Here’s some waste for you, DOGE!
How did the vaccine-autism connection ever come about? It was an instance of scientific fraud:
“In 1998, Andrew Wakefield published a paper based on just 12 children that linked the MMR vaccine to autism. The results have not been replicated, and it later transpired that he had falsified data, for which his medical license was revoked.
“The Lancet completely retracted the Wakefield et al. paper in February 2010, admitting that several elements in the paper were incorrect, contrary to the findings of the earlier investigation. Wakefield et al. were held guilty of ethical violations (they had conducted invasive investigations on the children without obtaining the necessary ethical clearances) and scientific misrepresentation (they reported that their sampling was consecutive when, in fact, it was selective),” a report into the case explains.
“The final episode in the saga is the revelation that Wakefield et al. were guilty of deliberate fraud (they picked and chose data that suited their case; they falsified facts). The British Medical Journal has published a series of articles on the exposure of the fraud, which appears to have taken place for financial gain.”
But RFK Jr, who is not only not a physician or a scientist but by all appearances is scientific illiterate, won’t take no for an answer, and has convinced Trump that federal dollars need to be wasted on a large CDC study to once again demonstrate the obvious—that there is zero connection between vaccines and autism. That’s government inefficiency at its most egregious. Shame.
Trump CDC to disprove vaccine-autism link again
“In 1998, Andrew Wakefield published a paper based on just 12 children that linked the MMR vaccine to autism. The results have not been replicated, and it later transpired that he had falsified data, for which his medical license was revoked.
“The Lancet completely retracted the Wakefield et al. paper in February 2010, admitting that several elements in the paper were incorrect, contrary to the findings of the earlier investigation. Wakefield et al. were held guilty of ethical violations (they had conducted invasive investigations on the children without obtaining the necessary ethical clearances) and scientific misrepresentation (they reported that their sampling was consecutive when, in fact, it was selective),” a report into the case explains.
“The final episode in the saga is the revelation that Wakefield et al. were guilty of deliberate fraud (they picked and chose data that suited their case; they falsified facts). The British Medical Journal has published a series of articles on the exposure of the fraud, which appears to have taken place for financial gain.”
But RFK Jr, who is not only not a physician or a scientist but by all appearances is scientific illiterate, won’t take no for an answer, and has convinced Trump that federal dollars need to be wasted on a large CDC study to once again demonstrate the obvious—that there is zero connection between vaccines and autism. That’s government inefficiency at its most egregious. Shame.
Trump CDC to disprove vaccine-autism link again
Musk’s DOGE asked every federal employee to email them five things, ideally the most important, they did each week. This takes about 1/2 hour, so at, what, $40 an with overhead, that’s $20 per employee per week. For a million federal employees, that would be a billion dollars in government waste right there. That’s probably a minimum. Anyone who has held a desk job knows that this kind of horseshit upper management request wastes more than an hour due to its effects on workflow.
It really makes Musk look like Dilbert’s pointy haired boss who was always doing things like this.
Kaleberg:
Yep . . . if you do not put the detail down, for sure you will have to explain yourself. If you put too much down, then you will be answering the why and the what questions. Your 3o minutes is probably conservative. Proper wording to avoid the inquisition is necessary.