Maybe a review of the scientific method and steps involved is in order. Preliminary – look it up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

And how does this relate to autism? Obviously, mercury poisoning damages your brain. That doesn’t mean it causes autism.
Frankly, I don’t care. If I’m autistic because of mercury poisoning, so what? It doesn’t appear that the mercury poisoning is causing me any real problems.

This indicates that Selenium deficiency is the problem, not mercury. Maybe the diets of autisic childrens mothers should be studied?

I believe that there is no solid evidence linking mercury or other heavy metals to autism. I believe that the people who say there is such a link do so despite lack of data, relying instead on unpublished and unreplicated “studies”, conspiracy theories, and cherry-picked evidence.

You are correct! I mistated when I said that the selenium to mercury ratio was statistically signficant. Thanks.

But hold on just a minute, when you say:

“So, the article in question actually only found that cerebellar 3-nitrotyrosine levels were elevated in their autistic brain samples (as the title suggests) and that any speculation about selenium and/or mercury is not supported by their data.”

I’m not sure you are completely correct.

Didn’t we also find a very strong, positive relationship between levels of mercury and levels of 3-HT? This, in my mind, was the most striking thing, as mercury went up, oxidative stress markers also go up. There have frequently been ‘other’ things that could be causing oxidative stress (no doubt there are), but in this case, the relationship between mercury and 3-HT seemed pretty clear, at least to my understanding.

Here is what how I understand it:

“However, there was a positive correlation between cerebellar 3-NT and Hg levels (r=0.7961, p=0.0001).”

I’m told that an r value > .4 tends to be pretty strong stuff when determining strength of a correlation, and that a p value of .0001 indicates that the chance the relationship was random and is less than one in one thousand. But hey, maybe I’m wrong. Have I misread this as well?

As for curious, OK. (?) As for preliminary, it has been noted as such in the abstract. As for not yet repeated, I believe the authors indicate this was the first time such a condition was searched for.

Take care!

- pD

Given the usual p-value cut-off of 0.05 in biological and medical research, the fact that the selenium and mercury levels did not show a statistically significant difference is quite damning. In short, it means that there’s no reason to suspect that there is a real difference between the two groups in respect to mercury and selenium.

While you might be able to argue that a larger sample might have reached statistical significance, it also might not. As a researcher in biology, I’ve seen a lot of preliminary studies that “approached statistical significance” and yet showed no difference with larger sample sizes.

It’s also interesting to note that one of the authors on this paper – Woody McGinnis – is an author on 4 of the 15 articles in this issue of the journal. Curious, for a fellow with no research grants and no real laboratory facilities to be included in so many papers in a single issue of a journal.

Curious.

So, the article in question actually only found that cerebellar 3-nitrotyrosine levels were elevated in their autistic brain samples (as the title suggests) and that any speculation about selenium and/or mercury is not supported by their data.

Prometheus

What’s not to like?