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Saturday, February 8, 2025

Letter to the Editor – Oakley Rankin

Anecdotal evidence

Anecdote:  Many, if not most, of the claims of vaccine and EMI damage are anecdotal.  Anecdotes rarely deal with causes, they are descriptions of singular events.  Many anecdotes are true; the truth or falsity of an anecdote is important only in selecting it as part of a group of similar anecdotes.  But to make sense of stories concerning any large scale event, anecdotes should cover the whole field which, for either vaccines or EMI, would include anecdotes from the millions like myself who are vaccinated or use WiFi yet suffer no effects whatsoever.  Putting both types of anecdote together gives us the ability to gauge frequency of real events and work out a risk assessment.  It is simply not possible to build causation on a few selected anecdotes.

Controlled Studies:  Working initially from empirical evidence (a more scientifically meaningful term for anecdotal evidence), which often points the way, scientists attempt to devise a test procedure which will isolate a possible cause.  This is not an easy task involving such problems as sample size, measurement difficulty, identity and control of all factors, extraneous causative factors, sloppy procedure, etc.  But it is the best procedure we have to try to determine causation for many of the problems that beset us.  A great example of a controlled study being set off by anecdotal stories is that of citrus fruit and scurvy.  James Lind, a Scottish naval surgeon in the 18th century conducted one of the first controlled studies recorded on the basis of long-standing anecdotal evidence of a connection between citrus fruit and lack of scurvy in sailors.  In 1747 he performed his experiment by dividing a group of scurvy afflicted British sailors into six groups, each to indulge in the same overall diet but with the addition of six different possible prophylactics, one of which was citrus.  After six days the citrus group of sailors had either fully recovered or were nearing recovery; the others were still afflicted.  In spite of this clear demonstration it took the British Navy until 1797 to begin to issue ships with citrus.  No clear causation could be determined at the time as Vitamin C was unknown but a very clear risk assessment with a positive result was eventually accepted.  The fifty years between experiment and acceptance is also a sad reflection on how long we can hold on to an idea in spite of clear evidence it is not true.

Most claims of causation by the EMI and anti-vaccination proponents rest on anecdotal evidence or very questionable studies often performed by individuals without experience in designing such studies—a difficult task even for those with a high level of statistical and methodological training.  Perhaps a South African anecdote is a cautionary tale for those who accept anecdotal stories as proof positive of causation.  In 2009 a number of residents in Craigavon, South Africa were complaining of typical EHS (electro-hypersensitivity) symptoms after a new iBurst cell tower went live. At a meeting in November with the company, a number of residents continued to complain that they were at the moment suffering skin rashes, headaches, and the like whenever they went near the tower. It turns out, however, that the company had shut the tower off six weeks before the meeting, meaning that the present-day complaints couldn’t have been directly due to the radiation from the tower.  At the very least such anecdotes should cause us to pause in our jump to a conclusion.  But it seems that even with the tower shut off most of the residents were not ready to question their causative belief and were still trying through the courts to get rid of the tower and gain restitution a year or two later on the basis of their ailments.

The difficulty in designing a study to elucidate cause and effect is evident in the case of ultra-processed foods.  According to Dr. Joe Schwartz, Professor Emiratus of Chemistry at McGill and director of their Office for Science and Society, roughly 60 per cent of the western diet is made up of ultra-processed foods. Numerous studies have linked the consumption of these foods with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, Type 2 diabetes, and obesity. Although these studies only indicate a risk and cannot prove an unequivocal cause-and-effect relationship, attention is warranted when so much empirical evidence and so many studies all point in the same direction.  It also points out the seminal part ‘risk’ plays in determining positive or negative effects when direct causation is not possible.

All of us deal daily with risk; when we attempt to jay walk we are quickly assessing the risk of being run over; it is an almost automatic process as we look both ways and decide we can make it before that car approaching reaches us.  We try to build procedures, rules of the road, which will improve certainty so that when we head out in our cars we can be reasonably sure that we will get there in time without killing or injuring ourselves.  But the risk is still there.  When something new appears to increase risk, we might invoke the so-called ‘cautionary principle’ but this principle does not demand we stop the new process completely; it is the amber light which says proceed with caution.  And, in the case of mRNA vaccines it does not mean stopping all vaccinating on the basis of a small number of selected anecdotes; it requires a risk assessment of positive versus negative effects on the population as a whole.  Such an assessment takes time, usually measured in months if not years, and requires large scale implementation AFTER many small scale studies—in the case of mRNA vaccines beginning in the 1990’s—have indicated no negative effects.  Large scale implementation gives us a huge range of anecdotal evidence on which we can base a reasonable risk assessment and all the anecdotal evidence must be included; one cannot chose only the anecdotes which reinforce our anxieties.

So if you are faced with an argument of causality which depends on a few anecdotes be aware that causality can rarely if ever be determined from anecdotal evidence alone.  But FULL anecdotal evidence can be a starting point for a reasonable risk assessment.  Ask yourself what comprises the full universe of anecdotes surrounding the claim and has the proponent taken all of them into consideration to substantiate their claim.  Then check for well conducted studies attempting to assess the anecdotal evidence by a controlled study or a well thought out risk assessment.  Many of those who write of causation based on a few anecdotes also encourage us to use ‘critical thinking’.  But the only causation they are sure of is a conspiratorial one whose evidence they simply write off in the name of the unexplained conspirators—an example of what psychologists know as ‘projection’; accusing others of your own critical thinking faults.  The residents of Craigavon, like the British Navy, demonstrate a common disdain for critical thinking when they refuse to respond to the evidence presented and continue to ignore it.  So try to learn from all supported evidence and be your own James Lind.

Oakley Rankin

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