The pinnacle of bad science

So it has turned out that bad science has plumbed new depths with the publication of Brian Deer's investigation of Andrew Wakefield's shameful MMR-Autism study. I'm not going to go into the minutiae of the debacle but suffice to say that even in light of the fraud perpetrated by Wakefield in the publication of this paper, there are still conspiracy nuts out there who maintain that Wakefield is a patsy who has been targeted by major pharmaceutical companies for his courageous stance against a dangerous drug. To set the record straight, I have gathered together a brief synopsis of the story.


Original Paper:

Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children

(Note: You will need to register with the Lancet to view the full text of the article but it's free)


Retraction Notice:

The Lancet, February 2010


GMC Ruling:

Fitness to practise hearing – 28 January 2010


Contradictory Studies:

• No effect of MMR withdrawal on the incidence of autism: a total population study
• Vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella in children
• Absence of detectable measles virus genome sequence in blood of autistic children who have had their MMR vaccine during the routine childhood immunisation schedule of UK
• No evidence for a new variant of measles-mumps-rubella-induced autism
• No evidence of persisting measles virus in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from children with autism spectrum disorder
• Vaccines and autism: a tale of shifting hypotheses
• Unintended events following immunisation with MMR: a systematic review

(Note: The second and last articles are both review articles, containing a synopsis of 31 and 22 different study papers respectively)


There are some general conclusions to be drawn from this whole sorry scandal which are pretty evident when you examine all the available information.

• This is not a scam by "Big Pharma" for the purposes of pushing a new product on the general public. The MMR vaccine like most others, is one which you only receive once or twice in your lifetime. No pharmaceutical company is going to make major cash with a phoney vaccine. 

• The use of mercury as a preservative in the MMR vaccine is not the cause of autism. At the time when mercury was used in the MMR vaccine it was also used in other vaccines and yet there has been no claims in relation to autism being caused by any other vaccine. In addition, mercury has been removed from vaccines since 2001 and yet autism cases continue to increase. Also, when the MMR vaccine was removed from use in Japan in 1993, the number of autism cases continued to increase. 

• Correlation is not causation. Part of the bad science problem that pervades society today is that someone notices one event following another and suddenly proclaims that one caused the other. This is a well understood principle referred to as: post hoc ergo propter hoc (after it therefore because of it). Fifty years ago, the most common example of this fallacy was cures for warts. There were almost as many cures for warts as there were people who suffered from them. Now it's causes for cancer. Almost every other day you hear some new cause for cancer: fried food, popcorn, sunlight etc. Even last year a "doctor" appeared on tv saying that Irish women should drink more soya milk because Chinese women drink twice as much soya milk as Irish women and have a rate of cervical cancer only a third of Irish women. I'm sure that Chinese women cycle more than Irish women as well but nobody is going to suggest that cycling prevents cancer. 

• The scientific method is a powerful tool. This story has had a beneficial effect, it has shown the world the scientific method in operation and shown how simple and elegant it is. If you publish results of an experiment in a paper then it releases that information into the scientific community where any interested scientist can reproduce your experiment to see if they get the same results. And thus the downfall of Wakefield was forged as one scientist after another repeated the experiment but could not reproduce Wakefield's results.

An expert in immunology, Paul Offit, has written an excellent rebuttal of the anti-vaxers called Deadly Choices. It's well worth reading as it covers not just the modern MMR controversy but the opposition experienced by vaccination pioneers all the way back to Jenner. In fact the only problem I have with the book is the conclusion Offit reaches about the motivation of the anti-vaxers. He suggests that these nutters like Jenny McCarthy suffer from Jack D. Ripper syndrome. They are repulsed that their precious bodily fluids would be contaminated by a foreign substance like a vaccine. Think Howard Hughes only worse, and you're getting there.


I think that there is a far more plausible explanation to be found if you study the world of conspiracy theorists. The MMR vaccine controversy is essentially a conspiracy theory. Anti-vaxers contend that MMR is causing autism and apart from Andrew Wakefield, there is a massive conspiracy among major pharmaceutical companies to suppress this information to which the CDC, the government and any other agency which takes their fancy is party. This behaviour is common to all conspiracy theorists and it stems from an overriding desire to have an explanation for the world. These people cannot bring themselves to accept the idea that their child has contracted autism due to genetics or chance or something outside perhaps not their control but somebody's control. They would like to believe that there was always a system, a tangible cause for their child's condition.


At the end of all this tragedy, we must now face the realisation that we will not see the full effect of the anti-vaxers shameful efforts for at least a generation. While some children will become sick now and suffer immediate adverse effects, those who don't will grow up not having been vaccinated and have children who are even more vulnerable to disease because children rely on their mother's immune system for the first six months of their life. It is then that we'll see really horrible diseases like SSPE (sub-sclerosing pan-encephalitis) rear its ugly head and the legacy of one man's fraud is known.