The paper is a preclinical safety study and the control is good in this context. For example, here is a description of the controls used in another preclinical safety study of the vaccine:
The control article used in Study 1 was phosphate-buffered saline/300 mM sucrose (PBS/Sucrose; Polymun Scientific Immunbiologische Forschung GmbH, Klosterneuburg, Austria). In Study 2, the control used was 0.9% sterile saline for injection, USP (B Braun Medical Inc, Bethlehem, PA, USA).
Yeah and I said that for a clinical trial, saline is an adequate placebo. I don’t think it’s reasonable to call this animal experiment an attempt to “determine the safety of the vaccine package” when it was transparently seeking solely to find “evidence” of “autism-like” effects and if they can read, they already knew that there is no reason to test the “safety of the vaccine package” in rats.
Well, the point is that I was reading 5 different things at once yesterday and I got my wires crossed! The paper gives the impression (to me, anyway) that it compared adult males and females, and in fact that would be a smart experimental design if you are studying effects in pregnancy (males, pregnant females, non-pregnant females). I just re-read the paper and I still think it gives the impression of a study on the adults, and it is in part. (If I’m reading their methods right, they reassembled the population of adults and offspring at P21.) But the effects they report are on the neonates.
So, my suggestion that you didn’t read the paper was inappropriate and inaccurate. It seems I’m the one who read it too hastily and carelessly. I hope you might accept my apology.
Of course I accept. And I appreciate your graceful and elegant attitude here.
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So in your opinion the title of the paper is a falsehood?
ID theory would cast doubt on the basis of the paper not just for its low statistical power and design, but because of the unstated assumption of evolutionary relatedness of humans and rats. That is, under evolutionary theory, one might reasonably propose that rats and humans may respond similarly.
Certainly if ID theory provides sufficient specification to propose that 10-30% of the human genome could be junk but not 70-80+% junk, then surely it has the power to reject extrapolating low-powered stats from rat experiments to likely human responses. These species were designed separately with intrically refined, irreducible and species optimized systems thus many common responses are more likely accidental than the result of possessing the same mechanisms.
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I think a better title could have been as follows:
Prenatal Exposure to high doses of COVID‐19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2 Induces Autism‐Like Behaviors in Male Neonatal Rats: Insights into WNT and BDNF Signaling Perturbations
The same is true under ID theory.
If you’re fine with exhaustively long titles, more accurate would be:
Prenatal exposure to insanely high doses of COVID‐19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2, with no vehicle-only control, may induce “autism‐like” behaviors in male rats (but we are more interested in touting our own company’s unvalidated data analysis system without mentioning our financial interest in it, in violation of the most basic ethics, than in obtaining good data using classical assays), with an insanely long discussion that is not warranted by the small amount of data in the paper
You know, even if Pfizer wouldn’t provide them with a vehicle-only control, it’s trivial to inactivate the mRNA in the vaccine to have a great negative control.
I’m reasonably certain that ID doesn’t make that prediction in any of the various literature. ID allows this to be true, but it isn’t making any predictions. If it does, then it’s a prediction based on evolutionary commanalities. ID has no hypothesis to make predictions about similarities or difference between two species.
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Study Design
Two cohorts of female rats were randomly assigned to the following treatment groups: Group 1 or the 0.9% NaCl Saline Group (n = 7) and Group 2 or the COVID-19 m-RNA Vaccine BNT162b2 Group (n = 8) […] Subsequently, on P21, a total of 41 progeny (comprising 10 male and 10 female saline-treated rats; along with 13 male and 8 female rats exposed to the COVID-19 m-RNA Vaccine BNT162b2) were systematically divided and accommodated in cages housing same-sex and same-study group members (Table 1).
Just this alone… utterly ridiculous. And the raw data appears to be unavailable, despite the fact that the paper says “The datasets supporting the conclusions of this article are included within the article and its additional files”.
I am having Seralini-study-flash-backs.
That is boilerplate that appears in some form on all papers in the journal (under Data Availability). It’s possible that the article is not “complete” since it doesn’t yet appear in an issue. But it’s also possible that this journal doesn’t enforce requirements like this one. This does take a lot of work.
In the multivariable logistic regression model, holding prematurity constant, the odds ratio of RD in neonates born to unvaccinated women was 3.06 (95% CI:1.08-10.21) (Fig. 3). When pregnant patients received at least one messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine dose prior to infection, the OR of neonatal RD was 0.33 (95%CI: 0.10—0.96), a 67% decline.
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Question for @Giltil: please note that this study involves a normal dose of vaccine in humans.
So how would you advise the pregnant women in your life: according to your strong “philosophical commitment,” should they be afraid because of the horribly designed rat study, or is what happens to human women and human children more important?
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- It would be reasonable, now, to edit the name of this thread by adding “Yes!”
- It would be reasonable to start a new thread called “The mRNA-based COVID19 vaccines are strongly indicated for pregnant women and their children”
- It would be reasonable to wonder whether PS is too often used to dishonestly sow doubt about science and medicine
- It would be reasonable to wonder what motivates people who use PS to sow doubt about science and medicine
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Trying out a feature that has been here all along, but never used - I have copied @sfmatheson’s comment to create a Wiki Post. This should be editable by anyone TL3+, but only one person can edit it at a time. I’ll start with some basic layout edits, then turn it loose for further edits. — Dan
Note: There should be a button at the top of this comment which will allow anyone TL3+ to edit. 
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Are the mRNA-based covid19 vaccines indicated for pregnant women? “Yes!”
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It would be reasonable to start a new thread called “The mRNA-based COVID19 vaccines are strongly indicated for pregnant women and their children”
Trying this as a Wiki post for now. This wiki might becomes the first post in a new thread addressing the question. -
It would be reasonable to wonder whether PS is too often used to dishonestly sow doubt about science and medicine
Such questions are subjected to intense scrutiny, exposing errors and dishonesty. That might be a service to others. Let’s see if a wiki can help make this a service? -
It would be reasonable to wonder what motivates people who use PS to sow doubt about science and medicine
A different topic, I think, and not unique to PS. It might be useful to list potential motivations and benefactors for further investigation. We might address the question of “Who benefits?” from misinformation.
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A) There isn’t an ID theory. There isn’t even an ID hypothesis advanced by ID advocates.
B) I can’t conceive of an ID theory that would make such a prediction. Can you state that alleged theory and explain how it makes such a prediction? Mechanistically, of course.
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It is not so much doubt about science and medecine per se, than doubt about mainstream scientific or medical theories. As Richard Feynman said, science is a culture of doubt.
I wish I could agree but PS regularly sees dishonest crap, mostly in the form of the uncritical resharing of dishonest crap. Doubting and questioning a theory (whether it’s “mainstream” is unimportant) is, I agree, necessary and noble. I wasn’t talking about that.
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So the only “scientific or medical theories” that should not be doubted are those based on fringe science?
What could possibly go wrong with that strategy?
[Does his best to keep a straight face]
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I was a pregnant wife, but I don’t have one. 
Meh - already have autism-ish genes floating around my family. My 2 year-old daughter, who was a fetus when I got vaccinated, was singing last night while emptying the dishwasher for me because she saw me doing it. It was pretty cool. Fairly social. She screams a lot though, so that could be an after effect of the vaccine. I think though she’s mostly normal - as mostly normal as all kids are.
Funny enough, I have never officially gotten covid. I did get two boosters as well in the last few years, but wondering if I got a super-immune effect from being pregnant. Did get sick once last year where I had muscle aches and fatigue so bad, I could not really walk. I went to my doctor but was already getting better by then and he suggested covid. I thought that was dumb initially and my tests were expired. 
I swear my immune system is different after covid (and all the viruses that went around after) - I blame it on the vaccine. 
But I’ll get a little bit of muscle aches faster than I’ll get any significant respiratory symptoms from a cold now. Just me? Anyone else? Lol.
TMI. I’ll stop now.
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