the figures as pertaining to 2001, the ruling would have been different.

Dorey goes on to write...

I contacted the ABC Corporate Affairs department and corresponded with Denise Musto who assured me that the finding was not against myself but against the presenter, Katya Quigley.

By upholding the a complaint about the statistics the host had used on air, the ABC had effectively ruled against Dorey, although an actual ruling against her would obviously not be possible as she is not employed by them.

If I tell someone at the ABC that Joe Bloggs is a convicted murderer and they then use my "fact" on air, the ABC would admonish the employee, not me, because the hosts are supposed to check their facts.

This was made clear in the correspondence the ABC had sent to Dorey in February this year...

As previously advised in a number of my emails to you, the findings of the Audience and Consumer Affairs review did not relate to your contribution to the program or to how the AVN presents statistics. Consistent with ABC complaints procedures, our review related to whether the statements about the statistics made by an ABC presenter complied with the ABC’s editorial standards for accuracy in factual content. Our finding was that the ABC presenter’s statement did not meet the standard, which requires that “Every reasonable effort must be made to ensure that factual content is accurate and in context”.

In this case, where the presenter had apparently relied on "factual content" provided by the AVN, the ABC clearly determined that the the "content" was not accurate. But the ABC is in no position to make findings against private citizens or unrelated organisations. They're a broadcaster, not the Supreme Court or the ACCC.

The HCCC, on the other hand, can investigate and rule against the AVN. They did both.

To close, here's some snippets from the comment thread on today's blog post. These comments are from Meryl Dorey (my bolding)...

---

They [the McCafferys] received the original response from the ABC which stated that it was a mistake on the part of the presenter plus, I did mention this in a recent blog post which I know they read because they responded to it. I don’t know why they continue to claim that I had misinformed the ABC when this is not true? Perhaps that is something they will need to think about and answer to their own satisfaction as time goes on? [link]

---

I’m sure that in [the McCafferys] minds, there is some justification for these actions. We just don’t understand what they are going through and I feel the greatest sympathy for them. They are also mixed up with a very toxic group of people – they probably just don’t realise it because this group has been sycophantically giving them so much positive reinforcement and pushing them into these actions. It truly is a shame that it has come to this. [link]

---

As for the McCafferys continuing to report that I had misled the ABC – again, I don’t understand why they have done this but you’re right – it isn’t fair and it is not honest either. [link]

---

Again:

• Dorey wrote "1991"
• Quigley said, on air, "1991"
• ABC says "2001", declares the information incorrect and misleading and and upholds complaint.

So, with this issue now cleared up, will Dorey and her supporters leave the McCafferys alone?


If Meryl Dorey can't even understand a short, simple finding from the ABC Complaints department, what chance does she really have of understanding the complex sciences of immunology, pharmacology and biochemistry? Is she a reliable source of information?

MORE:
Meryl Dorey, AVN & Lizard People
Dana McCaffery died of Whooping Cough
Meryl Dorey - misleading the ABC


The above opinion is based on my reading of the situation based on publicly available sources. If something is wrong, leave a comment and I'll check it out and make corrections or deletions as necessary.

Meryl Dorey, AVN & Lizard People...

Several times in the last few weeks I've seen Meryl Dorey, of the Australian Vaccination Network, denying that she linked to a vaccine conspiracy article written by David Icke or that she shares Icke's conspiratorial beliefs, including his belief that the world is ruled by lizard people.

I covered this issue when it broke a year ago - AVN against the Lizard People.

Tonight, Dorey has again denied sharing Icke's beliefs, writing in a comment on her blog...

I did not quote David Icke’s article – at least, it was not that article that the skeptics have said at various times that I’d either written myself or quoted in full – depending on the mood they were in at the time.

I cited a short (4-5 paragraph from memory) article from the Pakistan Daily that had a by-line of a Farrouk somebody (can’t remember). I did not know at the time that he had plagiarised the article by Icke, but nowhere in the article I posted (not wrote, mind you) did it mention Illuminati or Reptilian Aliens or any of that other crap. [my bolding]

The "other crap" Dorey is presumably referring to is the oft-repeated claim by skeptics that she believes vaccines are used for implanting microchips and for a planned mass culling of the population (at least, I hope she's denying those beliefs).

So what's going on here? Have the sceptics got it all wrong?

The conspiracy article in question was written by David Icke. It is here. (Site down tonight. I'll keep an eye on the link. Cache here.)

Dorey quoted from and linked to a verbatim copy of Icke's article published at Pakistan Daily with a Farooq Hussain by-line. That article has changed address slightly, as often happens with news articles, (and by-line now "dailypak771") - but it can still be found here.

Dorey might not have known Icke was the real author but that would likely be due to a lack of research. I discovered the author's identity within minutes by simply looking for selected quotes from the article to see who else had commented on it after I saw it on the AVN blog. I often seek out other comment to see if something is receiving wide acclaim or criticism (in this case to see if other anti-vaccination groups were also linking to it).

Dorey says...

I did not quote David Icke’s article – at least, it was not that article that the skeptics have said at various times that I’d either written myself or quoted in full – depending on the mood they were in at the time.

It was THAT article. Hussain's article is THAT Icke article as you can see by comparing the opening paragraphs with the article on her blog.

I don't recall any of the mainstream sceptics ever claiming she'd quoted the entire article or that she'd written it herself (I'm open to correction). The claim, generally, is that she presumably supports the article since she linked to it on her blog and didn't rubbish it.

Regardless of authorship, since it is no more or less ridiculous no matter who wrote it, the reader will find the following claims in those two identical articles...

The Illuminati plan for the world includes a mass cull of the population and the microchipping of every man, woman and child. Microchips would allow everyone to be tracked 24/7, but it goes much further than that.

Computer technology communicating with the chips has the potential to manipulate people mentally, emotionally and physically. This could be done en masse or individually through the chip’s unique transmitter-receiver signal. Killing someone from a distance would be a synch.

So there, in just one small snippet - from the Pakistan Daily copy of the article in question - we have the Illuminati, mass culling, micro-chipping and remote killing - some of the very things the sceptics attribute to her belief system and which Dorey suggests were not mentioned in the article.

Now, she might want to claim she didn't read that far and was unaware of those claims (which would raise many more questions about why she linked to it) - the following, however, is from the section she quoted in her blog article...

The word ‘evil’ is much overused and I don’t say it lightly; but we are dealing with evil in the sense that the word is the reverse of ‘live’. Those behind the conspiracy to cull the human population and turn the rest into little more than computer terminals are anti-life. They have no respect for it and no empathy with those who suffer the consequences of their actions, no matter how appalling. [my bolding]

The quoted section finished with an invitation for the reader... "Here is a link to read more"

She added no comment about the article, either supportive or condemning or ridiculing and. It doesn't matter that she wasn't the author - she put it on her blog without critique. On what basis should any casual reader assume she wasn't supportive of the article's conspiratorial themes? Should we assume nothing on that blog carries any merit in Dorey's eyes?

Even after a year of people pointing out the ridiculous nature of Icke's ramblings, the article remains on the AVN blog without comment from Dorey. Even though the link she provides is now broken, simply copying one unique part of the blog article - such as "It is no longer an option to do nothing or passively acquiesce", with quotation marks, into Google will take you to a full copy of the article somewhere on the internet. Perhaps Dorey thinks her followers are too ignorant to think of such things.

But what about those "Lizard People"? The simple fact is that there's no such thing mentioned in the full article so why do sceptics keep mentioning them?

Again, this comes down to simple research and a vague knowledge of conspiracy theorists. Once I discovered the original article was by David Icke (a matter of a few minutes) - the lizard people connection soon followed (wikipedia). And I'm not even a hard-bitten, well-seasoned sceptic with a wide knowledge of conspiracy theories.

When faced with such monstrously outrageous claims as those that are actually contained right there in the article Dorey linked to, assuming she might might also believe in Icke's lizard people is hardly much of a stretch.

Had Dorey followed up the article she could have soon discovered David Icke as the author and possibly made the lizard people link herself - yet even now, over a year later and after having it pointed out several times, Dorey is still pleading ignorance and the article is still there on her blog.

None of this is either difficult or complex or confusing. It's very straightforward.

In short, Icke wrote a conspiracy-filled article about the Illuminati using vaccination as a means to mass cull and microchip the world population. Pakistan Daily re-published his article verbatim (word-for-word) under a different by-line. Meryl Dorey quoted from this plagiarised copy on the AVN blog, including an explicit reference to mass culling. She added no comment suggesting that the reader should disregard it as a load of conspiracy-filled nonsense or read it for a laugh. Instead she quoted the mass-culling claim then invited the reader to follow a link for more.

And she wants us to believe she's a credible source of peer-reviewed, scientific information on vaccination. Well, sorry Meryl but I'm not convinced.


MORE:

Vaccination Awareness and Information Service

Acid = Base?

In high school we learn that acids and bases are opposites that neutralise each other to salt and water when mixed.

"An acid plus a base gives salt and water only"

In journalism, if today's news is any indication, they learn that acids and bases are the same thing.

Tots in pram burned by falling acid in South Yarra carpark

A BABY and toddler have suffered facial burns after youths threw an acidic liquid at their pram from a Melbourne multi-storey car park. 

A boy is expected to be cautioned after being taken into custody and questioned by police.

The baby boy, aged 12 months, and girl, aged two, suffered superficial facial injuries when the sodium hydroxide landed on them as their mother pushed them along in their pram, police said.

Sodium hydroxide, or caustic soda, is a base, an alkali. It is the very opposite of an acid.

While I've linked to the Herald Sun article, they are not alone. I first saw the acid reference on morning TV and a Google search shows others have used similar headlines, though some have changed since first published.

But it's only science. Why write "Doberman attacks man" when you could instead write "Tiger attacks man"? I mean, they're kinda the same aren't they?

God smites Christian blog?

Yesterday PZ Myers noticed a survey question on a blog for Catch the Fire Ministries, an Australian fundamentalist Christian evangelical group lead by Pastor Daniel (Danny) Nalliah.

Myers holds the opinion that online polls are essentially worthless, presumably because they are almost never a fair sampling of community opinion and that, for many questions, opinions don't matter a damn anyway since they can never trump facts. As such, Myers has no problem with asking his readers to "crash" polls that he finds particularly troubling - and crash them they do, with seemingly unmatchable zeal.

The blog, at ctfm-survey.blogspot.com and titled Catch the Fire Ministries Surveys: Welcome, had a few links to articles and one poll.

The poll question was: Would you vote in a Prime Minister who does not acknowledge God?

Putting aside for one moment the clear assumption in that question that God actually exists and that atheism is simply a refusal to acknowledge this, rather than a position of disbelief, things got interesting fairly quickly - as all too often happens when Myers links to an online poll.

When Myers mentioned it, with some 2000 votes already cast, 54% of respondents had voted NO. 

Within hours, with YES votes coming in at an estimated one per second as I watched the poll, the balance had shifted and soon, with over 12,000 votes cast, 89% had voted YES as shown in the Google cache screen capture at right.*

You'll also see that there were 14 days left to vote when that page was cached but when I checked the poll this morning, the question was simply "X or Y?". Strangely, three votes had even been cast in this new poll, with Y ahead by one vote!

Before long, however, the whole blog was gone.

Shocked and a little unnerved, I closed my eyes and meditated. A vision came through and I received a clear message that God had smote (trashed, evaporated, demolished) the blog due to Victoria's abortion laws.

Sucks to be Catch the Fire Ministries.

*Side Note: Google cache seems a little behind the times. Myers posted his article on August 6 (US time) and the NO vote was leading with an estimated 2000 total votes cast (there were only 3000+ when I looked at the poll last night, August 6 Aust time). A comment at Myer's blog confirms around 12,000 votes cast at about 3am GMT, August 7 (very rough estimates). 

Google dates its cache data as August 4 GMT. Either Google cache is broken or this poll was trashed and re-set long before Myers set his readers to work on it, only for it to be trashed again. Even stranger, when I checked Google cache again, the vote count had increased to 12137 but the cache time, 15:20:53GMT was the same. 

Maybe God's messing with time - because of Victoria's abortion laws.

AVN: Punch-drunk yet?

You have to give Meryl Dorey of the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN) credit for one thing - she's tenacious.

As far as she's concerned, her son was damaged by vaccines and the authorities don't seem to want to admit such things happen. She's so convinced that she's right that seemingly anything - even worldwide conspiracy theories involving vaccine-implanted microchips and vaccine-induced genocide - seem like useful ammunition. It's like that old adage "my enemy's enemies are my friends".

Although Dorey's approach to her "information campaign" is a simplistic mixture of Chicken Little and The Boy who cried Wolf, I can understand, at some level, where she's coming from.

Sure she's wrong in many, many ways in the majority of what she says about vaccination - and some actions, as reported, seem despicable - but she's committed to her cause and she goes all out to pursue it, regardless of the opposition she meets. It's a shame that energy isn't going into something genuinely beneficial but it's not so that's what we have to deal with.

For several years, sceptics around the world have been targetting the AVN's war on vaccination with counter attacks promoting the benefits of vaccination and pointing out the mountains of errors in the AVN claims. But the AVN kept going, all the time claiming to be a pro-choice vaccination watchdog (they are neither pro-choice nor watchdog, by the way).

Last month the Health Complaints Commission (HCCC) declared Dorey's AVN to be an "anti-vaccination" group and "requested" a notice to that effect be put on their website. Dorey simply refused that "request" and the HCCC then issued a public warning about the group. Despite wide media coverage, including stories on the ABC's Lateline program, Dorey shrugs it off as just one more move in the witch-hunt against her.

Tonight, ABC's Lateline introduced the latest issue Dorey is having to deal with - an investigation of the AVN's charity status by the Office of Liquor Gaming and Racing...

JOHN STEWART: Now the AVN is under fire again, this time from the NSW Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing which wants the anti-vaccination group to show why it should be able to continue raising funds as a charity.



The Sydney Morning Herald also carries the story - AVN charity investigation...

 

A spokeswoman from the Office of Liquor Gaming and Racing said the audit had detected a number of breaches of the charity fund-raising law. They included: fund-raising without an authority; unauthorised expenditure; and failure to keep proper records of income and expenditure.

She said other possible breaches of the Charitable Trusts Act 1993 had been referred to the Department of Justice and Attorney-General.

But will this be the end of Meryl Dorey and the AVN? Will this punch land where the others have only glanced? I doubt it. She is very much like the proverbial, unsinkable rubber duck - and as the HCCC "request" shows, Australian authorities seem to be effectively impotent where attacks on science-based medicine are concerned.

Regardless of Dorey's tenacity, we must never forget that Dana McCaffery died of Whooping Cough.

Dana McCaffery died of Whooping Cough!

At just 4 weeks of age, Dana McCaffery died of Whooping Cough!

There are some people with an all-too-public presence who refuse to believe this.

These same people have no problem believing that all mainstream healthcare is the product of a corrupt system in which pharmaceutical companies and worldwide governments apparently seek to purposely injure the populace in order to keep us all sick and in perpetual need of medication.

These same people also often insist that alternative approaches to healthcare, like homeopathy, have merit despite mountains of quality evidence against them and despite, in some cases, no plausible mechanism by which these things could work as advertised.

Some of these people, like the AVN's Meryl Dorey, apparently support the unbelievably bizarre notion that the leaders of this grand pharmaceutical conspiracy are the Illuminati, a shape-shifting reptilian race of overlords occupying the highest positions in the ruling class. (My reasons for believing Dorey supports this proposition are explained here.)

Despite their affinity for believing things with virtually no credible evidence or plausibility, these same people refuse, absolutely refuse, to believe a baby died of a deadly disease in an area where vaccination against that disease is at an historic low. Their skepti-meters are seriously out of calibration.

To hopefully put to rest, once and for all, the notion that Dana McCaffery's parents are a part of this supposeldy secret conspiracy against us and our children, Dana's mother, Toni, has spelled out some facts in a long and what must have been a frustratingly heartwrenching and difficult-to-write message to Meryl Dorey and her ilk.

I closed this blog three weeks ago after deciding that my writings were all-but worthless in the wider scheme of things and that all I was achieving was personal stress, frustration and legal risk. Tonight, after reading just part of Toni McCafferey's message, I just had to re-open the blog and help spread this message, if only to a handful of people.

Here's one small but very important part of that message...

Yes, Dana had the PCR test. My doctor called with the positive diagnosis and we drove straight to hospital. Thank goodness this test is so quick and reliable as it means quick treatment, and means people can be treated earlier with antibiotics so they don’t infect others. This statement tears my heart out and is so offensive. My daughter did not survive another 10 days !!! Fact. Dana had Pertussis – end of story and no-one should be stating otherwise. She had blood tests every half hour in hospital for goodness sake, so yes we have toxicology results to prove she had Whooping Cough. It satisfied the Coroner, that should be enough for anyone.

The remainder of her message is an absolute must-read for anyone with even a passing interest in the AVN or vaccination. You can read it at the following link:

Dana McCafferey died of Whooping Cough. Meryl Dorey is just wrong, again.