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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday March 15 2016, @10:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the toxic-news dept.

From the (boneheaded) editor: My apologies. I pooched this one in a way that is exceptional, even for me. I humbly beg your forgiveness. The line for torches is on the left, and pitchforks is on the right. Please, move on to the next story and don't waste any further time on this one.

Regards,
cmn32480

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  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 16 2016, @12:58PM

    by Thexalon (636) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 16 2016, @12:58PM (#319001)

    But what bothers me is that we didn't simply have a half dozen independent researchers go out, reproduce and extend the experiment and publish conflicting findings that outweighed Wakefield - that would be science, that would be worthy of basing decisions on.

    They did that. The thing was, Wakefield and the people paying him had already gone to the press with his brand new study, because the purpose of the brand new study was to be able to sue the heck out of MMR vaccine manufacturers on behalf of the autistic kids' parents, even though that wasn't actually true.

    What bothers me is that the whole thing became a huge media spectacle, with personal attacks, destruction of careers, giant smear campaigns with "talking heads" shouting each other down on television.

    1. As previously mentioned, it was a huge media spectacle before the first contradicting study came out.
    2. Wakefield deserved to have his career destroyed. Not because he got something wrong (lots of honest scientists have that happen), but because he was paid to produce a particular result and made stuff up to get that result. Which isn't science, it's propaganda masquerading as science.
    3. I agree it should not have been TV talking heads shouting at each other. Instead, it should have been a simple report with a reporter saying "All the science has made it abundantly clear that our previous reports about a link between vaccines and autism was completely wrong. This happens with science: Sometimes they get a result, run more tests, and find out that they were wrong." They don't do that because news organizations like having talking heads shouting at each other even if one of those talking heads is completely demonstrably wrong e.g. evolution vs creationism.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 16 2016, @02:17PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday March 16 2016, @02:17PM (#319031)

    I agree that (given the evidence I have access to, it appears that) Wakefield should have gone down in flames. The media really shouldn't have allowed Wakefield all the access they did based on his first study, but they can be gullible that way.

    Tangent: I lived near the kook who was going to burn a Quran on the anniversary of 9-11, he actually managed to get Obama to react to him in the press, the first time. A year later he pulled a similar stunt, but I only heard about it because I was local - thankfully the media learned on that one.

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