Wakefield's Hep B Monkey Study Withdrawn

[Estellea]

http://tinyurl.com/ycsh6a7

Andrew Wakefield is a co-author but the lead author and 2 others have serious conflicts of interest that they didn't disclose. I don't know if that was the impetus for Neurotoxicology editors to withdraw the study but I doubt Wakefield's recent woes helped.

Este

 

[technoextreme]

Andrew Wakefield is a co-author but the lead author and 2 others have serious conflicts of interest that they didn't disclose. I don't know if that was the impetus for Neurotoxicology editors to withdraw the study but I doubt Wakefield's recent woes helped.

Maybe it was the research itself. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that there are problems in developing a controlled study when they changed the controls mid study.

 

[Estellea]

I agree that the methods were dubious and the subsequent results, although it made it through peer-review and accepted. Perhaps more attention was paid to the science or even the ethics of the study as a result of Waker's formal rulings against him and the Lancet retraction but the undisclosed COIs would be more than adequate for them to pull it.

Este

 

[JJM]

Some discussion: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/02/wakefield_retracted_again.php

 

[zooterkin]

A detailed analysis of Wakefield's fall here, too.

So, in a period of time encompassing January 28, which is when the GMC decision was first announced, to February 17, which is when Wakefield was apparently forced to resign from his position at Thoughtful House, all the accumulated pseudoscience, dishonesty, conflicts of interest, and incompetent research finally caught up with Andrew Wakefield and reduced Thoughtful House from three practitioners of autism woo to just one. It was a breathtaking fall to those of us who have been following the case for years. So slimy and slick has Wakefield been that I had honestly thought that he could weather even the GMC ruling plus the Lancet and NeuroToxicology retractions. I was wrong. It was three strikes that sent Andy back to the dugout.