Andrew Wakefield is a fraud!

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Maybe, because of this, there will be a new study on how widespread fraudulent studies are

That's why science has failsafes to prevent and/or out any false data. If other scientists can't replicate your results then there's obviously a problem. Remember, it was the scientific community who discredited Wakefield. If you want to blame someone, blame the media for taking a story and blowing it out of proportion. Also blame Wakefield for making stuff up, not science.

Of course, I am not blaming "science". I blame human self interest and since scientists are human...it kind of makes you wonder...how accurate science is.

Well, as I said, if a scientist publishes inaccurate results, they will be found out once someone tries to replicate those results. Wakefield's results couldn't be replicated, so the scientific community knew there was something wrong. The people who mainly fell for it were parents who believed what the media told them.

IMO it took them too long to tell the world Wakefield falsified his data...
The question I have is what was his motivation for conducting such a false study...it's not like he was trying to find a drug to market. The only thing he had to gain was notoriety. That's not a good enough reason...to risk everything the way he did. He must have thought no one would ever find out.

There was news about one a year or two ago that showed researchers had manipulated data on the use of combinations of medications for pain management - that the combinations were useless and patients really needed straight painkillers. This meant for years that people were prescribed pain medication that did nothing.

I think there's more of this going on than people expect. It's just so easy to get a study out.

A probable motivation is described in this article:

http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-deer-1.htm

That is, it looks like he was gathering data for a lawsuit alleging that the MMR vaccine caused autism in multiple children.

I just got through watching Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN with Dr Andrew Wakefield and Seth Mnookin. Seems Andrew Wakefield was motivated to conduct his study because of a Patent on an MMR vaccine he developed and his lawyers were involved in vaccine litigation. So, there's the answer to why he would be motivated to manipulate his study to support findings which would allow him to market his new vaccine worldwide.

It just shows you the depths some people will sink to just to market their product. I doubt he's the only one.

btw, thanks, Verandi. I just read what you wrote after I posted this, tee hee.

No problem. I followed this whole thing until it was finally debunked.

I thought I remembered something about a patent, glad to see that recollection was accurate.

As Wikileaks showed, certainly not the first time. Did he do his research at the University of East Anglia?

This is rather "old" news. Not the fraud part but that there have been ZERO studies (of the many done) to replicate any similar findings. It has long been known by anyone who reads pubmed research (as opposed to the fad magazines) that vaccines do not cause autism.

I am actually shocked at the fabrications and distortions described in the BMJ report at http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347.full

I had always assumed that Andrew Wakefield had used some selection and exaggeration in his papers, and that he had ridden the wave after the public hysteria to build a career (which he still pursues in the USA) as an autism specialist. I had always assumed it was a kind of happy accident that he chose to believe in and not to question, and to cherry-pick whatever subsequent data supported his theory.

What the BMJ describe is altogether a different level of dishonesty, manipulation of parents fears, abuse of children's welfare and self-interested motivation.

Yes, I am just excited about the potential for legal action now. Measles has become endemic in Scotland and England because of fear for the vaccine that was generated by this charlatan and his empty-headed groupies (McCarthy, Carrey, et al).

Well, there was, but it was found to be fraudulent...

LIAR!

There are sure to be more fraudulent autism research. Maybe not to a similar degree as the Wakefield study, but more how biased all of it is. In fact, to propose narrow "theories" of autism is also kind of fraudulent when they must know it cannot explain more than the researchers own favorite traits.