Science & Money: The Wakefield Case

Andrew Wakefield: Discredited for conflicts of interest and unethical practices.Andrew Wakefield got a lot of fame in the late 1990's for claiming there was a connection between the MMR vaccine and the explosion of diagnosed cases of Autistic Spectrum disorders...

Scientists, like priests, are in a position of trust. Their pronouncements and theories carry huge weight for public policy, community values, and so on. People who put their faith still in Wakefield's research (that is, who hold to an MMR-Autism connection against the weight of the statistical, double-blind evidence) have a right to know that he concealed his financial conflicts of interest and conducted his research under a cloud that is not common or desirable in science. This amounts therefore to science cleaning its own house.

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