Research misconduct revisited
BMJ 2011; 342 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.d2006 (Published 29 March 2011) Cite this as: BMJ 2011;342:d2006
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After interviewing Professor Mark Pepys of UCL and towards the end of
the second episode of 'Science Betrayed', Adam Rutherford goes on to say,
"It's clear that this story is not yet over; Wakefield continues to
push his agenda in America, where even this week, measles outbreaks are
being reported." [1]
Andrew Wakefield then says,
"I've read the science, I've read it in great detail; I've analysed
it and reanalysed it, I've done so with my colleagues, and I will focus on
the science, whatever the consequences for me, because the issues are far
too important to roll over and be kicked by the pharmaceutical industry or
the government."
Rutherford then resumes with,
"Now you use words like 'witch-hunt' and 'persecution' and you refer
to the 'vaccine politburo'; you've described yourself living in America
now as being in political exile: these are words of someone who just
sounds like they're in opposition to the world, like they're paranoid ...
is that the case; you appear to disagree with the entire medical
establishment?"
After a few words on the overall agnosticism of much of the medical
establishment over vaccine science and safety, Wakefield goes on to say,
"Let me just give you a quote which you've seen from the book, from
Merck in relation to the Vioxx trials in Australia ... and let's just
decide whether this is paranoia or not ... they said ... (and Rutherford
tries to interject) ... no, no ... and this is terribly important ... this
characterises corporate policy for Merck in America ... we're talking
about what happens ... (Wakefield fights off another Rutherford
interjection) ... this is what happens to scientists who cross the
Rubicon, scientists who question policy and profit ... and that's what
we're talking about here ... they said about doctors who question the
safety of Vioxx, 'we may have to seek them out and destroy them where they
live' [2] ... now you tell me whether that's 'paranoia', whether that's
'conspiracy', whether that's 'witch-hunts' ... you put a name to it."
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00znb98
[2] The danger of drugs ... and data. Ben Goldacre, The Guardian, Saturday
9 May 2009.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/09/bad-science-medical-...
Competing interests: No competing interests
Michael Fitzpatrick tells us that many people wanted to believe in
Wakefield, including those "parents desperate for an explanation of their
children's difficulties ..." If not in Wakefield, in whom can these
desperate parents now place their trust?
As Dr Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat member of the Commons science and
technology select committee ousted at the last election, said,
"The children with autism and/or bowel disease have real needs, their
parents have real concerns." [1]
Who will dare to try to meet the needs of these desperate children
now?
At the end of his book, Andrew Wakefield writes of the implications
of the January 28 2010 ruling by the GMC,
"The GMC findings have dire consequences for the practice of medicine
generally, necessary treatments for desperately ill autistic children, and
for the future of the GMC in its role of protecting patients ... Medicine
will no longer be a learned profession but just a series of rote steps
performed mechanically and utterly without inspiration. Patients' care
will suffer, which is exactly the opposite of GMC's supposed mission.
Although all medicine will suffer, the impact will be most immediately
borne by the most severely ill autistic children. They will continue to be
denied the diagnosis and care that is their basic human and ethical
right." [2]
What doctor will now dare provide a real explanation to desperate
parents?
[1] Comment: Dr Evan Harris MP: For the children's sake, we need an
inquiry. Times Online, February 22, 2004.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article1027825.ece
[2] 'Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines - the truth behind a
tragedy' by Andrew Wakefield 2010. Afterword: Ethics, Evidence and the
Death of Medicine
Competing interests: No competing interests
Why do scientists sometimes go bad?
Dr Adam Rutherford told us that "by 2006, Hwang [Korean biotechnology
researcher Hwang Woo-suk] was indicted on charges of embezzlement and
ethical violations; his groundbreaking work was built on fabricated
results and he was exposed as a fraud. In this series I'll be
investigating how and why scientists sometimes go rogue ... and what is
done to uncover it." "Trust is a key element in science, but is it open to
abuse? .... "and are we doing enough to deal with that betrayal of
trust?", asks Rutherford during this first episode of 'Science Betrayed'
[1]
As it happens, Ben Goldacre, sometime correspondent for the BMJ and
tried and trusted author of the 'Bad Science' column in the Guardian, was
also a key element in the first episode. The second episode, of course,
was devoted entirely to Andrew Wakefield's alleged betrayal of science in
'that paper', the simple case series report of February 1998. However, Dr
Goldacre can have established few friends at the BMJ and Lancet, those
"twin pillars of the medical establishment", when in 2005 he wrote,
"Now, even though popular belief in the MMR scare is - perhaps -
starting to fade, popular understanding of it remains minimal: people
periodically come up to me and say, isn't it funny how that Wakefield MMR
paper turned out to be Bad Science after all? And I say: no. The paper
always was and still remains a perfectly good small case series report,
but it was systematically misrepresented as being more than that, by media
that are incapable of interpreting and reporting scientific data." [2]
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00znb98
[2] Ben Goldacre. Don't dumb me down. We laughed, we cried, we
learned about statistics ... 8 September 2005.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/sep/08/badscience.research
Competing interests: No competing interests