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Andrew Wakefield could be struck off

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  • 29-01-2010 4:42pm
    #1
    norrie rugger
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,656 ✭✭✭


    http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18447

    Andrew Wakefield looks set to be banned, from practicing. I can think that this is the least that should happen to this man. Never mind professional misconduct, he should be charged with criminal negligence.


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    #2
    bleg
    Registered Users Posts: 5,848 ✭✭✭bleg


    He should be struck off.

    www.badscience.net is jumping up and down.


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    #3
    ballsymchugh
    Registered Users Posts: 7,936 ✭✭✭ballsymchugh


    the amount of fear mongering he started, it's at levels that run to da hills would be proud of.


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    #4
    locum-motion
    Registered Users Posts: 5,143 ✭✭✭locum-motion


    I have to confess that I thought he already had been struck off years ago. I read somewhere that he had been.
    And I've said as much in PMs to users posting about his crap research before, usually while explaining why their post got deleted.
    If anyone reading here received such a message from me: I apologise to you for jumping the gun.


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    #5
    Tree
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 4,689 Mod ✭✭✭✭Tree


    I think many people thought he'd been bollocked out of it already. Needs more bollocking and hard labour though.


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    #6
    GuanYin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    bleg wrote: »
    He should be struck off.

    www.badscience.net is jumping up and down.

    What if he's right? The study wasn't sufficient to give an answer either way. I've seen far worse studies published.
    ballsymchugh wrote: »
    the amount of fear mongering he started, it's at levels that run to da hills would be proud of.

    Ermmm I think you'll find that the journalists who wished to generate sensationalized stories started it. If the journalists had taken more than 30 minutes before jumping on the story, they'd realize that the study in question wasn't sufficient. The problem here is careless and irresponsible media reporting. They're the ones who should be suffering, at least equally to Wakefield.


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    #7
    norrie rugger
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,656 ✭✭✭norrie rugger


    GuanYin wrote: »
    What if he's right? The study wasn't sufficient to give an answer either way. I've seen far worse studies published.



    Ermmm I think you'll find that the journalists who wished to generate sensationalized stories started it. If the journalists had taken more than 30 minutes before jumping on the story, they'd realize that the study in question wasn't sufficient. The problem here is careless and irresponsible media reporting. They're the ones who should be suffering, at least equally to Wakefield.



    Goldacre states as much, about the journalists


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    #8
    Tree
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 4,689 Mod ✭✭✭✭Tree


    GuanYin wrote: »
    What if he's right? The study wasn't sufficient to give an answer either way.
    New Scientist Article linked in first post wrote:
    And so [the GMC report] goes on, for page after page. There's no doubt that a minority of parents continue to believe there was something in what Wakefield reported, despite scores of scientific studies clearing the vaccine of any link with autism. One showed that autism was still on the rise even in children who'd never received the vaccine because it had been withdrawn. Wakefield supporters outside the GMC's headquarters in London claimed he'd been made a scapegoat by the medical profession.

    In that part of the article, there's two links to other articles that have reference to other papers on the rise of autism.

    Even if his study was insufficient, other studies have found his findings to be unsupportable. His methods were completely flawed and the lancet should never have published it.

    He should be be struck off at the very least due to his extremely poor ethics. As a doctor of medicine, his duty is to patients, not to producing biased research.


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    #9
    GuanYin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 15,552 ✭✭✭✭GuanYin


    Tree wrote: »
    In that part of the article, there's two links to other articles that have reference to other papers on the rise of autism.

    Even if his study was insufficient, other studies have found his findings to be unsupportable. His methods were completely flawed and the lancet should never have published it.

    He should be be struck off at the very least due to his extremely poor ethics. As a doctor of medicine, his duty is to patients, not to producing biased research.

    From the articles referenced by New Scientist.
    The study cannot rule out the possibility that MMR triggers autism in a tiny number of children, as some claim, but it does show there is no large-scale effect. The vaccine "cannot have caused autism in the many children with autism spectrum disorders in Japan who were born and grew up in the era when MMR was not available", Honda concludes. His team's findings appear in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (DOI: 10.1111.j.1469-7610.2005.01425.x).

    Now, I'm not saying that MMR causes autism or IBD (both were linked, but autism was the one that was going to sell papers). I am saying that the people who caused this problem (the media) are now profiting by mediating the downfall of this man. This is probably far, far more unethical than his actions, which, were it not blown out of proportion (how many people read the actual paper?) would have been examined by the scientific community pretty quickly.

    What I am saying is, in epidemiology, sometimes the mechanisms are easiest to pick out from the small numbers. In fact, in many cases, we understand rarer incidents far better than widespread ones. If even a small number of children turn out to develop autism from MMR, we're missing a huge chance to understand the condition itself.


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    #10
    nesf
    Registered Users Posts: 27,645 ✭✭✭✭nesf


    GuanYin wrote: »
    Now, I'm not saying that MMR causes autism or IBD (both were linked, but autism was the one that was going to sell papers). I am saying that the people who caused this problem (the media) are now profiting by mediating the downfall of this man. This is probably far, far more unethical than his actions, which, were it not blown out of proportion (how many people read the actual paper?) would have been examined by the scientific community pretty quickly.

    Yarr, and as noted above it's been picked up on by one of the best (imho) mainstream broadsheet science journalists in the English speaking world* that the problem wasn't Wakefield as much as it was the journalists with respect to the whole MMR scare (Ben Goldacre). That said, there was some very dodgy stuff going on apparently according to said journalist about the Wakefield study being funded by a lawyer who was taking a case against the vaccine manufacturers about autism (or so my memory tells me from reading Goldacre's book).


    *Mostly, it's fair to say, because he's one of the few commentators on science, specifically health/medicine, in said broadsheet world that actually has some qualifications in the field. Much of the "health" articles are written by people with little to no formal training in science, i.e. people with little to no training in how to interpret or judge a scientific study.


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