Lancet Retracts Vaccine-Autism Study
Jonathan H. Adler
The Lancet, one of the premier medical journals, has retracted the controversial study purporting to link the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine to autism in children. The journal issued this statement:
It has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al. are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation. In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were ‘consecutively referred’ and that investigations were ‘approved’ by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record.
I wonder how much this retraction has to with the fact that people are getting tired of being sold faulty science; and are starting to call people on it. As in the climategate case? Is the journal doing a little CYA? And quietly letting people know they're going to start paying a little more attention to the science, not the politics? Hope so.
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