Andrew Wakefield
Respectful Insolence
Tag archives for Andrew Wakefield
Goodbye to false balance over vaccines and autism! May you stay gone!
Posted by Orac on February 17, 2010 I realize that Chris Mooney is a polarizing figure here on the ol’ ScienceBlogs, but I have to give him props for doing a damned fine job handling questions about vaccines, autism, and Andrew Wakefield’s utterly discredited 1998 Lancet study, which was retracted by the Lancet‘s editors last week: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world…
Blocked by Fire Marshal Bill!
Posted by Orac on February 15, 2010 I feel really, really good today. The reason? Simple Orac has annoyed Jim Carrey enough to ban him on Twitter. The exchange went something like this. For the first time in a while, I was perusing Twitter (I have a really hard time keeping my Insolence to 140 characters; so I only check my Twitter…
But what about the Illuminati and David Icke’s reptilians?
Posted by Orac on February 13, 2010 The utter discrediting and disgrace of Andrew Wakefield, first by the judgment of the General Medical Council against him and then by the retraction of the crown jewel of his respectability his 1998 Lancet paper that sparked the modern anti-vaccine movement and launched a thousand autism quacks. The reaction of the anti-vaccine loons was very…
J.B. Handley wants to touch Andrew Wakefield’s monkey(s)
Posted by Orac on February 11, 2010 “Would you like to touch my monkey? Touch him! Love him!“ J. B. Handley wants to touch see Andrew Wakefield’s monkeys. How do I know this? Well, there’s just the little matter of his entitling his most recent excretion of flaming stupidity Show me the monkeys! and repeating “Show me the monkeys!” eleven times in…
Best. Conspiracy. Theory. Ever.
Posted by Orac on February 8, 2010 It looks as though Generation Rescue’s bubble-brained spokescelebrities Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey have finally found their niche. Can you guess where it is? Come on, take two guesses! That’s right. They’ve made it into NaturalNews.com, crossposted from a post they had their handlers make to Age of Autism, entitled A Statement from Jenny McCarthy…
“Building bridges” to the leaders of the anti-vaccine movement?
Posted by Orac on February 5, 2010 Thanks to Andrew Wakefield, it’s been pretty much vaccine week for me. Well, mostly anyway, I did manage to have some fun with Mike Adams and the immune system, but otherwise it’s been all vaccines all the time this week. As I mentioned yesterday, at the risk of dwelling on one topic so long that…
How not to report science and medical news, vaccine edition (addendum)
Posted by Orac on February 4, 2010 Here we go again (rest of the post below the fold because there is a video that autostarts):
How not to report science and medical news, vaccine edition
Posted by Orac on February 4, 2010 I realize I complain periodically about when I get into what seems to me to be a rut in which I’m writing pretty much only about anti-vaccine lunacy. This is just such a week, when the news on the vaccine front has been coming fast and furious, first with Andrew Wakefield’s being found to have…
The martyrdom of St. Andy, part 2: David Kirby rides to the rescue (sort of)
Posted by Orac on February 3, 2010 If I am wrong I will be a bad person because I will have raised this spectre. Andrew Wakefield, March 3, 1998. Interview in The Independent. The martyrdom of brave maverick Saint Andy continues apace, it would appear. As you recall, last week, after an interminable proceeding that stretched out over two and a half…
Here’s another slam on Andrew Wakefield…
Posted by Orac on February 1, 2010 …from, of all places, a Daily Kos diary. Although the post itself is quite good, some of the comments make baby Jesus cry. There’s even one repeating the old myth about H. pylori and how Barry Marshall and Robin Warren were supposedly “ostracized” for their “heresy” back in the 1980s. Still, it’s good to see…
The martyrdom of St. Andy
Posted by Orac on February 1, 2010 Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up sniffing glue. Well, not really. Maybe it looks more like I picked the wrong NIH grant cycle to be submitting an R01. After all, the deadline for my getting my grant to my university’s grant’s office coincided very closely with the announcement of the General…
They’re coming out of the woodwork
Posted by Orac on January 30, 2010 Thanks to having been up all night Thursday night and most of the night a couple of days before that working on a grant, I know I haven’t had a chance to write about the GMC’s ruling on Andrew Wakefield’s unethical conduct in conducting his “clinical research” that according to him linked the MMR vaccine…
When the outbreaks begin, they’ll start in California
Posted by Orac on March 31, 2009 I may have been deluding myself when I talked about 2009 shaping up to be a bad year for antivaccinationists. It turns out that the antivaccine movement is succeeding. That’s right, a cadre of upper middle class, scientifically illiterate parents, either full of the arrogance of ignorance or frightened by leaders of the antivaccine movement,…
Brian Deer responds to Andrew Wakefield
Posted by Orac on March 18, 2009 Two days ago, I deconstructed Andrew Wakefield’s clumsy attack on Brian Deer, the investigative journalist whose investigations uncovered Wakefield’s massive conflicts of interest and, most recently, his scientific fraud. Now, right here in the very comments of this blog, Brian Deer has responded: Obviously, because Our Andy’s statement purports to be a complaint to the…
Hero of the antivaccine movement Andrew Wakefield strikes back
Posted by Orac on March 16, 2009 The antivaccine counterattack against Brian Deer continues. As you recall, about a month ago British reporter Brian Deer published an exposé, a tour de force of investigative journalism that led him to discover that Andre Wakefield had not only had incredibly blatant undisclosed conflicts of interest (his having been in the pocket of trial lawyers…
“We support Dr. Andrew Wakefield”?
Posted by Orac on February 24, 2009 Alright, I know that, after yesterday’s epic post (which was long even by Orac-ian standards), I said that I was going to try to get away from vaccine blogging for a while. I lied. Well, not really. At that time I really did mean it. But then I came across something that I just couldn’t…
The beginning of a very, very bad year for antivaccinationists
Posted by Orac on February 23, 2009 One thing that’s become apparent to me so far in 2009 is that, while 2008 was the year of the antivaccinationist, 2009 is already shaping up to be a very bad year for antivaccinationists. A very bad year indeed, and this is a very, very good thing–if it can be sustained. But first, let’s take…
Andrew Wakefield: Scuzz-wo
Posted by Orac on February 21, 2009 I don’t know what “scuzz-wo” means, but I agree that Andrew Wakefield is one. My only nit to pick is that the puppet flirts a little too close to conflating the thimerosal scare with the MMR scare. There never was any thimerosal in the MMR vaccine. But that’s just a nit, and as a blogger…
Brian Deer responds to Keith Olbermann
Posted by Orac on February 12, 2009 Last night, I lambasted Countdown host Keith Olbermann for having been played by the antivaccine movement and having unjustly slimed British journalist Brian Deer. Clearly, Olbermann was so blinded by his hatred of Rupert Murdoch that all chief apologist for the antivaccine movement, former freelance journalist David Kirby, had to do was mention that The…
Andrew Wakefield: Worst person in the world
Posted by Orac on February 11, 2009 I’m not as big a fan of Keith Olbermann as I used to be. Indeed, sometimes he strikes me as the liberal version of Rush Limbaugh, not to mention a blowhard. However, occasionally, he still has it, and when he’s on, no one skewers the dishonest better than he does. For instance, after a media…
Why am I not surprised? It looks as though Andrew Wakefield probably falsified his data
Posted by Orac on February 8, 2009 Pity Andrew Wakefield. Actually, on second thought, Wakefield deserves no pity. After all, he is the man who almost single-handedly launched the scare over the MMR vaccine in Britain when he published his infamous Lancet paper in 1998 in which he claimed to have linked the MMR vaccine to regressive autism and inflammation of the…