The bitly-linked article also has other problems - the assumption that there will be 'increased health insurance premiums' which presupposes a non-socialised healthcare system (while the costs might rise in a socialised system, the presence of more healthy people contributing to the economy might well ameliorate, cancel out or more than cancel out that effect) and the idea that foods people might be allergic to will be banned (rather than clearly labelled, alternatives offered or eliminated when a by-product is used in manufacturing).

The most baffling part is the appeal to conspiracy: "As a US resident, the main reason why I refuse to be vaccinated is lack of trust in the pharmaceutical industry and its bedfellow, the current government.". A mild mistrust of corporate medical interests is justified, but the link to the 'current government' is laughable - vaccination programmes are decades long and not part of any specific administration. It says far more about the author than it says about vaccination or the government.

Frankly, the article is altogether imbecilic. I feel ashamed as a statistician that someone in my profession has written tripe like that. Not that any of this excuses slack reporting in Forbes, of course, but to me that's a minor issue by comparison.

Cheers,

Ben

On 3 February 2014 09:16, Anthony Staines <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

There is perhaps a more critical point.

The article linked to also brings out a very old eugenic argument against vaccination - roughly, vaccination saves the lives of the unfit, who would otherwise die, and so allows the 'weaker ones' to breed, and so prevents natural selection doing its pre-ordained work.

This argument, which shows alike profound confusion about natural selection, about evolution, about human population dynamics, and about the actual factors that influence decision on family completion, was discredited before I was born (1960). Perhaps some of our more enthusiastic Big Data advocates, and practitioners, need to catch up with basic knowledge in public health, before they open their beaks?

Regards,
Anthony Staines

On 03/02/14 05:47, Vincent Granville wrote:

The following article published in Forbes on January 23, Big Data Crushes Anti-Vaccination Movement, illustrates why data should be processed and interpreted by data experts, not by journalists or professionals lacking analytic judgment or experience. First this is not big data, but small, summarized data. Using big data in the title makes big data practitioners (the real ones) look bad - as the public will eventually associate the keyword "big data" with "analytic incompetence".

But there is even something far worse about this article: the fact that they used one data set, and that they are missing the big picture, which is found in other data sets, or even by using  intuition and good judgement. While there is no direct causal relationship between vaccination and autism, there are indirect causal relationship between vaccination and a number of medical conditions, possibly including autism and peanut allergies.

Read our article at http://bit.ly/MQgVDc

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