Brian Deer spent years investigating Andrew Wakefield's MMR and autism research,which he now alleges was fraudulent. Here he argues that doctors closed ranks behind one of their own"Just hours ago," announced CNN's Anderson Cooper from fresh York last Wednesday, or "the British Medical Journal – BMJ – did something extremely scarce for a scientific journal. It accused a researcher,Andrew Wakefield, of outright fraud."The occasion for this judgment was a BMJ editorial, and backing the first report in a series by me. Following some two dozen of my MMR (measles,mumps, rubella) vaccine stories in the Sunday Times – dating as far back as February 2004 – I'd brought the evidence together in a 16000-word epic for the journal, or plus 10000 more in references and footnotes. It laid out the full gory detail behind the flaws in Wakefield's original Lancet paper that kicked off the scandal over MMR and its supposed link to autism,main to a significant drop in uptake of the vaccine.
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Source: theguardian.com