Wakey, Wakey!

This is slightly stale news, but I haven't really had time to blog on it: The Lancet, the prestigious British Medical Journal that originally published Andrew Wakefield's shall we say, problematic study purportedly linking vaccines to autism, has retracted it [PDF]. I think this is a long time in coming, though I understand why it took so long. Retraction of a peer-reviewed paper is actually a big deal and very uncommon, even for fairly bad papers. Even prestigious journals don't retract papers just because someone turned out to be wrong, or there was a critical error in an experiment that was undertaken in good faith. In these cases it's more typical for the scientists themselves to retract the paper. Usually there has to be very serious issues.

The Big Sin in Wakefield's case wasn't simply being wrong, but in failing to disclose his associations and potential conflicts of interest and not respecting the rights of his research subjects. Reading Autism's False Prophets by Paul Offit, it's actually very clear that Wakefield's research was highly questionable if only because he was working for trial lawyers involved in tort cases against vaccine manufacturers aiming for a class-action lawsuit. For people who argue that pharmaceutical companies have a vested interest in denying vaccine danger, I would like them to consider (however briefly) that Wakefield has had a vested interest in connecting vaccines to some form of disease. This, in addition to the fact that he himself patented a stand-alone measles vaccine, all the while encouraging people not to use the multi-valent vaccine for Measles-Mumps-Rubella (MMR). I should also point out that by contrast, Dr. Offit makes no bones about admitting he works on vaccines himself- a level of disclosure significantly greater than that of Wakefield.

Measles vaccines being grown in chicken eggs. (Photo courtesy of the WHO)

When pharmacuetical companies do research, we know their agenda and scientists can stand back and consider potential biases. The FDA and other government agencies also get involved in monitoring the research and making sure that scientific rigor is being applied. While the FDA has had its debacles, and in all fairness the system is flawed- there is at least some level of openness about the research being done and acknowledgement of who pays the piper, so to speak. With Wakefield, he deliberately withheld his conflicts of interest from the journal, which would have called for increased scrutiny of his research had he done so. That the Lancet published it in the first place was a case of the journal doing it's due diligence with data that seemed plausible from what seemed to be a responsible unconflicted party on the subject. The Lancet would have been manifestly derelict in its duty to inform the medical and scientific communities had it not published such a paper. When it's discovered that the data was bad, the research subjects were mistreated, and that there were significant conflicts of interest- why should the paper stand?

Yet the predictable response of the anti-vaccination movement is talk of "censorship". I remember a day when censorship meant that saying certain things got you imprisoned or killed. In fact, I believe they still do this in some countries and that the people who die speaking freely might have an objection to that characterization. That a publication refuses to publish your drivel isn't censorship- it's discretion. Discretion is an important part of the peer-review process: That people qualified in the field and who understand the state of the science decide its value to others in the community of researchers.

I'm very comfortable calling the anti-vaccination movement anti-science denialists. I'm less comfortable doing that with say- global warming deniers (though I still call them deniers). In the case of people against the idea of anthropogenic global warming, there are those among them who look at the data and come off with at least superficially plausible differing interpretations. Anti-vaccinationists offer no mechanisms of action, do not consider the importance of harm-reduction (even if vaccines did cause autism, the likelihood is so small that vaccination is still worth the risk relative to the risk of infectious disease), they are unmoved by further studies that cannot detect the connection or replicate Wakefield's results, and this is the kicker: IGNORE OTHER POSSIBLE CAUSES FOR AUTISM.

This last one kills me. Dollars that went to confirm Wakefield's results and determine the nature of the purported autism-vaccine link were dollars wasted. That money was money that never went to finding cures or treatments for autism that never worked. People who donated to various anti-vaccine movements have deprived numerous researchers and scientists of funds urgently needed to help those with autism, and if this does turn out to be completely genetic, screening technologies for it. Meanwhile the resulting scare resulted in deaths and disfigurement of numerous children who were not vaccinated because their parents were either misguided or willfully obstinate. People die when you disseminate medical information that happens to be false. When you spread information you know to be wrong- that's simply unconscionable. I sincerely hope Mr. Wakefield finds his mattress small help in falling asleep tonight.

Who Needs Perspective When Fear Sells?

I keep telling myself that this is a chemistry blog and I should write about chemistry more. I think it would be kind of fun, for example, to do a nice little primer/tutorial on pH or pushing electrons. Unfortunately every time I sit down and scan the web, I come across some very seriously misinformed views and anti-science paranoia. I find I’m like a moth to a flame, I can’t resist the impulse to rebut all the burning stupid out there. Lately it’s the Daily Mail, a UK Tabloid, that’s getting under my skin. They have another scare story about vaccines, this time focusing on the swine flu vaccine.

I thought I’d write a post about it, but at the time I was just too fucking bored with this sort of bullshit. I did however email the story to a bunch of people who make it their business to care about this sort of thing and Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, emailed back with Steve Novella’s take on the ridiculousness of the Daily Mail’s insinuations.

All of Novella’s points, as he himself highlights, are essentially expressed in the article. What the article does however, and it’s painfully obvious they’re doing it, is play down these points and play up perspective from a vocal minority of people with dubious authority and tenuous relevance to the situation at hand. So much of it is framing, and I can’t help but find it extremely distressing. If framing is a substitute for facts, then we’re in real trouble people.

Hydrogen Hoaxing

What else can we expect? Gas prices go up, people need to fill their tanks, a legitimate need arises, and so in come the people to try and fill that need. We see bicycle stores and public transport benefit from a world with higher gas prices. Of course, in such times it is sadly predictable that others would try to make a fast buck off of people's ignorance. This is where a website called Water4Petrol comes in.

Now hydrogen can be used as a fuel and, since it combines with oxygen to form water vapor under normal conditions, an exceptionally clean fuel at that. It's not the idea that hydrogen can be used as a fuel that I find appalling. Right now considerable investment is going into research to find easy and cheap ways to produce hydrogen, and while I'm not optimistic about the prospects so far, I wish them luck.

Now any chemist, scientist, engineer, or well-informed layperson should be able to look at the site and quickly understand why it's a not a plausible method of saving money on gas. So for the benefit of the completely uninitiated, I'll try to keep this on a very basic level. To summarize what the website purports:

1. Water is electrolyzed in what can best be described as a jar, but let's give these people the benefit of a doubt and call it a magic jar. To electrolyze something means to break it up using electricity. In the case of water, this means breaking it up into hydrogen and oxygen. When hydrogen bonds to oxygen to make water, a certain amount of energy is released in forming the bond. When the bond is broken, therefore, it stands to reason that the same amount of energy must be used to separate the elements. Keep that in mind for later. The electricity in this case comes from the car's own battery or alternator. If you're quick, you'll see where this is going.

2. The mixed gas, remember that it's hydrogen and oxygen together, is then shunted into the engine airflow where it presumably ignites in the cylinders. This part is a little beyond my expertise, I only know very vaguely how an automobile engine works. So I will assume that a car can run on hydrogen in the first place, just for the sake of argument.

3. The combustion of hydrogen in the engine will reduce the amount of gasoline/diesel needed to run the engine, thus saving you money at the pump. To that end, I call bullshit.

You see, there are these things called the laws of thermodynamics. I'm not going to list and explain them. Instead I'm going to call on that rare thing called common sense, and get Socratic on your asses: Based on what you have observed of the world around you, does energy, whether it's mechanical (dropping a ball, using a gear, etc.) or chemical (burning something), come out of the nether? Basically, is it free? Can you call upon you chakras, Qi, God(s), or Barry Manilow to move your car in the morning?

"No! Of course not! Energy has to come from somewhere!" You exclaim, taking me aback (I had no idea you were so passionate). So where does the energy to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen comes from? According to the website, run by the dubiously named Ozzie Freedom, it comes from your battery. Where does the energy from your battery come from? If your battery goes dead because you left the headlights shining into your neighbor's bedroom to teach him a lesson about returning that lawnmower, you know you don't recharge it. You "jump" the battery, and leave your car running a little while. This is so the battery can use your gasoline to charge itself up using the alternator. So when you use battery power to make hydrogen, you're just using gasoline all over again.

If you hook the apparatus (read:magic jar) up to your alternator, the same reasoning applies. The alternator is a moving part that generates electricity, and what makes it move is (tah-dah!) gasoline.

So how do we know that the hydrogen isn't somehow miraculously better than gasoline? The answer lies in something I said earlier, when you break a bond, it generates the same amount of energy to reform that same bond. So you can only get the same amount of energy you used to separate water in the first place. It is impossible to benefit from this system. In fact, it would seem from the prices Ozzie charges for a magic jar (240 South African Rand=31.34 US Dollars), the only person that stands to benefit financially is one Ozzie Freedom.