"In a statement published on Feb. 2, the British medical journal said that it is now clear that “several elements” of a 1998 paper it published by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues (Lancet 1998;351[9103]:637–41) “are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation.” "
I had skimmed some mass-media stories about Wakefield back when he was making himself infamous. The one very big point that those stories didn’t seem to want to spell out, the critical conclusion that I didn’t understand until hbomberguy highlighted it, was that Wakefield’s scandal wasn’t the result of incompetence, bad luck, differences of opinion, or the kind of ordinary dead ends that happen in real science inquiry. Wakefield undertook a deliberate campaign of misinformation, one that he’d planned and stood to profit from.
And they weren’t merely incorrect, they were fraudulent. Wakefield fraudulently and purposefully manipulated data to obtain the incorrect outcome. To me it’s like… the instance of scientific fraud and academic dishonesty - I can’t think of any case more infamous, which is why I think rolling him out is so amazing.
Absolutely amazing that they have Wakefield as their poster boy
For those who don’t know Wakefield’s name:
Lancet retracts 12-year-old article linking autism to MMR vaccines https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2831678/
"In a statement published on Feb. 2, the British medical journal said that it is now clear that “several elements” of a 1998 paper it published by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues (Lancet 1998;351[9103]:637–41) “are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation.” "
Most of what I think I know about Wakefield, I learned from hbomberguy (YouTube).
I had skimmed some mass-media stories about Wakefield back when he was making himself infamous. The one very big point that those stories didn’t seem to want to spell out, the critical conclusion that I didn’t understand until hbomberguy highlighted it, was that Wakefield’s scandal wasn’t the result of incompetence, bad luck, differences of opinion, or the kind of ordinary dead ends that happen in real science inquiry. Wakefield undertook a deliberate campaign of misinformation, one that he’d planned and stood to profit from.
And they weren’t merely incorrect, they were fraudulent. Wakefield fraudulently and purposefully manipulated data to obtain the incorrect outcome. To me it’s like… the instance of scientific fraud and academic dishonesty - I can’t think of any case more infamous, which is why I think rolling him out is so amazing.