The Childbirth Truth Squad

UPDATE:  Published late, after the next post (I think 2) were published and the conversation had moved on.  Similar to what was done on the baby sling comments.   I imagine they pat themselves on the back for not deleting and ignore the fact that this tactic, nevertheless, is designed to minimize the number of people who see it.

This was submitted over a day ago.   It hasn’t been posted, yet.    It is another example of an orchestrated ending.  Debate is allowed up to a point.   Then, it is cut off to give the false impression that the Midwifery side was soooo right, the opponent conceded and didn’t reply.

This post is essentially CBTS Cliff Notes.   It summarizes all the bad behavior of midwives, just on-line and, by doing so, shows why those who debate them need to be anonymous to protect themselves from these sociopaths. 

Their tactics of attacking dissenters instead of addressing the rather dry, boring scientific criticisms speaks louder than their words.

It also highlights the midwifery double standard.   They can choose to be anonymous, but no one else should.

@russ

“Greetings Anony-b,”

Oh, no, you have me mistaken with your friend Anony-B (big B that is).  That’s OK.  We look so much alike that I mistook myself for her.   Or maybe your other friend Anony-bennifer or your other friend Anony-bmanda, or pretty much all your friends.

“I must point out that there is a bit of a mismatch in this contest. You are entirely anonymous, b, and free to say whatever you like with no accountability, while I am accountable for my words.”

Not really. People can’t be accountable for their words when they can’t be assured they will be theirs.  They are always subject to the selective censorship and the editing of others.   And non-midwifery types don’t act like sociopaths, on-line or off-line, so you are not risking anything or doing anything noble.    

If midwifery is such a great thing for women, why do they always have to resort to these dirty tactics.  Why are they always trying to control the information women see?  Why do they attack and silence dissent and dissenters?   

Do you get your blog comments deleted? (https://childbirthtruthsquad.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/can%e2%80%99t-see-the-forest-through-the-trees/)

Do you get your blog comments held back, posted out of order and long after the discussion has moved on? (https://childbirthtruthsquad.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/keeping-baby-close-the-importance-of-high-touch-parenting-and-deleting-correct-information/)

Do you get your quotes truncated to change their meaning?  (Indiana fanny comment #12, chopping and re-imaging #10)

Do your comments get banned towards the end so your debate partner can have the last word and orchestrate the ending she would like?  (https://childbirthtruthsquad.wordpress.com/our-bodies-ourselves-our-delete-button/) 

Do you get people telling tall tales about things that you never posted on your own blog on other blogs?  (http://skepticalob.blogspot.com/2010/08/breastfeeding-and-what-it-means-to-be.html   in the comment, I don’t mean the post itself)

Do you non-midwifery blogs not safeguard information covertly collected?  http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/

Do you face tangible off-line retaliation ?  (https://childbirthtruthsquad.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/midwife-on-midwife-violence/)

Do your comments get deleted on neutral websites via strategic use of the Flag for Abuse button?

“Why don’t we make it more fun and you can tell us who you are with all of your outstanding credentials.”

What credentials do you need to state the main counter-argument to this post? 

If you look up the Mother of All Birth Studies, the subject of this post, it says nothing like what the poster or its authors claim it does when you look up the paper AND its citations.   She posits we should all accept the conclusion and move along.    But, the  ‘data’ relied on here, the “study” that is supposed to convince us all to let midwives take over US maternity care, isn’t “data” or a “study” at all.    It is a couple of midwives that used a completely invented connection between homebirth and its outcomes.

I mean, c’mon, why doesn’t any one address this, the silence is deafening.   No pat answer in the Statistics for Non-Majors book eh?

REPEAT

Amy Romona opined:
“de Jonge: midwives routinely record the planned place of birth in a national perinatal database that covers 99% of births and is linked to another database of neonatal deaths by a validated method.”

There’s no “perinatal database” RTFM. The entire thing was through statistical guessing linking Midwife to OB and then peds databases. There’s no actual data in this so-called study!! Where babies that died were intended to be born in this is no more than a guess.

THIS IS THE CITATION IN DEJONGE NEXT TO THE CLAIM THE DATA WAS VALIDLY LINKED

From the J Clin Epidemiol. 2007 Sep;60(9):883-91. Epub 2007 May 17.Probabilistic record linkage is a valid and transparent tool to combine databases without a patient identification number.Méray N, Reitsma JB, Ravelli AC, Bonsel GJ.
Academic Medical Centrum (AMC), Department of Medical Informatics, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. (document listed by DeJonge as the method they used)

“All four perinatal caregivers create records in one of four independent registries: the registry of midwives (LVR1 or MR), of general practitioners (LVR-h), of obstetricians (LVR2 or OR), and of pediatricians (LNR or PR), respectively, with partial records in case of transfer. Because of privacy laws of the Netherlands, no unique personal identifier (of the mother or child) is available to combine records.”

And in case you weren’t aware, there’s no way to definitive validate anonymous databases, otherwise, ya know, they wouldn’t be anonymous. Only a small percentage matched on a small set of variables, and only a very small percent of those were unique.

The full text is up at science direct http://www.sciencedirect.com/

J Clin Epidemiol. 2007 Sep;60(9):883-91. Epub 2007 May 17.Probabilistic record linkage is a valid and transparent tool to combine databases without a patient identification number.Méray N, Reitsma JB, Ravelli AC, Bonsel GJ.
Academic Medical Centrum (AMC), Department of Medical Informatics, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

“In absence of a large sample of validated pairs to independently estimate the awards and penalties, we used standard maximum likelihood techniques to estimate these weights from the data itself and to estimate the threshold”

In other words, they guessed.