Bad Science

Study Linking Vaccine to Autism ‘Fraudulent’

Doctor skewed results, falsified data.

The notorious report that first claimed to link vaccines to autism was “an elaborate fraud,” according to the British Medical Journal. Andrew Wakefield, a former British surgeon, published research establishing a link between the two in 1998, and many have frantically followed his beliefs ever since. Although widely discredited over the years and eventually retracted from the journal in February 2010, the editors of the British Medical Journal now say Wakefield falsified data, skewing the patients’ medical records to support his hypothesis. And yet, despite the new evidence, some doctors say parents may not be swayed—mumps is now the second-highest reported disease among the vaccine-preventable diseases, according to the Centers of Diseases Control and Prevention.