Whatever Were They Thinking?

FINALLY, the Lancet (one of the world’s top medical journals) has retracted their publication of one of the most misleading articles in the history of modern medical science – the now totally discredited piece on the relationship between autism and the MMR vaccine. 

What took them so long? It seems that the Lancet editors where the last in the world to know that the article was basic bunkum. And why did they even print it?

If you can find me another article that uses the same low level of scientific evidence and flawed thinking that the Lancet has published in the last decade as this one used I will buy you a chocolate cookie. (Only one cookie per customer, just in case). I for one have no idea about what the answer to either of those questions is. But the fallout has been substantial. It seems that large numbers of children died because they were not vaccinated. And to what end? Because a researcher (who it seems was in the employ of lawyers making lots of money suing vaccine manufacturers) published such poor science and because a learned journal did the publishing?

So what is a possible lesson here? Although there are many, one most certainly is that one swallow does not a summer make. That is, scientific knowledge is not built on one study, but on many, conducted by different and independent investigators, using best methods and techniques and scrutinized by peer review. Is there the possibility that some studies will show one thing and others will show another? For sure. Science is nasty, brutish and long. Remember the word attributed to Mark Twain: “be careful reading a medical text book. You may die of misprint”

--Stan