Twitter/X Community Notes gets an ‘F’ on autism studies

The Highwire posted a video on Twitter during the Thanksgiving holiday of a presentation given in Memphis, Tennessee, this past summer entitled, “Vaccine Experts Under Oath: Shocking Revelations in the Fight for Transparency and Truth.”

The information revealed was enough for Twitter’s Community Notes to insert themselves as “fact checkers.”

The 44-second clip essentially indicated that the CDC finally put out 20 studies that they relied upon as referents for the claim that vaccines do not cause autism in the first six months of life.  

Well, ICAN, a group dedicated to choice and transparency in vaccine awareness, read the studies and found that 18 of them involve Thimerosal – an ingredient not included in any of the vaccines given during this period.  

And one involved Antigen, which is not even vaccine-related.  

There was only one study that involved a vaccine administered during the first six months of life from the Institute of Medicine (now National Academy of Medicine). But that study only showed that there was no study showing whether DTaP does or does not cause autism.  As read right out of the Institute of Medicine report by the godfather of vaccinology himself, Dr Stanley Plotkin, … 

“The evidence is inadequate to accept or reject a causal relationship between diphtheria toxoid, tetanus toxoid or acellular pertussis containing vaccine in autism.”

Twitter’s Community Notes stepped in and posted that:

Vaccines do not cause autism. Countless studies have shown no link between vaccines and an increased risk of autism spectrum disorder.

Interesting to observe that the response jumps to a negation of any causal relationship between vaccines and autism when none were asserted.  

Highwire’s hour-long Thanksgiving presentation indicated that they sued the CDC when they refused to reveal what studies were relied upon to make the claim that all vaccines do not cause autism.  The request made to the CDC – the party obligated with the burden of proof for its universal claim – was simply to supply the relevant studies for the vaccines administered in the first six months of life.  Never was it asserted that vaccines do cause autism.

So, The Highwire responded to Community Notes with…

Would @CommunityNotes please provide the studies that our regulatory agencies relied upon to make the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ for the vaccines administered in the first six months of life? Also, please tell us where we make the claim ‘vaccines CAUSE autism’ in this post.

Eventually, Twitter’s Community Notes repeated their original response along with seven studies.  Were they relevant to the question?

To site a few examples, one entitled “Measles, Mumps, Rubella Vaccination and Autism: A Nationwide Cohort Study” is a study involving a vaccine that is not given during the first six months of life. The study “Prevalence and Characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder Among Children aged 8 years…” is about the prevalence of autism at 3 years of age, not the first six months.  And these two studies (here and here) again involved Thimerosal, which is not included in any of the vaccines during the first six months.  And on it goes. 

Not one study the community provided answered the question posed. 

Important to note that it is within this period that numerous parents have complained that their child regressed into autism right after the DTaP vaccine.  Yet, regulatory agencies like the CDC, FDA, and NIH have never done a study investigating the DTaP vaccine and its correlation to autism.

So, Twitter/ X Community Notes makes a strong assertion about a medical correlation that essentially corresponds with what the CDC has said and yet provides no evidence for their assertion, just as the CDC did not.  Well, who makes up this group of Community Notes anyway?

According to Elon Musk’s Twitter, Community Notes is a crowdsourced fact-checking feature that permits users  to provide context to others’ tweets.  Any user on X who has been on the platform for at least six months can take part in the program by signing up and agreeing to terms.  So, members can be people like you and me.  But users can also be members of the medical industry, like Moderna, for instance.

On November 20, Unherd authors Jack Poulson and Lee Fang reported that “The marketing arm of the company (Moderna) has been working with former law enforcement officials and public health officials to monitor and influence vaccine policy.”  They’ve also worked closely with a drug industry-funded NGO called Public Good Projects which collaborates with social media platforms, government agencies and new websites to “confront the root cause of vaccine hesitancy by rapidly shutting down misinformation.”  Moderna also monitors numerous mainstream outlets and even retains Talkwalker and its Blue Silk artificial intelligence to monitor vaccine-related conversations across millions of websites in about 200 countries.

Although Moderna may not be behind these community notes, its interest in controlling the narrative and people’s perception of public policy is something likely shared by the giants of Big Pharma and government agencies.  And its attitude toward Twitter is also something they may have in common. 

 In fact, Moderna appears rather displeased with Elon Musk, a billionaire who has expressed his opposition to mandates.  The Unherd authors note that Moderna’s global intelligence monitoring team, which is run by a former FBI analyst, reported that Musk is deemed to be “high risk.”  One only has to observe Musk’s incredibly effective video post mocking the “vaccines are 100% effective” narrative to observe how frightening the message of truth can be to an establishment that puts profits over health.

Interestingly, the report did not single out one false statement in the video.  In fact, none of the monitoring team’s reports make any attempt to dispute the claims made. If they encourage vaccine hesitancy, they are simply deemed “misinformation.”  

It’s clear that a free speech platform like Musk’s Twitter/X will be perceived to be a means to sow distrust on vaccine safety and effectiveness by parties with an agenda, even when a call for evidence is all that is asked for.  The problem is not with the free speech platform, but with parties that elect to deceive the masses and refuse to provide factual information that actually back up their claims.   

Those involved with Twitter’s Community Notes’ debate with Highwire, are just as guilty as the regulatory agencies in terms of their unwillingness to provide relevant data.  Perhaps, in this instance, they are one and the same.

Victor Fernandez is a former Logic/Philosophy of Science adjunct and retired math teacher.

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License