(Press-News.org) A series of denials and a failure to formally investigate allegations of misconduct in Andrew Wakefield's MMR research meant the public was misled about the credibility of the paper for six years.
Dr Fiona Godlee, BMJ Editor in Chief, says the UK has consistently failed to take research misconduct seriously. She calls on the UK government to establish mandatory oversight of clinical research integrity within the NHS, as happens for publicly funded research in the USA.
"This case reveals major flaws in pre and post-publication peer review," she says. "Allegations of research misconduct must be independently investigated in the public interest. But it's still too easy for institutions to avoid external scrutiny, and editors can fail to adequately distance themselves from work they have published and then defended."
In the third and final part of a special BMJ series, "Secrets of the MMR scare", investigative journalist Brian Deer reveals how the medical establishment closed ranks to protect Wakefield after he raised concerns with the Lancet in 2004.
Deer's allegations included possible research fraud, unethical treatment of vulnerable children, and Wakefield's conflict of interest through his involvement with a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers.
Deer thought the editor, Richard Horton, would say that an investigation was needed. Instead he reports that "within 48 hours, and working with the paper's three senior authors, the journal was to publish 5000 words of denials, in statements, unretracted to this day."
The statements said that an investigation was undertaken by the Royal Free Hospital that "cleared Wakefield of wrongdoing."
But documents, emails, and replies obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal no formal investigation. "What emerges is merely a scramble to discredit my claims during the 48 hours after I disclosed the information," writes Deer. In short, "the accused were investigating themselves."
It took a further six years for the General Medical Council (GMC) to prove Deer's allegations, and for the Lancet paper to be retracted. During this time, public alarm over MMR continued, measles outbreaks occurred, and two UK children died from the disease.
"Were it not for the GMC case, which cost a rumoured £6m (€7m; $9m), the fraud by which Wakefield concocted fear of MMR would forever have been denied and covered up," argues Deer. The Royal Free Hospital and Medical School have since confirmed that they carried out no formal investigation. No doctor was interviewed, and no documents were generated.
In a written response to the BMJ last week, Professor Sir John Tooke, Vice-Provost at Univesity College London said: "UCL takes any allegation of research misconduct very seriously, and we will certainly investigate those raised in the BMJ. He added: "We are determined to learn from the mistakes made in relation to this case ... Our objective is to continue refining a structure and processes which provide all reasonable safeguards whilst also facilitating the highest quality research for population benefit."
An accompanying editorial by researchers in Seattle says Deer's articles reveal the urgent need "to fix a system that failed to protect human subjects and the public from the consequences of fraudulent science."
INFORMATION: END
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), an estimated 322,000 deaths globally per year are linked to severe injuries from fire and in many of these cases death could have been avoided with surgical intervention.
In this type of intervention, when major burn patients have insufficient skin left to graft on the most damaged part of their body, new skin has literally to be grown from the patient's own skin cells. However, the long delay in growing the skin can expose the burns patient to increased risk of infection and dehydration; so to help those cells to multiply, ...
Travel websites, especially those that offer 'last minute' deals, should inform people about the risks of malaria and the need to take preventative medication before travelling, say experts in infectious diseases today.
Their warning, in a letter to this week's BMJ, follows three recent cases of malaria in UK citizens returning from 'winter sun' holidays to the Gambia, where malaria is highly endemic.
They all used the same travel website. Two had made a late booking and all failed to take preventative drugs (chemoprophylaxis). Within two weeks of returning to the UK, ...
One of the most important predictions of Einstein's theory of General Relativity is the existence of black holes. The dynamics of these systems are not yet fully understood, but researchers from Queen Mary, University of London have now provided a rigorous way of determining the evolutionary stage of a black hole by analysing the region outside where matter cannot escape, the event horizon.
Dr Thomas Bäckdahl and Dr Juan A. Valiente Kroon at Queen Mary's School of Mathematical Sciences have developed a method based on properties of the Kerr solution, a time-independent ...
Adults who suffer from attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are more than three times as likely to develop a common form of degenerative dementia than those without, according to research in the January issue of the European Journal of Neurology.
Researchers from Argentina confirmed the link during a study of 360 patients with degenerative dementia and 149 healthy controls, matched by age, sex and education. The dementia patients comprised 109 people with dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and 251 with Alzheimer's.
"Our study showed that 48 per cent of ...
Sharks are unable to distinguish colors, even though their close relatives rays and chimaeras have some color vision, according to new research by Dr. Nathan Scott Hart and colleagues from the University of Western Australia and the University of Queensland in Australia. Their study shows that although the eyes of sharks function over a wide range of light levels, they only have a single long-wavelength-sensitive cone* type in the retina and therefore are potentially totally color blind. Hart and team's findings are published online in Springer's journal Naturwissenschaften ...
Philadelphia, PA, 18 January 2011 - Biological Psychiatry is proud to announce this week's publication of a special issue focusing on postmortem studies of psychosis.
This special issue showcases the use of human brains postmortem to study psychiatric disorders, focusing on schizophrenia. The review articles highlight the benefits, achievements, problems, and perhaps most importantly, the future of postmortem research.
Postmortem research, which allows scientists to study the brain directly via its tissue, is difficult and expensive. Hence, it is a relatively rare avenue ...
Developing new drugs is a highly costly and time-consuming process. Of 20 candidates, 19 are normally rejected because they don't work or have unwanted side effects. Now a research team led by Professor Lars Baltzer at Uppsala University has produced a tiny molecular "binder" that has the potential to change this landscape radically.
The study, published today in the prestigious journal Angewandte Chemie, presents the concept of a tiny polypeptide consisting of 42 amino acids to which virtually any target-seeking organic molecule can be bound. In the body it then seeks ...
WASHINGTON -- The first global simulation study of equatorial spread F (ESF) bubble evolution using a comprehensive 3D ionosphere model, SAMI3, has been demonstrated. The model self-consistently solves for the neutral wind driven dynamo electric field and the gravity driven electric field associated with plasma bubbles.
Developed by Dr. Joseph Huba and Dr. Glenn Joyce at the NRL Plasma Physics Division, SAMI3 is a fully three-dimensional model of the low- to mid-latitude ionosphere. SAMI3 has been modified recently to use a sun-fixed coordinate system to eliminate rotation ...
Nutrients, vitamins, minerals – during pregnancy a woman's body needs more of them. For most nutrients this increase in demand can be covered with a balanced diet. However, mothers-to-be should ingest some nutrients in the form of tablets. Research conducted by the Chair of Nutritional Medicine at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) indicates there are knowledge gaps: According to this study, pregnant women often start taking sensible dietary supplements too late or not at all. At the same time, other micronutrients are unwittingly overdosed whose effects during ...
Researchers at the University of Warwick have developed the world's first complete High Dynamic Range (HDR) video system, from video capture to image display, that will help a range of users including: surveillance camera operators, surgeons using video to conduct or record surgery, and camera crews following a football being kicked from sunshine into shadow.
The researchers will be premiering footage of the world's first ever showing of a short film shot using this new HDR technology in the WMG Digital Laboratory at the University of Warwick on Wednesday January 19 ...
