Cross posted from Nature’s The Great Beyond blog.
Andrew Wakefield has been thrust back into the limelight today, along with his discredited views on links between the MMR vaccine and autism.
The world’s media has jumped at the chance to have another shot at Wakefield, as provided by the BMJ, which has peer-reviewed the claims of journalist and long standing bane-of-Wakefield, Brian Deer.
Deer’s work for the Sunday Times was the first to really detail the flaws in Wakefield’s claims and the baseless nature of subsequent public scares over what now appears to be a non-existent link between receiving the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine and developing autism. Deer was also the target of legal action by Wakefield over his work, although the doctor eventually abandoned the case.