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#1110550 added March 13, 2026 at 9:59am
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Say Anything
Here's one from the end of last year, from Science-Based Medicine. I don't know much about the source, except what they put on their website; they seem rational, like their name isn't misleading.
     Well Dr. Stephanie Seneff, 2025 is Over. Did Glyphosate Turn Half of All Children Autistic?  
Failed predictions are a key feature of pseudoscience, and much of my writing has documented instances of credentialed academies making bold, confident declarations, only to act like they never happened when reality intruded into their fantasy.

I'll just butt in here: yes, sometimes science makes failed predictions, too. That's part of the process. What they don't normally do is sweep it under the rug.

A big date has arrived. Those of us who have been following pseudoscience for some time will remember that way back in 2014, MIT computer scientist and American Loon #2234 Dr. Stephanie Seneff, predicted that “half of all children will be autistic by 2025“.

Well... no. I don't remember that. I don't remember almost anything about 2014. I do remember RFKJr. saying shit about finding the cause of autism in 2025 and, when his deadline passed, mumbled some obvious bullshit about acetaminophen / paracetamol and called it a day.

The culprit, in her opinion, would be glyphosate, an herbicide initially manufactured by Monsanto for genetically engineered crops. As you can imagine, an MIT scientist using the buzzwords autism, Monsanto, and GMOs made quite the splash in the wooisphere back then. It was very big deal at the time.

Oh, yeah. That would do it. Not sure why I don't remember it. I wasn't blogging at the time, so maybe I wasn't as tuned in to certain news reports.

Brace yourself. It turns out that no, glyphosate did not turn half of all children autistic.

"Well, then, her warning must have worked!" < this may or may not be satire.

Predictably, instead of reflecting, apologizing, and retreating from public commentary as someone with integrity would do, Dr. Seneff has seamlessly moved on to claiming that vaccines will cause 50% of children and 80% of boys to be autistic by 2032.

Vaccines prevent or reduce deaths. Autism isn't usually fatal. They're either saying "I'd rather have a dead child than an autistic one" or are trying to demonize those on the spectrum. Maybe both. I don't know. Either way, the overwhelming evidence, ignoring for the moment the efficacy of particular vaccines, is that they have nothing whatsoever to do with autism. And it's gotta be tough for people on the spectrum to get bombarded with that kind of messaging.

Failed predictions- both of catastrophes and better days ahead- are a key feature of misinformation, and much of my writing has documented instances of similarly credentialed academies making bold, confident declarations, only to act like they never happened when reality intruded into their fantasy.

So, this is the real reason I hung onto this article, not the particular debunking in the headline: to emphasize that these crank predictions need to be remembered (though apparently not by me) and scrutinized, like when the whole "the world will end in 2012 according to the Mayan calendar" took hold of popular imagination enough for someone to make a truly epic shitty movie about it. That movie remains probably the only John Cusack movie I've seen that I don't like. Well, okay, I wasn't a huge fan of Say Anything, but that was a really long time ago.

Those of us with working minds, meanwhile, noted that the Mayan calendar is cyclic (like, you know, every other calendar that we know of) and it was basically just the end of a counting cycle. Claiming the world will end then is like claiming that it's going to end because a year does.

That, of course, has nothing to do with medicine. But it's still scaremongering.

Anyway, the article goes on to help with the remembering by listing particular predictions. Most of them had to do with COVID.

I don’t know what 2026 will bring, but I predict that most of it will be very bad, and unlike the doctors I write about, I will admit it if I am wrong.

I, too, will admit it if I am wrong. That is... if I can remember what I said in the first place. I trust y'all to remind me and tell me "I told you so."

It just occurred to me that we have prediction betting markets now. I've never messed with them, but I say if you make a prediction like that, put some real money behind it. I might have to jump in and bet against you.
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