Bad science gets its due

THE REVOCATION of Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s license to practice medicine in Britain comes too many years too late.

It was back in 1998 that Wakefield, who now stands accused of unethical and irresponsible research, published a medical article suggesting a link between autism and the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Since then, the research has been discredited by follow-up studies that failed to find a link between the vaccine and the disease. As far back as 2004, 10 of Wakefield’s original co-authors retracted the findings of the article in a letter to The Lancet, the prestigious medical journal where it was initially published. Puzzlingly, it took the journal six more years to issue its own official retraction, which came out in February. By then, alas, the damage had been done. The work worried millions of parents and prompted many others to endanger their children’s health by declining vaccination.

Scientifically unproven treatments, modeled on a theory of autism spearheaded by Wakefield, have been given to children in attempts to treat the condition. But sadder still is the possibility that, in the minds of thousands of parents desperately clinging to hopes of finding a cure for autism, Wakefield’s legend might survive untarnished, possibly even exalted. In reality, his work on autism offers an unfortunate example of poor research trumping the scientific method.

It has been too long, when the research was flawed to begin with. Unfortunately peer review is ill equipped to pick up outright falsification of findings and undisclosed conflicts of interest and it took some years for that to be uncovered and for an investigation to be launched. One thing this article doesn't mention is the role of the media in this debacle, especially the idea of balance which means anyone can say anything and all the journalist has to do is provide a sound bite from an expert to provide "balance" and their job is done. It doesn't matter that the claims might be baseless. The media fed this. True investigative reporting is all but gone, except for a few like Brian Deer who worked extremely hard to get at the truth.

The findings on the cases are here (via the Millennium Project)

Dr Andrew Jeremy WAKEFIELD - Determination on Serious Professional Misconduct (SPM) and sanction:
Professor John Angus WALKER-SMITH - Determination on Serious Professional Misconduct (SPM) and sanction:
Professor (formerly Dr) Simon Harry MURCH - Determination on Serious Professional Misconduct (SPM) and sanction: