REVISING SCIENCE: Can the publishing protocol of revising or retracting papers change minds outside the academic community? Last month's retraction in The Lancet hints that change might not be so simple.
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When science revises its stance, the field itself follows established protocol to adapt, but public opinion can be slow to catch up. Rather than wiping the slate clean, last month's retraction of a key paper proposing a link between childhood vaccines and autism seem only to have widened the societal divide on the issue. And the rising rate of retractions—roughly ninefold between 1990 and 2008—suggest that there could be more cases in which public opinion carries on long after science has reversed course.
The case series report by Andrew Wakefield (then of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Study Group at the Royal Free Hospital in London) and 12 co-authors published February 28, 1998, in the well-regarded U.K. medical journal The Lancet described gastrointestinal problems in children with developmental regression—and suggested a possible link with inoculation of the combination measles–mumps–rubella (MMR) vaccine, which had preceded the symptoms in the children. What appeared, on its surface, to be a descriptive paper about developmental disorders and diarrhea ended up becoming a flash point in the autism community and sparked a decline in childhood vaccination rates—and possibly an uptick in outbreaks of vaccinal diseases.
On February 2, 2010, the editors of The Lancet retracted the paper because the 12 children in the research were not recruited as described by the authors, and the work had apparently not been approved by an ethics committee.
The retraction came as little surprise to many observers of the vaccine–autism debate. Nevertheless, the paper's influence on the broader public may last for awhile, despite a growing body of contrary evidence (as well as many of the co-authors having stepped away from the indications). A survey conducted in 2009, published online March 1, 2010 in Pediatrics, found that about a quarter of the 1,552 parents surveyed thought that vaccines can cause autism in some children. And 12 percent of parents had declined at least one recommended vaccine for their children.
"It's hard to un-ring the bell," says Paul Offit, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "It's very hard to un-scare people once you've scared them."
Rising tide of retractions
For the 1.4 million scientific papers that are published each year, scant few are ever retracted—and even fewer of those events reach the public ear. Perhaps the most widely publicized retractions were those surrounding the now-discredited stem cell researcher Woo Suk Hwang, formerly of Seoul National University in South Korea, after proposing that he had cloned human embryonic stem cells. But his work and the recently retracted Wakefield paper have just been two in an accelerating trend of retracted papers.
In 1990 just five of the 689,752 scientific papers published were retracted, according to data from Thompson Reuters's "Web of Science" database, courtesy of Times Higher Education. By 2008, however, that number had increased to 95 papers out of the 1.4 million published.
Some of the increasing number of retractions might well result from a proliferation of journals worldwide. "There are countries that have very little infrastructure" to detect and investigate potential misconduct, says Liz Wager, chairperson of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in the U.K. "I think it is an international problem."
Despite these increasing numbers, however, science is not necessarily getting sloppier. "I really don't think you can conclude anything about the frequency of misconduct," Wager says. She notes the improved plagiarism detection software in the digital publishing age as well as improved investigations into allegations of misconduct—and even a greater willingness on the part of journals to retract papers.
But closer research shows that growing or not, these formal retractions are likely just the tip of the iceberg. A meta-analysis of studies on scientific misconduct by Daniele Fanelli of the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation at the University of Edinburgh and published in May 2009 in the journal PLoS ONE, showed that "on average, about 2 percent of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once…and up to one third admitted to a variety of other questionable research practices." When the blame was shifted to others, however, about 14 percent said they had observed fabrication, falsification and modification by colleagues and 72 percent said they had seen "other questionable research practices," Fanelli wrote. And because of fuzzy definitions and a reluctance to admit wrongdoing, these figures, she argued, are likely "a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of scientific misconduct."
Rarely does news of alleged scientific misconduct reverberate so widely—and deeply—in the public sphere as it has with the Wakefield paper. Even in the case of Hwang, Wager says, "it wasn't actually affecting clinical treatment of patients." Other retractions have, however, toyed with our understanding of public health issues. One 2002 primate study, published in the September 27 issue of Science, reported the drug ecstasy was neurotoxic. "People latched onto it," Wager notes, and it "fit into their political agendas." But the paper, which had been funded in part by the federal government, was retracted in 2003 after it was discovered that the lab's supplier had accidentally botched the labels so that, instead of giving the monkeys ecstasy, the researchers gave them methamphetamine, which caused the observed brain damage. Despite the public interest in that retraction, however, it did not touch a nerve as deeply as did the Wakefield paper, perhaps because it examined an illegal drug rather than a recommended treatment—and showed a clear misstep.
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34 Comments
Add CommentWhen it comes to science, the public "hears what it wants to hear". Some people don't even "trust" science, and treat it like faith. Discussing science with scientists is one thing, but when doing it with someone from the "public" outside of science, it isn't treated as science. Does anyone remember when Pluto was demoted from Planet status? Illinois passed a LAW that when the celetial body that is reffered to as Pluto passes over the Illinois night sky, it will be reinstated as a Planet temporarily. To the general public these days, science is just another point of view, equal enough to their own.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy 2 cents.
What the scientific community must accomplish is inform the citizenry that "exact science" is an oxymoron. All science is the best available opinion of the day. It is inherently open to new data, new questions, new answers; that is what has been going on for 400 years. But the new explains the old and more that is the difference. Our educational system, the scientific community, and science writers need to assume responsibility for teaching us what science actually is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe system seems flawed. You h
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisKatherine, great article. I believe that grant funded research may play a role in killing scientific integrity http://bit.ly/9LmfGd
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat the scientific community must accomplish is putting quality before quantity. But this cannot happen, because our granting agencies reward quantity over quality. Either quantity of papers, or quantity of high-profile papers. And the medical sciences do not exist for the advancement of knowledge, they exist to advance the careers of the authors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is useless to complain about the media, when the problem was caused by the science bureaucracy and scientists. Tiny increments of cheating have led to this. Papers should not have to be retracted, because they shouldn't be published before they're ready. Unfortunately, the volume of information now is so massive, that bite-size publications are the main-stream, and longer, in-depth articles, as were the norm once upon a time, are now frowned upon. So everyone rushes to publish every byte of data as a bite-size article.
And while it's nice to be aware of this, it's ultimately pointless. Ethics are not part of science curricula, because the professors that establish the curricula at a university were neither taught, nor necessarily agree with, these ethics. So under the obvious surface of problems caused by scientists, we have the compounding problem that these scientists teach more scientists.
It can only get worse!
The process is alive and from time to time its movement will be dramatic and take place in context that rouses human passions and runs counter to our sense of reason, and occasionally scientific fact itself comes to be interpreted in an understanding so different from the one under which we first came to know it, and it looks completely different, and we think of it as different, but clearly it's our minds that are changing and not factual reality. I'm glad that it happens this way, in debate and public discourse, and rather than ridicule those that believe in what to me seems willfully wrongheaded, recognize that from time to time we must all be wrong occasionally, I open the doors for communication wide open and keep the process of discovery as transparent as it can be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not a scientist but am a fairly well educated adult. It seems to me that there is a lot of "scientifically based" information out there that is being posited as fact instead of theory. This causes a problem when the "fact" turns out to not be a fact later on. Case in point would be the case of vitamin supplements. How much do we need and when do we need it is changing constantly. What is good for us diet wise seems to be constantly in flux. How much exercise is good for us and how much is bad for us also seems to be changing. How can people take what scientists say in good faith and use it to their benefit if what scientists say continues to change?These are the same folks who at one time told us that cigarettes are not harmful, in fact may be good for us. We now have a national disaster on our hands from diseases caused by cigarette smoking. Maybe scientists should take more time with their science and do more research before they come out making pronouncements to the public.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe simple explanation for the public's lack of awareness when, especially sensational, reports are retracted is that retractions are often buried in the back pages or go unreported, especially on the network news.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, the irony. Part of the problem here is that general media accounts misrepresent the meaning of a given retraction. Like your depiction of the Ricaurte retraction! The lasting serotonergic deficit caused by MDMA ("Ecstasy") has a great deal of prior and subsequent support: the "neurotoxicity" is not in question. The 2002 Science paper purported to observe a novel *dopaminergic* deficit..which is not observed in any species other than mouse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd because MSM is either lazy or intentionally enhances the scandal factor, the public does walk away with a highly skewed view of what a retraction actually means in the context of all of the (independently replicated) findings.
@Tim
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou have a good point, but I'd like to take a stab at how this can/should be understood. It turns out that human physiology is extraordinarily complicated. And we cannot do fully controlled studies on human beings (forcing all things to be equal except for the one thing we're studying, and then observe the various outcomes over a long period of time while holding all other conditons constatn). So for the most part, scientific studies on human beings end up being correlation studies from which very little (some would say nothing) can be inferred about causation. This leads to some theories becoming more or less credible over time. Scientific conclusions about human research should normally be (and often are) described carefully in terms like "the preponderance of evidence to date suggests that .... might be the most plausible hypothesis...".
But the public generally does not like or even tolerate such cautious and carefully caveated statements. Our sound-byte media culture (which derives, after all, from ordinary citizens' lack of patience for these carefully nuanced conclusions) normally just states conclusions as facts, without any of the underlying nuance. Sometimes scientists themselves are also guilty of over-asserting their conclusions. But most scientists know, and certainly should know, how to state their research conclusions with the proper degree of caution.
If the public at large could understand just how nuanced the conclusions really are from most scientific research regarding humans (and much else as well), they would not be surprised at all (or troubled) if further research later overturns the tentative conclusions that had been made. In fact, it is a good, useful and healthy sign of research progress when such things happen. Almost every true scientist knows this. Moreover, most often the great breakthroughs in scientific understanding involve a refutation of prior theories. Actually, despite all this, scientific results that are negative (we tried this and it didn't work, or at least didn't work as expected) are very important to our accumulated knowledge. Negative results are usually harder to get published, however, which seems to be a relic of our underlying sense of science as discovering something positive. Nonetheless, refutation is at the heart of scientific research.
At the risk of writing too much, philosophers of science would probably state this even more strongly or absolutely. When you read Karl Popper, for example, he would tell us that no amount of ... [cont'd]
[cont'd] ...no amount of confirming research can ever prove anything, since it just takes one example of something the other way to refute the conclusion, and you can never be sure that you a refuting example does not exist. In this sense, he would say that the only thinge we can ever really do is disconfirming research. But I'm getting too abstract here, sorry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I can try to summarize this, it would simply be the overturning or disconfirming formerly held hypotheses is a good thing, and that we should try to help our media personnel express scientific conclusions in the more nuanced manner that scientists themselves try to follow.
Some great comments on this article! @Tim, that was a very good point indeed and bostonprof covered it beautifully. But because you also spoke or everyday issues such as food and nutrition I will put forward a little story that illustrates the point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI used to train in Thaiboxing few years ago. In a sports science forum discussion about training regimes I read an article from a young sports science enthousiast who was stating that the training regime traditionally used in Thailand was not fully fit for purpose and that he had adapted it to fit the advances in science that the Thais obviously could know nothing about. When I asked my instructor about this (who was also a sports science university lecturer) he said that, while science constantly changes as new findings are revealed, these people have evolved their training through fighters and champions for hundreds of years. What they do clearly works for them as no one has matched them. So in spite of the current stand of science, because what they do works best it is the best way to do it.
The lesson here is if you are unsure about the science of something do what works for you. It's never going to fail you badly. And if something does not work for you even though you are assured of its truth then see what works best for you. Of course this applies mainly to practical and personal decisions.
I think all information should scrutinised in a logical and "scientific" manner but science should not be considered all source of knowledge.
Another interesting thing I have experienced recently as a trainee scientist is that the methods and results section of a paper is the objective side but there is a huge leap from there to drawing conclusions. The sound interpetation of your results can be a very challenging process. Also good scientists do not base their research on other peoples conclusions but on their results and methods. However it is the conclusions that make popular science and the news and these are subjective to a degree. Another thing about science that I learned in the process of writing my thesis is that when an effect is only supported by one primary publication (as in the autism paper) you should consider it but not base your actions on its truth.
Here's my 2p in this pot of ideas... Goodnight
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt certainly could, and for that matter, should (especially for those who have strong faith in scientific truth).
Books have been burned in the past, doesn't mean the book did not exist or that it was truthful. Alexandria library was burned and we lost so much. Just because you burn the paper, doesn't make bowel problems go away in autistic children whose parents saw the changes after MMR. Probably MMR the straw that broke the camel's back after so many other vaccines. But it is taking a long time to find out because of censorship, modern-day book burning
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSheri Nakken, RN, MA
Just because you burn the witch, doesn't make problems go away in children whose parents saw the changes after the new moon. Bat fur the straw that broke the camel's back after so many other spells?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnything you've heard of seems more real than everything you've never even thought of. The fact remains that there is just as much evidence to show that corn flakes cause autism as there is against MMR: exactly none.
Wakefield's Study simply asked whether more research should be addressed to vaccine and autism issues. Wakefield's question was the right question in the wrong place! Jefferson the EU Commissar for vaccines also said vaccine research is the Cinderella of medical research not long afterwards.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere are some facts. I am an active campaigner for more resources for autistic children and adults. I have worked with several hundred parents of autistic kids to this end. I have systematically searched for unvaccinated autistic people, thousands of hours of work. They simply do not exist so put that into your scientific melting pot and tell me what you come up with. Do not whatever you do tell me that vaccines and autism are not linked!
Tony Bateson, Oxford, UK.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do believe that the scientific community's attitudes play an important role in creating the problem. There is an attitude of self-superiority in the science community -- the great scientist deigning to give us a glimpse of his/her insights -- which is not helpful. "The science wasn't wrong -- the public just did not understand the nuances." People resent feeling patronized and therefore celebrate if/when the pompous are proven wrong.
On top of this is the defensiveness and rationalization of the community as a whole to back up its individual members. After all, a retraction of a peer-reviewed paper impugns not only the authors, but the reviewers as well. Scientific American itself tends to show this quality... for instance minimizing Climategate because science has otherwise proven the same results. This sort of defensiveness does not acknowledge what the public knows: a lot of science is based on competitively funded grants and at least some people will bend the rules or bias results to get those grants. In fact, the defensiveness when results are called out simply feeds the skeptics and conspiracy theorists.
The scientific community is not divorced from society. The arrogance of some in the scientific community to think the "purity" of their quest for knowledge somehow makes them stand above the average citizen... and the hubris to believe the scientific and peer-review processes somehow weed out all of the biases and malefactors... are an important aspect of the public's skepticism. Until this is acknowledged, the problem will remain.
@Sheri, @Grey Seal
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSheri, I'm sure you mean well, but your reasoning is badly flawed, as Grey Seal points out. Let me try to state the point a little more abstractly, but it is the same point that Grey Seal is making.
The fact that B follows A in time doesn't allow us to conclude anything at all about causation. Any real event that is observed is preceeding by millions of other events, and we know nothing about the question if one of those preceeding events or the combination of certain of them was a causative agent or not. Even the Greeks and Romans understood this. The Latin phrase: "Post hoc ergo propter hoc" [After this, therefore because of that] is the label for this logical fallacy. It's a common error because temporal sequence is normally involved in the cases of causality that we think we know about. Just because causality does normally involve a temporal sequence does not mean that a temporal sequence creates a causal relationship. It's easy to see in a thousand different ways. A simple example is that thousands of Americans drink coffee within the 24 hour period prior to their deaths. That fact doesn't let us conclude that drinking coffee caused their death. It's possible, but if so, that has to be established by very different research. Many superstitious beliefs and/or magical thinking arise from this fallacy.
@tony bateson
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTony, are you really arguing that there was never a case of autism anywhere in the world prior to the last period of time when we started vaccinating children? You can't be serious. Today, the vast majority of children in developed countries get vaccinations. It isn't hard at all to imagine that people you've run into have had vaccinations. I bet all of the parents of those children have also injested caffeine, too, at some point in their lives. They've probably all seen the started at the moon for a few seconds, too. Chances are they have all slept in a bed. I bet they've all visited a hospital as well. Probably they've all ridden in cars. Probably they've all stood near electrical wires for a few minutes in their lives. Probably they've all spoken on the telephone. Probably they've all had their eyes glued to a televisions for many minutes in their lives, maybe within the last week before they has the sex that created the conception of the autistic child. Your failure to find this is not only not surprising, it does not allow us to conclude anything at all about a causal relationship between the two.
I dunno about that. The public can be pretty stubborn sometimes. Usually more often than not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJack
www.fbi-logging.at.tc
I guess the book burners better get busy burning a few more books with the same message
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.pulsus.com/journals/abstract.jsp?sCurrPg=journal&jnlKy=2&atlKy=8619&isuKy=837&isArt=t
http://www.la-press.com/clinical-presentation-and-histologic-findings-at-ileocolonoscopy-in-ch-a1816
http://www.nature.com/ajg/journal/v95/n9/abs/ajg2000579a.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8492105
Evidence of persistent measles virus infection in Crohn's disease
http://www.autismrecoverynetwork.org/wakefield2006.pdf
Gastrointestinal comorbidity, autistic regression and Measles-containing vaccines: positive re-challenge and biological gradient 2006
http://www.autismone.org/content/gastrointestinal-pathology-autism-spectrum-disorders-venezuelan-experience-lenny-g-gonzalez-
Gastrointestinal Pathology in Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Venezuelan Experience by Lenny G. Gonzalez, MD
http://www.la-press.com/redirect_file.php?fileId=2387&filename=1692-III-Generalized-Autoimmunity-of-ANCA-and-ASCA-Related-to-Severity-of-Disea.pdf&fileType=pdf
Generalized Autoimmunity of ANCA and ASCA Related to Severity of Disease in Autistic Children with GI Disease
http://www.rescuepost.com/files/th-9-lymphocytes-in-autism.pdf
Intestinal Lymphocyte Populations in Children with Regressive Autism: Evidence for Extensive Mucosal Immunopathology 2003
http://taap.info/briefing2004.pdf
MMR Vaccine, Thimerosal, and Late-Onset Autism (Autistic Enterocolitis)-Review of Evidence of Vaccine/Autism Link
http://www.taap.info/cytokine%20paper.pdf
Spontaneous Mucosal Lymphocyte Cytokine Profiles in Children with Autism and Gastrointestinal Symptoms: Mucosal Immune Activation and Reduced Counter Regulatory Interleukin-10
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11929383?dopt=Abstract
The concept of entero-colonic encephalopathy, autism and opioid receptor ligands. Abstract of Wakefield's research (March 2002).
http://www.autism.com/ari/newsletter/202/page6.pdf
Two studies implicate measles vaccine in autism (AUTISM RESEARCH REVIEW INTERNATIONAL 2006)
@MITDGreenb
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou make an important point. There is an important counter-point as well.
Unfortunately, the arrogance goes both ways. Lots of relatively uninformed people have no hesitation in loudly asserting their relatively uninformed opinions. Any scientist who has had to deal with the "general public" has experienced the flip side of this arrogance.
Hardly anyone tolerates arrogance in others well. I think we Americans have a particular allergy for scientific arrogance, certaily compared to East Asia, for example. I suspect that our "All men are created equal" mantra can slip rather easily into "My opinion is just as good as anyone else's opinion [regardless of how little I actually know or have studied about the issue/problem]."
No one likes to be patronized, either. The opposite side of this is that no expert who his spent most of his or her working life exploring the nuances of a problem likes to have some loudmouth ignoramous completely disrespect the knowledge he/she has obtained in the process.
We see this attitude of disrespect about all manner of "experts", not just about scientists. Turn on almost any sports radio talk show and you can hear incredible arrogance on the part of relatively uninformed people regarding decisions that "experts" have made. Of course, it could also be said that sometimes a couple of these opinions are actually insightful and right on. But what is more stunning to me is the incredible arrogance of "the public" in thinking that they know so much more than the expert who made/is making the decisions. Sports decisions are usually far less subject to expert research and knowledge than most scientific matters, but in any case, the analogy probably holds.
It's probably perfectly fine to let people express their opinions on sports matters and blow off steam or just express themselves. Probably little harm comes from it, and some good. But normally the experts don't pay much attention to these uninformed opinions since they know thousands of other pieces of information that help them make the decisions they do. And of course sometimes (some would argue oftentimes) they make the wrong calls.
I'm not certain why the American public has a relatively high disdain for professional expertise, but as mentioned, it isn't limited to scientists. Actually, the article in Time this week on "the problem in politics is us, not the government" is an interesting twist on this theme, at least worthy of consideration.
In any case, there is some counter-point to your point.
1) We don't need science to tell us the documented truth: that Dr. Paul "for profit" Offit received at least $29 million from his share of royalties for Merck's Rotateq vaccine after using his position in the ACIP to ensure that childhood vaccination with the vaccine became compulsory.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2) Why won't Offit drink the vaccine concoction that M.D.s inject into babies on a daily basis?
http://www.spontaneouscreation.org/SC/VaccineOffer.htm
Jock Doubleday
Director
Natural Woman, Natural Man, Inc.
A California 501(c)3 Nonprofit Corporation
http://spontaneouscreation.org/SC/links.htm
director@spontaneouscreation.org
Retracting a paper due to selection methods not as described in the paper is not at all the same as book burning. The information is not lost; a panel of peers after years of debate judged it as improper method.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe truth about causes of autism will eventually come out. Particular vaccinations may or may not have something to do with it. I don't know, and frankly, no one can at this moment, can definitively say.
Clearly a lot more research needs to be done regarding the causes of autism. If we've been barking up the wrong tree, the earlier other hypotheses get tested/researched the better. If it turns out that we have been barking up the right tree, this will eventually come out as well. I have deep sympathy for all those who want the answers now. The caution is that if we've been wrong about the vaccination hypothesis all these years, we need to get off it as soon as possible so that other approaches can get the funding they need to be explored.
A very good point was made earlier by Grey Seal (morning of March 5th) that "Everything you've heard of seems more real than anything you haven't thought of." We humans are also extremely prone to "confirmation bias", meaning that we have a very strong tendency to think we see evidence for what we believe is true even when the evidence is weak or non-existent.
I have no doubt that it is extremely difficult for a person who has once gotten it into their head that certain vaccinations cause autism to reverse that idea and let go of it. Even leaving aside for the moment any debate about the evidence, many people will have an extremely difficult time to accept disconfirming evidence. Even if the evidence against the vaccination hypothesis were extrememly compelling (I'm not arguing here that it is), many people would cling to the hypothesis. Many people go to their graves refusing to accept compelling disconfirming evidence for many things, not just about this particular topic on the possible causes of autism.
This is part of our human nature. Any evaluating the debate here should be aware of this.
>>>Retracting a paper due to selection methods not as described in the paper is not at all the same as book burning. The information is not lost; a panel of peers after years of debate judged it as improper method.>>>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you really think that is why it was retracted, I'm sorry
You don't see what is behind this at all.
It was just a report of some cases, for god's sake.
No parent ever complained about how their child was treated, in fact they show glowing praise and appreciation
http://www.autismone.org/content/second-looking-case-dr-andrew-j-wakefield-william-long-mdiv-phd-jd
On Second Looking into the Case of Dr. Andrew J. Wakefield by William Long, MDiv, PhD, JD
Discredited Defamation: The Fallacious Case against Dr. Andrew Wakefield by Polly Tommey
http://www.autismone.org/content/discredited-defamation-fallacious-case-against-dr-andrew-wakefield-polly-tommey
http://www.autismone.org/content/paper-andrew-wakefield-mb-bs-frcs-frcpath
"That Paper" by Andrew Wakefield
http://www.autismone.org/content/devils-detail-andrew-wakefield-mb-bs-frcs-frcpath
Title: The Devil's in the Detail by Andrew Wakefield, MB, BS, FRCS, FRCPath
Anyone actually read the Case Paper?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/wakefield2.pdf
in case you might want to
What a tragedy that scientific speculations--even dubious ones later shown to have no validity--cannot be published openly as they were from the Enlightenment until quite recently. Circulating and testing invalid hypotheses was the greatest result of a free press that no longer exists. Freedom of expression should be a primary tool of scientific knowledge--to expose and clear away nonsense as well as to expand the boundaries of known reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut in our day of purple pseudo-journalism and rapid internet myths, religious fanatics and right-wing haters & baiters can grab hold of a tentative hypothesis and pump it up to create fear. Fear is Big Brother's greatest advantage, since terrified people look for daddy leaders and are easy to mind-control.
If the public truly understood science that couldn't happen--but our locally-mandated schools are too often controlled by rigid, ignorant school boards who outlaw the glory of the scientific method, the most reliable means of discerning reality. So Americans have become easy suckers and True Believers , allowing the perpetrators of hysteria to turn nonsense like "don't get your child vaccinated" into clear and present threats to public health.
The final result is even more tragic, and without a massive defense of our values we can see in our imminent future the decline and death of genuine science, of freedom of thought and democracy, far beyond the tragic and unnecessary deaths of unvaccinated children.
It is strange for me to see the opinions of Liz Wager published here. In my case, the Committee on Publication Ethics had refused to do anything to retract an obviously illegitimate paper. Moreover, the Committee blatantly falsified the very definition of plagiarism, excluding from it plagiarism of unpublished research. After some further exchange of letters, the Committee apologised and said: "We probably did make a mistake with our interpretation of the term plagiarism...". Reading my correspondence with the Committee will clearly show that the words in their policy: "The main purpose of retractions is to correct the literature and ensure its integrity..." are simply not applicable to their own actions: they made all, quite fraudulent, efforts to ensure that an obviously plagiarised paper is not retracted. Please, see my correspondence with the Committee at http://www.universitytorontofraud.com/committee.htm
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI, therefore, firmly believe that the Committee must be dismantled; it presents a serious danger to the integrity of scientific publications in the 5000 journals that suddenly fell under the Committee "guidance".
It is strange for me to see the opinions of Liz Wager published here. In my case, the Committee on Publication Ethics had refused to do anything to retract an obviously illegitimate paper. Moreover, the Committee blatantly falsified the very definition of plagiarism, excluding from it plagiarism of unpublished research. After some further exchange of letters, the Committee apologised and said: "We probably did make a mistake with our interpretation of the term ‘plagiarism’...". Reading my correspondence with the Committee will clearly show that the words in their policy: "The main purpose of retractions is to correct the literature and ensure its integrity..." are simply not applicable to their own actions: they made all efforts to ensure that an obviously plagiarised paper is not retracted. Please, see my correspondence with the Committee at http://www.universitytorontofraud.com/committee.htm
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI, therefore, firmly believe that the Committee must be dismantled; it presents a serious danger to the integrity of scientific publications in the 5000 journals that suddenly fell under the Committee "guidance".
Bostonprof's comment that "Even leaving aside for the moment any debate about the evidence, many people will have an extremely difficult time to accept disconfirming evidence" applies just as well to those who call themselves scientists but share the very same human traits that bostonprof bemoans in others.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe public is smart enough to know that "science" relies on fallible and sometimes even dishonest scientists, and it is therefore a rational reaction to take with a grain of salt what any of those scientists proclaim as the latest truth. Moreover, any outside observer can see that the so-called self-correction in science is a myth, and that blatant frauds find their way into the hallowed "body of knowledge" but get never retracted.
Medical research is particularly vulnerable to this accumulation of rigged studies and bogus results in its literature because there are often large financial and psychological stakes involved that prevent the admission of error. See, for instance, the systematic patient-harming research frauds committed against premature babies and condoned by the wagon-circling medical establishment, as described at retinopathyofprematurity.org. Those bogus results were never retracted and still dictate misguided practices in today's intensive care nurseries, but admitting such blatant wrongs entrenched in the doctrine appears beyond the capacity of the medical scientists involved.
Is it a coincidence that Wakefield's paper got retracted when it reduced vaccine sales, but that Pfizer's ghostwritten studies about its useless and cancer-risk-increasing hormone therapy keep selling pills and have not been retracted even after Congressional hearings exposed the lack of evidence behind their fabricated claims? See http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Are-Pfizer-s-Ghostwrit-by-Martha-Rosenberg-100202-181.html
The public attitude of discounting the value of the latest medical breakthroughs is a healthy reaction, particularly in the context of John P. A. Ioannidis' recent well-reasoned article on "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/
The answer to Katherine Harmon's question whether a scientific retraction can change public opinion is therefore that such an isolated retraction from a deeply contaminated corpus remains meaningless as long as the guardians of that corpus refuse to acknowledge that the medical literature is riddled with error and fraud and does not deserve the public's blind trust.
Respectfully submitted,
Peter Aleff
Bostonprof's comment that "Even leaving aside for the moment any debate about the evidence, many people will have an extremely difficult time to accept disconfirming evidence" applies just as well to those who call themselves scientists but share the very same human traits that bostonprof bemoans in others.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe public is smart enough to know that "science" relies on fallible and sometimes even dishonest scientists, and it is therefore a rational reaction to take with a grain of salt what any of those scientists proclaim as the latest truth. Moreover, any outside observer can see that the so-called self-correction in science is a myth, and that blatant frauds find their way into the hallowed "body of knowledge" but get never retracted.
Medical research is particularly vulnerable to this accumulation of rigged studies and bogus results in its literature because there are often large financial and psychological stakes involved that prevent the admission of error. See, for instance, the systematic patient-harming research frauds committed against premature babies and condoned by the wagon-circling medical establishment, as described at retinopathyofprematurity.org. Those bogus results were never retracted and still dictate misguided practices in today's intensive care nurseries, but admitting such blatant wrongs entrenched in the doctrine appears beyond the capacity of the medical scientists involved.
Is it a coincidence that Wakefield's paper got retracted when it reduced vaccine sales, but that Pfizer's ghostwritten studies about its useless and cancer-risk-increasing hormone therapy keep selling pills and have not been retracted even after Congressional hearings exposed the lack of evidence behind their fabricated claims? See http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Are-Pfizer-s-Ghostwrit-by-Martha-Rosenberg-100202-181.html
The public attitude of discounting the value of the latest medical breakthroughs is a healthy reaction, particularly in the context of John P. A. Ioannidis' recent well-reasoned article on "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/
The answer to Katherine Harmon's question whether a scientific retraction can change public opinion is therefore that such an isolated retraction from a deeply contaminated corpus remains meaningless as long as the guardians of that corpus refuse to acknowledge that the medical literature is riddled with error and fraud and does not deserve the public's blind trust.
Respectfully submitted,
Peter Aleff
Malicious bacteria growth is often amplified by synthetic surfaces found in many contemporary play environments. Contact transfer of disease including inhalation of evaporated spit from linoleum is at issue in controlling and making effective herd immunity to known pathogens. When petrochemical, tobacco, herbicide and pesticide lobbies are too powerful to address squarely, the case for papers challenging vaccination becomes a logical fit for retractions when overprotectiveness has no price. Exposure to untreated wood, stones and mud and other natural risks has become a rarity for many youngsters. Parents have a choice to receive vaccinations seperately at increased cost. There will always be resistance by parents to have subsidized medications replace the option for education and voluntary controls.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell said! I couldn't agree with you more!!
But you really can't blame a lot of people, when we had an idiotic President in the office from 2001-2009... A President that felt "that Intelligent Design" should be taught more in the classroom, and that climate change needed more research even though all the scientific evidence is for the most part indisputable.
People need to realize there's a reason why scientists rely on peer-reviewed papers. To weed out opinions, and concentrate only on facts and evidence. But unfortunately, thanks to the Internet, a lot of Americans get their sources from blogs and the like. It's too easy for people to believe what they hear (or read) nowadays.
Did no one think about the vehicle of immunizations? Could it be because of the additives such as mercury or thalidomide? What else is in that syringe?!?
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