tl;dr

You couldn’t make this up. Unless you are Andrew Wakefield of course. The Times reports:

THE doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found.

However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal.

How serious was the impact this paper had? “Rates of inoculation fell from 92% to below 80%”, notes the Times. The BBC also shows us with this chilling graphic:

Let’s not mince words. If these allegations are true, then it means Andrew Wakefield made stuff up, and children suffered and  — in two cases — died as a result. He should be struck off and face criminal charges.

Our nation, in which 29% of teachers believe Creationism should be taught in schools, needs to take a long, hard look at the appalling understanding of science amongst the general populace, and how vulnerable this makes them to manipulative snake-oil salesmen. Or to put it another way, as the awesome MissPrism said on her blog whilst writing about the legal troubles faced by Dr Ben Goldacre, “babies are not epidemiology qualifications“.

Edit — Richie has pointed me to an excellent post by Ben Goldacre, “The Media MMR Hoax“, where he analyses in much more detail how the public outcry started, and who started and propagated it.

Science