Jabberwocky of the Day

I will be continuing the theme that I started yesterday later this week and will be talking about how parents choose treatments for their children.  But today, I am going to take a short detour with several notable bits of nonsense that I ran across today.

First up, from the "what does the word increase mean to you" department, is a document that I found on the National Institute of Heatlth's autism page. This document is an overview of what we know about autism and, in a section entitled "How many people have autism", I found this gem -

Some estimates of prevalence rely on previously published studies. Researchers review all the published data on a topic and take the averages of these calculations to determine prevalence. Independent researchers recently conducted two such reviews. Based on these studies, the best conservative estimate of the prevalence of ASDs in the United States is that one child in 1,000 children has an ASD

The document was published in 2005. Today, the conservative number is that 1 in 110 children have autism, a staggering 900% percent change from only 5 years ago, but we still don't "know" whether autism is increasing.  I mean with only a 250% increase over 10 to 15 years followed by a 900% increase in five years, it is very hard to tell.

Next, from the "ouch, you just hurt my head" department, we have Sullivan (of LBRB infamy) chiming in with the non sequitur of the day in his comments on OSR #1 controversy. His comment was made in reference to the allegations that OSR #1 is an "industrial chelator". The company that makes OSR #1 had this to say about the the claim -

OSR#1® as produced by CTI Science is not now and has never been marketed or tested as an environmental or industrial chelator. Nor has OSR#1® been tested in humans as a chelator by CTI Science, and no claims of chelation treatment use are made by CTI Science.

Sullivan, in all of this wisdom, came up with this response to the statements -

[T]his may have been addressed already, but CTI science has *not* stated that OSR is *not* a chelator. (Quoted text removed). They state it is not an *industrial* chelator. They state that it has not been *tested* as a chelator by CTI Science.  Mr. Haley’s company was originally called “Chelator Technologies”.  The chemical used is a chelator.

How does a company responding to a claim that their product is an "industrial chelator" by saying it is not an industrial chelator get changed into them not saying that is is not a chelator by saying that is not a chelator? Maybe the logic makes sense to Sullivan, but it just hurts my head.

But the funniest quote of the day comes from the Clay Adams as a response to me labeling him a notorious bully -

I see he calls me a “notorious bully”, for taking Jonathan Mitchell to task with satire. What he failed to read was that it was all “pay-back” for him bullying people I know and like on his blog.

Because you know, you aren't being a bully if you are only doing it for "pay-back".