He calls the chapter based on this "The Media's MMR Hoax" and, despite his damning dissection of the study, expresses disquiet that Alexander Wakefield looks like being hung out to dry by the media for a scandal largely created by the media.
It's one of Goodacre's general themes that science stories are written by non-specialists, even when a newspaper has specialists, because studies are far more newsworthy when they're misinterpreted. A headline "fact" is taken out of context, and the reader is given no chance to assess how good the study actually was or whether its findings are significant.
This is quite personal to me, because my son was born in 1998, and I had to make the vaccination decision more-or-less at the height of the controversy. Single dose vaccines were withdrawn in this country, to prevent parents demanding those instead. I considered going to Europe (as some families did) for the single vaccines, but it didn't really take much reflection to work out that six trips to France constituted a greater risk than the MMR (as well as being a wholly unnecessary additional risk for his older sister).
despite his damning dissection of the study, expresses disquiet that Alexander Wakefield looks like being hung out to dry by the media for a scandal largely created by the media.
I've known scientists who were misrepresented in the press, and I've known cases where the press ran with a story even after the scientists they quoted explicitly told them that they were being misrepresented.
Wakefield isn't one of those cases. He deserves everything he'll get.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
But who is responsible for the consequences of the MMR scare? The dubious writer of a flawed and insignificant paper, or the media that ran the story and have pretty much denied all correction short of its writer's professional disgrace? Scapegoating is an ugly process, whether or not we like the goat.
That doesn't detract from the press' blame for running with a half-assed, poorly researched story based on a single (unethically conducted) marginal paper whose lead author had a massive conflict of interest.
But blame, not unlike a computer virus, is not reduced in severity just because it is spread to more people.
