It was about bad and inadequate science being used to formulate policy and to formulate treatments for people which harm them. This is not limited to cases of fraud. Eliminating all fraud would be a good thing, but it won’t eliminate the use of bad and inadequate science to formulate policy and to formulate treatments for people that harm them.

I don’t think there is any fraud in the XMRV controversy, but there is certainly a lot of hype and overblown conclusions. There are people being treated with anti-retrovirals on the basis of the work that has been done so far. I think that is very unfortunate. People receiving anti-retrovirals for CFS are being subjected to malpractice and are very likely being harmed.

I think it is the same in the chronic Lyme. I don’t think there is any fraud among those treating people with long term antibiotics, just poor understanding of infectious diseases, poor understanding of how antibiotics work, a lot of groupthink and poor judgment. People being subjected to long term antibiotic treatment is harmful.

CC and myself are not saying scientists are or expected to be investigating fraud. Stop with that straw man, please!

“If Brian Deer things that scientists “circled the wagons” around Wakefield, wait until he tries to get sanctions against the lawyers that funded Wakefield.”

Deer said doctors. A doctor is usually not scientist.

“I would like to see Wakefield go to prison, I would like to see the lawyer that funded him go to prison too. 20 years for each of them would not be too long. They caused the deaths and suffering of many children.”
I agree.

The problems that Wakefield caused would have been just as severe if he hadn’t committed fraud. The problem wasn’t the fraud, it was the media blowing his “results” all out of proportion and people believing the “lone maverick scientist” had uncovered something that everyone else was too biased to find.

The problem wasn’t with the science, it was how the media took extremely preliminary results and blew them all out of proportion. A lot of the problem (I think) is that Wakefield is a charismatic person, and can be charming and compelling (the way that many sociopaths can be). Media personalities are very poor BS detectors.

News media isn’t put out to be “informative”, it is put out to be entertainment. News media has to be compelling entertainment, or people will switch the channel to something more compelling, a game show, a sports contest, a sit-com, or porn.

Fraud cannot be uncovered on the 24 hour news cycle.

Wakefield’s fraud could have been uncovered much sooner. Chadwick knew that Wakefield’s results were bogus. Chadwick had done PCR on all the samples that Wakefield claimed were positive via antibodies. Chadwick had sequenced every positive result he got and he found that all of the positives were false positives. He told this to Wakefield before Wakefield published the Lancet paper with positive antibody results. Chadwick was scheduled to be listed on the paper but he had Wakefield take his name off it. I don’t fault Chadwick, he was in an impossible situation. He was doing good work but being supervised by a fraud. If he blew the whistle on that fraud in the wrong way, Chadwick would have been destroyed, his career would have been destroyed and he would never have been a scientist.

The “apprenticeship” aspect of science and PhD programs is something that needs to be fixed. Senior scientists cannot be allowed to have life-and-death control over their students, there is too much potential for abuse. Science had some articles a while back about grad students in the lab of a faculty member that was committing fraud. They blew the whistle on her, and I think 3 out of 5 had their careers destroyed before they even started. One had to restart her PhD thesis for a different advisor, the others had to drop out.

The problem with Wakefield was a problem of main stream media. Wakefield played the media for fools and the media allowed themselves to be played for fools and amplified Wakefield’s ability to do harm by many fold. Wakefield was able to tell a made-up story that resonated with the media and parents, played on their fears. Scientists and health care providers only had facts and logic to work with, they couldn’t just make stuff up the way that Wakefield did.

We were very lucky that Brian Deer just happened to start digging into Wakefield’s stuff when he did.

I would like to see Wakefield go to prison, I would like to see the lawyer that funded him go to prison too. 20 years for each of them would not be too long. They caused the deaths and suffering of many children.

If Brian Deer things that scientists “circled the wagons” around Wakefield, wait until he tries to get sanctions against the lawyers that funded Wakefield. I suspect he wouldn’t even be able to get suggestions that the lawyers should be investigated into print (which is why I think there haven’t been any).

That sounds alot like most worthwhile endeavours. Someone could make the same criticism of science. Besides, no one is saying that individual scientists should spend more of their time investigating fraud. And just because investigations can be used as intimidation does not mean that appropriate investigations are not valuable. Investigation of fraud should be a rare occurence but lets not close our eyes and pretend it will go away, because fraud (or the perception of it) is a serious threat to science. It can add to the already excessive mistrust of science by the public. Appearing to not value the integrity of science is among the worst attitudes that scientists can portray to the public.

bgoldacre

12 January 2011 4:28PM

I can’t find the quote attributed as written by me in the BMJ on Google, in a BMJ search, or in my own email, so I don’t know if I did write that. I may well have, it would be interesting to see the context, and the date when I wrote it.

My view on the Wakefield Lancet paper has changed with time and new evidence, the GMC ruling, Deer’s BMJ pieces, etc.

Initially, it seemed like Wakefield’s paper was a perfectly good 12 subject case series report, a description of 12 childrens’ clinical anecdotes. My view then was that a 12 subject case series report is weak evidence for something causing something else, and therefore this paper should not have triggered a gigantic and lengthy scare story throughout the entire British news media. It’s significance was overstated by journalists.

Now, my view has changed, in the light of Brian Deer’s excellent work: we now know that this was a flawed and misleading 12 subject case series report. So that’s two big problems with it triggering a gigantic and lengthy scare story: it was a weak form of evidence to start with, by design, but on top of that, it was itself dodgy.

I think it’s worth reiterating that even if Wakefield’s paper had been a perfect and immaculately well-conducted 12 subject case series report, Wakefield’s Lancet paper should still never have triggered a gigantic and lengthy scare story throughout the entire British news media, because a 12 subject case series report is still very weak evidence for something causing something else.

One possible context for the possible BMJ quote attributed to me (I’m speculating) is this: people often suggest that the Lancet were wrong to publish a case series report, as if such a piece of weak speculative research is always and automatically useless. As I’ve said on various occasions, I think it’s dangerous to say that academic journals should refuse to publish things on the grounds that they might be misunderstood by the public, or overstated by journalists, so I do think that a case series report is a perfectly sensible thing for an academic journal to publish, because academic journals are edited to be read by academics, with a critical eye.

Another possible context (again I’m speculating) is this: anyone who’s read my stuff will know that I blame the media *and* Andrew Wakefield for the MMR scare, but also, as I’ve written more recently, I think it’s problematic that the media have now let themselves off the hook by pinning all the responsibility for the scare onto Wakefield, when they need to look at their own mistakes too.

I’ve been unswervingly supportive of Brian Deer’s work, linked to it, written about it, and promoted it at every opportunity, including now (there has been almost total media silence in the UK on his current revelations), and I’ll continue do so.

Must a scientist throw away all other critical thinking arguments and use the scientific method as their only tool? Dr. Novella and other skeptics teach us to be skeptical of claims, even from authority figures. The authority figure’s background becomes a relevant factor if it pertains to their claims. Fraud sure as hell does.

In my opinion, science would be better off trying to replicate studies and gather new data which is cleaner and better rather than trying to investigate allegations of fraud. Investigating fraud takes a long time and is extremely expensive to all involved and can result in equivocal results. Allegations of fraud can be used as a weapon to destroy opponents. There is no funding to cover the reasonable expenses of those falsely accused of fraud.

Michael Mann is being investigated for fraud solely for intimidation, to shut him up and to waste his time. It is essentially a SLAPP lawsuit but brought by the Attorney General of VA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAPP

And what about, “the ends justify the means?” An idea can be right, but if a scientist knowingly uses illegal means (lying to patients, use of illegal practices, ect), he should be held accountable. It shouldn’t matter that he’s a scientist, or was performing science, or his ideas were right. If he commits a crime like fraud, then he should be subject to the judicial system.