#158 - Brian Deer: A tale of scientific fraud—exposing Andrew Wakefield and the origin of the belief that vaccines cause autism

We discuss:

• How Andrew Wakefield's flawed approach to scientific research led to the belief that vaccines cause autism (3:25);
• The importance of following the scientific method, and how Wakefield twisted the science to link measles virus to Crohn's disease (14:15);
• The backstory behind Andrew Wakefield's infamous 1998 Lancet paper linking the MMR vaccine and autism (26:45);
• The many flaws and disturbing aspects of Wakefield's study: suffering children and failure to do strain-specific sequencing (45:15);
• The epicenter of fraud: Bogus PCR testing furthering the belief that measles virus from the MMR vaccine caused autism (1:00:00);
• Additional issues that contaminated the study results (1:22:15);
• Discovering the misrepresented medical records for the kids involved in the study leading to the retraction of the Lancet paper and Wakefield losing his license (1:31:00);
• The resurgence of the anti-vaccination movement, Brian's motivation to write the book, and parting thoughts (1:36:45); and
• More.

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