Quacks like a duck

 Another examination of anti-vaxx tactics by the apparently indefatigable Charlie Mitchell (and Katie Kenny) who may be my new crush.

So, an academic has produced a paper which suggested that 80-90% of pregnancies of women who were vaccinated early in their pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage.  The academic happens to be Simon Thornley, described by Mitchell and Kenny as "a founding member of Covid Plan B, and remains a member of New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out With Science" (like countries that showcase the word 'democracy' in their national name, there is more speaking than science going on with that lot) who acted "as an expert witness for several legal challenges that would impact the rollout of vaccines".  So, track record seems pretty clear.

Thornley tries to demonstrate there is a hidden menace in the vaccine for pregnant women, by analysing an older study and revealing the aforementioned shocking rate of miscarriage among women vaccinated in the first or second trimester.  But since the study focused on 'completed pregnancies' (i.e. those ending in birth or miscarriage) and only focused for a three month period, of course the only 'completion' a women in the first or second trimester is going to experience is a miscarriage or a premature birth.  You can't do a  complete nine month pregnancy from conception to birth in three months.  Any first or second trimester pregnancy 'completing' in the period is likely to have been a miscarriage.

Thornly uses a very familiar defence - essentially claiming he was misrepresented and his data misused and all he was actually doing was trying to highlight the flaws in the original study by performing a reductio ad absurdum.  That's a line often used by climate change deniers and Holocaust deniers - "I'm just asking questions" or "I'm playing with the data" or "It's just a thought experiment / piece of intellectual performance art."

But when all you "thought experiments" tend towards the same conclusion, and slot neatly into a wider pattern of behaviour, that defence becomes laughable.  Why are you spending so much time "asking questions" casting doubt on climate change, and never doing anything that shows it is a reality? Why spend all your time and energy trying to show the Shoah did not happen, unless you harbour a deeply held conviction it did not?

When it walks, talks and quacks like a duck, then it is hard to argue it isn't a duck.  Or as a child might put it, if it quacks like a quack, it's probably a quack.