Autism Street

By Do’C and Interverbal

In Part One of our DeSoto & Hitlan, 2007 revisit, we mentioned that we thought DeSoto & Hitlan made several important mistakes, (including some that merit formal correction), and that it is this aspect specifically, and not DeSoto & Hitlan’s abilities, that we call into question. Before we get to those important mistakes, we’d like to respond to a few of the apparent minor misunderstandings of logic, contained in the DeSoto & Hitlan FAQ.

Logical Fallacies

DeSoto & Hitlan imply in their FAQ that we used several logical fallacies. Specifically they write:

“Q. What do you think of some blog sites writings about your hair analysis results?

A. To be honest, I think it is a text book case of “Argument of Selective Reading”

The hair analysis is NOT the main point of our article (”Although not the central focus of this report…”p. 1309). Even if it is wrong (which I am not at all conceding), it still would not have any effect on the fact that 2004 Ip et al report that there was no link between mercury blood levels and autism diagnosis was falsely stated, widely repeated, and had to be retracted. In some regards, it seems a bit like Autism Street is hoping that anyone who can be made to agree that the hair excretion hypothesis is wrong will think that everything I have said as wrong (and then than Ip must have been right). It is the responsibility of readers who want to understand and be informed to separate each part of the argument…. There is, in fact, no possibility that Ip’s 2004 analysis was done correctly, although it is possible that hair excretion hypothesis is wrong.”

We did not argue that because we took issue with the “poor excretor” hypothesis put forth by Holmes et al., that everything DeSoto & Hitlan said was wrong. There is no fallacy here.

DeSoto & Hitlan also write:

“Q.  Can you or can you not support that mercury is “excreted” into the hair?
 
A.  OK… but this is going to be long.  Anyone reading this FAQ Webpage will need to know the background.  Autism Street bloggers penned the following within their online critique and associated discussion:
 
 “Mercury is not excreted in the hair…If there were any mechanism of “excretion” for mercury in the hair, maybe, but we’re not aware of any such mechanism. Call us spoil sports, but it would also seem that forming hair follicles’ relative position in the circulatory system (closest to peripheral capillaries, after circulatory delivery of blood to major organs like the brain, and before venous collection of cellular waste products and toxins) make it a very unlikely candidate for containing a mechanism for active excretion of any kind.” And it goes on to imply that hair mercury levels are not even related to mercury elimination, they say this “has not been shown in any way shape or form that we are aware of,” and culminates with “Only one small problem with (the) hypothesis - mercury is not “excreted” in the hair.” 
 
BTW… I found this on line at the same critical thinking web site referred to above.
 
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” Argument By Prestigious Jargon: using big complicated words so that you will seem to be an expert.
Why do people use “utilize” when they could utilize “use” ?””

Jargon is not a fallacy because big words are used. It is only a fallacy only when it is used around people who don’t know what the jargon means. That is because it sounds good, but the reader has no clue what was actually said. This fallacy is reader-dependent. No one is going to accuse Dr. DeSoto of this fallacy because she writes about one-tailed and two-tailed statistical tests in an academic journal. That would be a ridiculous claim. She is writing for a specific audience who is most likely adept at understanding what these terms mean.   

When we wrote our critique, we were writing for the specific audience who often visit Autism Street as well as other similar blogs. This audience is a mix of both scientists and non-scientists who have a strong or even passionate interest in autism and biomedical issues. Talking about “excretion” of heavy metals is an “old hat” for many of these people. Call us audacious, but we hardly think talking about “hair follicles” is going to leave our audience hopelessly impressed and confused. Again, there is no fallacy here.

DeSoto & Hitlan also write:
 
“I secretly hope that persons who have trusted these authors as a legitimate source of correct information will start to think independently.

Whereas we would openly hope that this is the case. It seems somewhat cynical to argue that that the readership demonstrates no independent thinking skills in this regard, and failed to fact check even a single aspect of our arguments. In fact, we know that this isn’t the case. Many readers did check it for themselves. We know, because we received a fair bit of mail both from dissenters and supporters who looked something up and had a comment they wished to share.

In their FAQ, DeSoto & Hitlan also seemed to accuse us of using a straw man argument concerning why they would use a one-tailed test. However, this is someone else’s argument and not ours. As such, we feel no obligation to answer for it.

And now, only having briefly touched on some of the apparently mistaken logic in the DeSoto & Hitlan FAQ, there is still much to cover.  As always, reader comments and criticism are welcome. At the end of the next part, we’ll provide our conclusion about the DeSoto & Hitlan paper and attempt to answer the question, “Do we think this paper adds to the body of scientific knowledge about autism?”. We’ll also provide a relevant list of additional reading.

Coming next: Important mistakes, (including some that merit formal correction).