Antaeus Feldspar ([info]afeldspar) wrote,
2009-02-08 22:02:00
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Cause dishonesty in scientific research should be named and shamed

It appears that the infamous paper by Andrew Wakefield claiming to find a link between the measles/mumps/rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism, a paper already long discredited, may simply have been faked in the first place. The Sunday Times has presented a prima facie case against Wakefield that it will be hard for his supporters to discredit (which is not to say they won't attempt to.)

Over at ScienceBlogs, Mike Dunford gives a good birds-eye view of what this means about Wakefield:

Taken individually, it's possible - if only barely - that any one of these things could be an innocent mistake. However, the combination of all these circumstances - the failure to report the prior developmental symptoms, the failure to report the initial negative pathology findings, the failure to report the Legal Aid conflict of interest, and the document that described the existence of the syndrome to Legal Aid prior to the commencement of the research project - cannot reasonably be explained away so easily. Simply put, this is a pattern that is very strongly suggestive of outright fraud, with possible associated financial gain.

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  • 3 comments

[info]lasafara

February 9 2009, 14:03:29 UTC 3 years ago

...I kinda wish I could say I was surprised by this but I'm not, really. I just feel for the families that he scammed.

[info]jakeexperience

February 10 2009, 04:31:02 UTC 3 years ago

Wasn't that guy working on his own proprietary vaccine? If so, it'd explain why he did not want anyone to treat common ailments with Brand X.

And I hope something horrible happens to him.

[info]afeldspar

February 10 2009, 23:48:57 UTC 3 years ago

See, the fact that he was working on his own proprietary vaccine and then published a paper painting the other vaccine as dangerous could just mean that he didn't guard sufficiently against confirmation bias.

The fact, however, that he documented his intention to further lawsuits based on the "new syndrome" before he even encountered the children whose cases were supposedly his evidence for the existence of the syndrome... that is the jawdropper.
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