A depressing thread

[regexcellent]

You tried to argue the Vietnam war was winnable, you then went into complete crazy man territory with your ridiculous claims about Agent Orange and then it turned out you were actually getting all your nonsense from a nutter who is so influential he had to self publish his own book.

What I said was the Vietnam War wasn't winnable without external strikes in Cambodia and Laos or an invasion of North Vietnam. I mentioned that book because I found it to be good background reading. That book's claim on Agent Orange is something which I followed up on and found to be true. The basis for my argument on Agent Orange comes from a complete lack of studies conclusively linking Agent Orange spraying in Vietnam to the symptoms described by alleged victims.

This thread has become two things, a) a testament to just how far down the crazy bunker guy path you've actually fallen and b) a testament to how no matter how insane the **** you spout, your fellow right wing butt chums will still pile in to support you.

It's gone so far past embarrasing now that it's actually hard to find the energy to mock you any more.

All you can do is mock me, because you can't actually produce a study linking Agent Orange spraying in Vietnam to the symptoms described by alleged victims, because one doesn't exist. Nor can you find me an example of an insurgency where the government forces won and the insurgents were able to get immunity from said government forces by stepping over a line in the sand, because one doesn't exist.

This isn't about conservatism or right-wing ideology like you think it is; this is about reality versus lies which have been so widely propagated that nobody knows fact from fiction anymore. And fact has become politically incorrect.

[kentonio]

What I said was the Vietnam War wasn't winnable without external strikes in Cambodia and Laos or an invasion of North Vietnam. I mentioned that book because I found it to be good background reading.

For someone who is bat**** crazy, sure. It's a nasty little book that tries to smear the integrity and honour of men who fought and died for the US, for the sin of deciding the war was a bad idea. The fact he tops that off with conspiracy **** about Agent Orange just acts as a final nail in the coffin of his reputation.

That book's claim on Agent Orange is something which I followed up on and found to be true. The basis for my argument on Agent Orange comes from a complete lack of studies conclusively linking Agent Orange spraying in Vietnam to the symptoms described by alleged victims.

This really isn't very difficult to understand, it's basically impossible to prove conclusively that the spraying of Agent Orange was the sole cause of specific cases. The US sprayed that **** over a huge area, and most of the illnesses developed over years and decades. There is no conclusive way to say that the dioxins sprayed on x date were the ones that caused a vet or a civilian to have a deformed baby 20 years later, but when you look at the tests and studies which showed it does have those effects, and then you see a generation of Vietnamese and US Vietnam vets suffering wildly inflated instances outside any kind of statistical norm, then yes you can link those things together and be pretty damn sure you've worked out the cause. It also helps that theres backing evidence from the hotspots where it was stored across Vietnam and on Okinawa. Seriously, trying to deny any harmful effects of this stuff is just utterly, mindblowingly stupid.

All you can do is mock me, because you can't actually produce a study linking Agent Orange spraying in Vietnam to the symptoms described by alleged victims, because one doesn't exist.

I'm mocking you, because you deserve to be mocked.

Nor can you find me an example of an insurgency where the government forces won and the insurgents were able to get immunity from said government forces by stepping over a line in the sand, because one doesn't exist.

Stop being an idiot. Of course you have to prevent insurgents from being able to escape over borders but as the examples we keep providing you (and which you keep ignoring) show, there are others ways to solve that problem other than bombing the crap out of neutral neighbouring countries.

This isn't about conservatism or right-wing ideology like you think it is

You're right, it isn't about conservatism or even right wing ideology, it's about a new generation of ****ing idiots who think that reading some crap on the internet means they know more than an establishment of trained professionals who spend their lives actually working in a specific field. It doesn't matter whether it's this or any of the other myriad issues that you boys are so regularly wrong about, every time it just comes down to the same arrogant belief that you know better than anyone else. It's basically the same damn attitude that causes all those time wasting bastards to clog up doctors surgeries by arguing with GP's about illnesses they've read about on the internet.

this is about reality versus lies which have been so widely propagated that nobody knows fact from fiction anymore. And fact has become politically incorrect.

You quite literally would not recognize a fact if it punched you in the face. If a peice of evidence does not fit into your pre-determined world view you reject it as bias or fake. It's pretty damn pathetic really.

[Hauldren Collider]

You quite literally would not recognize a fact if it punched you in the face. If a peice of evidence does not fit into your pre-determined world view you reject it as bias or fake. It's pretty damn pathetic really.

IRONY ALERT

[regexcellent]

You quite literally would not recognize a fact if it punched you in the face. If a peice of evidence does not fit into your pre-determined world view you reject it as bias or fake.

I just want to quote this for comedy gold.

edit: ninja'd

[regexcellent]

You're right, it isn't about conservatism or even right wing ideology, it's about a new generation of ****ing idiots who think that reading some crap on the internet means they know more than an establishment of trained professionals who spend their lives actually working in a specific field.

So, where did you learn that Agent Orange is dangerous? Surely not firsthand.

Also I thought we established that I read it in a book, not on the internet.

[kentonio]

So, where did you learn that Agent Orange is dangerous? Surely not firsthand.

Also I thought we established that I read it in a book, not on the internet.

Where did you hear about the book, considering it was a self published title by a nutjob? I'm guessing it wasn't on the shelf in Waterstones.

[regexcellent]

This really isn't very difficult to understand, it's basically impossible to prove conclusively that the spraying of Agent Orange was the sole cause of specific cases. The US sprayed that **** over a huge area, and most of the illnesses developed over years and decades. There is no conclusive way to say that the dioxins sprayed on x date were the ones that caused a vet or a civilian to have a deformed baby 20 years later, but when you look at the tests and studies which showed it does have those effects, and then you see a generation of Vietnamese and US Vietnam vets suffering wildly inflated instances outside any kind of statistical norm, then yes you can link those things together and be pretty damn sure you've worked out the cause. It also helps that theres backing evidence from the hotspots where it was stored across Vietnam and on Okinawa. Seriously, trying to deny any harmful effects of this stuff is just utterly, mindblowingly stupid.

We have a good idea of how much agent orange our men were exposed to, and we also know roughly their rate of cancer and birth defects in children and so on. We definitely have enough data to make a reasonable conclusion about the effects of Agent Orange on our personnel. In fact we can set up a controlled study by the people who drank the stuff in Operation Ranch Hand and the people who never went anywhere near Agent Orange anywhere. If there were a connection between Agent Orange and cancer/birth defects, someone would have made it by now.

But nobody has.

[regexcellent]

Where did you hear about the book, considering it was a self published title by a nutjob? I'm guessing it wasn't on the shelf in Waterstones.

I found it in the library, actually.

[kentonio]

..in the late '70s, two studies began that would eventually provide a body of evidence on the effects of dioxin contamination. One, by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, focused on workers in private industry, not on military personnel. But the number of people in the study, more than 5,000, made it by far the largest examination of dioxin exposure yet undertaken. A report from this study, released in the 1990s, found evidence of a link between dioxin and diabetes.

A second and better-known study, an epidemiological analysis commissioned by the U.S. Air Froce, focused on some of the most intensively exposed veterans: 1,200 members of Operation Ranch Hand, the team that conducted much of the actual spraying of herbicides in Vietnam. Early results of the Ranch Hand study, published in 1984, contained findings that the Air Force described as 'reassuring' to the exposed veterans, showing little difference between their health and that of other service members.

A decade later, however, an investigative report in the San Diego Union-Tribune revealed far more disturbing data from the Ranch Hand research that the Air Force had chosen not to publish. Among other things, the scientists conducting the analysis had actually found, in the newspaper's words, "that the Ranch Hand veterans were, by a ratio of 5 to 1, 'less well' than the comparison group." Study participants, according to the article, had also reported "significantly more birth defects among their children than did tyhe other veterans".

To clarify the facts, the Yale School of Nursing later examined birth defects among the children of Ranch Hand veterans. In 2003 the Yale researchers reported "evidence of a connection between Vietnam veterans' exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange in Southest Asia and the occurance of birth defects and developmental disabilities in their children." It concluded that "the children of Vietnam veterans constitute a likely vulnerable population as a consequence of their fathers' Vietnam service dioxin exposure."

http://www.agentorangerecord.com/inf...e_reports1/P1/

[regexcellent]

That's not in the link you posted. Where does that passage come from?

I'm skeptical of that too because dioxins aren't present in sufficient quantity in Agent Orange (5 parts per billion) to be a significant health risk (which is why it was selected over Agent Pink). Also what does "unwell" mean?

What I do see is that 1200 birth defect cases were identified among Vietnam veterans which is a very small number when you consider how many people actually served in Vietnam.

That website makes the "5 to 1 ratio" statement about Ranch Hand airmen from the passage, and cites it, but the cite doesn't contain that information.

Please post the actual link where you found that.

[Kuciwalker]

I couldn't dig up the actual Yale research article, but I could find the YaleNews article that was the source for kentonio's quote:

http://news.yale.edu/2003/08/25/yale-data-analysis-shows-birth-defects-resulting-vietnam-veterans-exposure-agent-orange

The relevant section:

Using data that only was made available to the public about two years ago, George Knafl, associate research scientist and statistician at Yale School of Nursing, said in presenting his findings today at the conference, Dioxin 2003, in Boston, that his results differ from those of the U.S. Air Force because he employed more powerful modeling and analysis techniques.

The Air Force Health Study in 1992 concluded there was no association between exposure to dioxin, which was the toxic contaminant in Agent Orange, and reproductive outcomes.

"Results for composite categories suggest that the children of Vietnam veterans constitute a likely vulnerable population as a consequence of their fathers' potential Vietnam service dioxin exposure," said Knafl in his talk at the Westin-Copley Hotel and Conference Center.

This isn't very much to go on, but the sort of analysis done here - where you take the same data and run different statistical tests on it - is much more likely than average to produce a false positive and/or overstate the statistical significance of the result.

[DaShi]

Hi, I'm Hauldren Collider and I know something about this topic! Excuse me while I pontificate about my IMMENSE KNOWLEDGE about this subject. Oh, you wanted something relevant to the actual discussion at hand? Well too bad! Google doesn't supply that.

Then I criticize people for doing the same thing.

I'm proud of you.

[DaShi]

I couldn't dig up the actual Yale research article, but I could find the YaleNews article that was the source for kentonio's quote:

http://news.yale.edu/2003/08/25/yale-data-analysis-shows-birth-defects-resulting-vietnam-veterans-exposure-agent-orange

The relevant section:



This isn't very much to go on, but the sort of analysis done here - where you take the same data and run different statistical tests on it - is much more likely than average to produce a false positive and/or overstate the statistical significance of the result.

Or the original test produced a false negative and/or understated the statistical significance of the results.

Statistic be frustrating.

[Kuciwalker]

Or the original test produced a false negative and/or understated the statistical significance of the results.

No, this mode of thinking is incorrect and demonstrates that you don't actually understand hypothesis testing.

[DaShi]

Then please explain the difference.