Those Damn Facts And Rigorous Standards

Anti-Vaxxers Fund Study That Finds Zero Link Between Vaccinations And Autism:

The overwhelming majority of scientists agree: Vaccinations do not cause autism. Study after study has shown this, and even the original research used to peddle this myth was eventually retracted due to falsified data. But this hasn’t stopped many anti-vaccination groups from still trying to create data that says otherwise, often by commissioning studies that they hope will support their ideologies.

But for one group at least, this method of funding scientific studies to prove their point seems to have backfired. A six-year study looking into the effect that vaccinations have on the neurological development and social behavior of rhesus macaque infants, funded in part by the anti-vaccination and autism advocacy group SafeMinds, concluded that there was no evidence at all for such a link.

That didn’t stop the group from claiming the results didn’t change things. In a statement, they say that they had “concerns about changes in the study design protocol and analysis that may have led to these contradictory results.” The contradiction they are referring to is the fact that they were previously given preliminary results from a smaller trial, which purported to back up their position, before the study was expanded to include more subjects and underwent more rigorous standards that eventually found zero evidence.

"The results didn’t change things." A nice example of Confirmation Bias.

Oh, the irony of funding a study that proves you wrong.