Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Alaszewski, Andy

Titel

How campaigners and the media push bad science

Ist Teil von

• BMJ. British medical journal (International ed.), 2011-01, Vol.342 (7790), p.231

Auflage

International edition

Ort / Verlag

London: BMJ Publishing Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2011

Quelle

Applied Social Sciences Index & Abstracts (ASSIA)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Alaszewski discusses how campaigners and the media push bad science. Brian Deer's three articles in the BMJ series provide a compelling account of bad science and bad scientists. He documents how Andrew Wakefield and his scientific colleagues "discovered" a new disease or syndrome (autistic enterocolitis) "caused" by the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and tried to convince others of the existence of this disease. The work of Deer and others undermining the evidence linking the MMR vaccine to autism had disastrous consequences for Wakefield and for those parents claiming legal compensation for vaccine damage. However, the antivaccine campaign is alive and active, with the Jabs Web site alleging an "unrelenting barrage of anti-Wakefield propaganda in the British media" and advertising the book Silenced Witness, parents' accounts of vaccine damage.