Jon Rappoport – The Zika-microcephaly connection is scientific nonsense. Let me run it down for you.
My analysis is beyond, “But Expert A says…” I am not dealing in appeals to authority, but instead the standards of evidence anyone can see if he opens his eyes.
First of all, the latest figures out of Brazil, the so-called epicenter of the microcephaly tragedy, reveal the following: 854 confirmed cases of microcephaly; and of those, 97 cases show the presence of the Zika virus.
Inference? Zika is not the cause of microcephaly. If it were, researchers would be able to detect it in all, or the overwhelming percentage of, microcephaly cases.
I’m not making this up. There are standards of proof and evidence. They dictate which inferences are possible, and which are not. 97 out 854 is a dud. Back to the drawing board. 757 microcephaly cases show no trace of Zika.
“But Expert A says…” Who cares what he says? He’s either right or wrong, independent of his presumed status as an expert. And here he would be wrong.
“But the Washington Post and the NY Times and the CDC and the World Health Organization say…” Doesn’t matter.
Two recent studies, if you want to call them that, have tried to make the case that Zika is the cause of microcephaly. Well, they were published because media outlets could then run headlines announcing: Zika Shown To Be The Cause; Doubts About Zika Erased. That’s all these studies were good for.
The first study examined several different groups of babies, and in each group they found a very weak correlation between microcephaly and the presence of Zika—but they tried to pull a fast one and say that the (very weak) correlation in several groups somehow added up to a much stronger correlation overall. Absolute gibberish. Weak plus weak plus weak equals weak.