Dealing with the Mawson study

[rev ronin]

Antivaxxers are at it again, trying to do their best to dismantle our preventive medicine starting with the safest, most cost-effective public health tool ever invented.

I'm seeing articles about the Andrew Mawson study pop up in my Facebook news feed.  It's a survey, not a study, but dressed up with silly trappings as if its underlying data were reliable.

For those of you who have kids, love kids, and/or don't want to see kids suffer needlessly, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the study so you can help insulate the audience from its poison:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2017/05/10/the-mawson-vaxedunvaxed-study-retraction-the-antivaccine-movement-reacts-with-tears-of-unfathomable-sadness/

You're not going to convert the True Believers in your office--I just call CPS on those--but you can influence those in their social sphere:

"Hey, Doc (no one ever calls us PA, do they?), what do you know about that study that said vaccinated kids get autism at a higher rate?"

"The one by Mawson?  Yeah, he basically just did surveys, which were send out to homeschoolers only, and just asked a bunch of moms about their kids.  They didn't look at immunization records or the kids' medical records.  There are a bunch of other problems with it too, but I won't bore you with the details.  Fact is, both the journals that he paid to publish it later pulled the article entirely when it came to light just how bad the survey was.  Real studies have shown vaccines are safe for kids time and time again."

"Oh, Ok.  Thanks Doc!"

 

[sas5814]

The goober that started all this.

 

 

Andrew Jeremy Wakefield (born 1957)^[1][2] is a British former gastroenterologist and medical researcher who was struck off the UK medical register for his fraudulent 1998 research paper, and other proven charges of misconduct, in support of the now-discredited claim that there was a link between the administration of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, and the appearance of autism and bowel disease.^{[3][4][5][6][7]}

After the publication of the paper, other researchers were unable to reproduce Wakefield's findings or confirm his hypothesis of an association between the MMR vaccine and autism,^[8] or autism and gastrointestinal disease.^[9] A 2004 investigation by Sunday Times reporter Brian Deer identified undisclosed financial conflicts of interest on Wakefield's part,^[10] and most of his co-authors then withdrew their support for the study's interpretations.^[11] The British General Medical Council (GMC) conducted an inquiry into allegations of misconduct against Wakefield and two former colleagues.^[12] The investigation centred on Deer's numerous findings, including that children with autism were subjected to unnecessary invasive medical procedures such as colonoscopies and lumbar punctures,^[13] and that Wakefield acted without the required ethical approval from an institutional review board.

On 28 January 2010, a five-member statutory tribunal of the GMC found three dozen charges proved, including four counts of dishonesty and 12 counts involving the abuse of developmentally challenged children.^[14] The panel ruled that Wakefield had "failed in his duties as a responsible consultant", acted both against the interests of his patients, and "dishonestly and irresponsibly" in his published research.^[15][16][17]The Lancet fully retracted the 1998 publication on the basis of the GMC's findings, noting that elements of the manuscript had been falsified.^[18]The Lancet's editor-in-chief Richard Horton said the paper was "utterly false" and that the journal had been "deceived".^[19] Three months following The Lancet's retraction, Wakefield was struck off the UK medical register, with a statement identifying deliberate falsification in the research published in The Lancet,^[20] and was thereby barred from practising medicine in the UK.^[21]

In January 2011, an editorial accompanying an article by Brian Deer in BMJ identified Wakefield's work as an "elaborate fraud".^[3][22][23] In a follow-up article,^[24] Deer said that Wakefield had planned to launch a venture on the back of an MMR vaccination scare that would profit from new medical tests and "litigation driven testing".^[25] In November 2011, another report in BMJ^[26] revealed original raw data indicating that, contrary to Wakefield's claims in The Lancet, children in his research did not have inflammatory bowel disease.^[27][28]

Wakefield's study and his claim that the MMR vaccine might cause autism led to a decline in vaccination rates in the United States, United Kingdom and Ireland and a corresponding rise in measles and mumps, resulting in serious illness and deaths, and his continued warnings against the vaccine have contributed to a climate of distrust of all vaccines and the reemergence of other previously controlled diseases.^[29][30][31] Wakefield has continued to defend his research and conclusions, saying there was no fraud, hoax or profit motive.^[32][33] In February 2015, he publicly repeated his denials and refused to back down from his assertions,^[34] even though—as stated by a British Administrative Court Justice in a related decision—"There is now no respectable body of opinion which supports (Dr Wakefield's) hypothesis, that MMR vaccine and autism/enterocolitis are causally linked".^[35]