Comments on: Holford, autism, Wakefield and a manufactured disease

By: Brian Deer Discusses Andrew Wakefield in the Sunday Times « Holford Watch: Patrick Holford, nutritionism and bad science

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 15:44:10 +0000

[...] And now we learn even more about the true state of the evidence on which this shoddy edifice was erected as if the devastating revelation by Dr Nick Chadwick and Professor Stephen Bustin were not sufficient to close this sorry chapter. As if MacDonald and Domizio have not clearly demonstrated that Andrew Wakefield created his own, self-serving disease by interpreting normal findings as abnormalities that supported a new form of gut pathology. [...]

By: Patrick Holford and His Recommendations for Vaccines: As Canard-Stuffed As We Feared « Holford Watch: Patrick Holford, nutritionism and bad science

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:43:19 +0000

[...] has been advertising updates on his vaccination advice for some time. We mentioned this in June and said that we weren’t expecting much that was evidence-based or [...]

By: pv

pv — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:06:45 +0000

What are the likes of Holford and Wakefield to do if they don’t make a lot of distracting noise and fight to defend their respective nonsenses? There’s a lot of money at stake and maybe even their liberty.

By: dvnutrix

dvnutrix — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 22:12:13 +0000

Sometimes, it is a little like the meejah are offering up John Merrick for our entertainment and it makes me a little queasy…

By: draust

draust — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:02:24 +0000

I tried adding a comment over at the Sunset Times online pointing out that (i) the article wasn’t about Wakers; (ii) most of the Lancet authors had retracted the paper; and (iii) every aspect his work had been comprehensively discredited.

Oddly enough it failed to reach the “Comments Thread”.

I then emailed the ST to tell them I thought that leaving a whole thread of anti-vax loons up without a single countervailing comment was abysmal work on their part, but that didn’t elicit anything either.

I actually suspect sometimes that the Meejah enjoy comments threads full of ultra-barking lunacy. It enables them to rub their hands – “Yaay! Controversial!” – and also to maintain the line (visible in many an editorial piece recently) that the blogosphere is “all static with nothing to tell responsible journalists”.

By: jdc325

jdc325 — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:12:39 +0000

I’m not hugely surprised that PH and AW are associated. Birds of a feather and all that….

I read the LBRB piece you linked to – thought it was excellent. I also looked at Dr Aust’s link to the Times comments, though. Not so good:

“As far as I know back in history adults and children drank mead as part of their stable diet. This article is an insult to us mothers who have vaccine damaged children”; “Dr Wakefield’s research was not discredited and the results still stand”; and my favourite – “The truths stareing us in the face mercury and vaccines dont go”.

By: Real Prof

Real Prof — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:39:51 +0000

I would be very keen to see photographs of Professor Patrick Holford of Teesside University at the anti-MMR protest outside the GMC.

Could anyone oblige?

Anyone nearby in UCL, UCLH, ICH perhaps?

The world should know about the Teesside Professors strong views on ethics in research.

By: draust

draust — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:45:13 +0000

Nice post. Didn't know about the Am J Gastro paper, though I had seen in various places that the GI endoscopy findings were "normal mislabelled as pathological". Amazing, isn't it, how after all the demonstrations that every single aspect of Wakefield's work was invented, misreported and misrepresented nonsense, PH and the rest of the Wakefield cheerleaders can't accept it. The patient selection was fixed, the GI findings are misclassified to "invent" a non-existent syndrome, the measles virus detection was a farrago of nonsense, the concealed conflicts of interest were damning... and STILL they can't accept the obvious interpretation: that Wakefield was hungry to be famous and an utterly lousy scientist. Instead they have to carry on seeing him as a "wronged crusader for Truth" (for a recent example see the depressing comments thread here). Why is it so hard to accept that the obvious is true, I wonder? It pretty much goes without saying, but I have never met a single scientist or medic, including a couple of GI clinician scientists I know, who views Wakefield other than as a "data fiddler".