Dr Fiona Godlee, Editor-in-Chief [for the moment] of the British Medical Journal is “up to her neck in it” current “electronic chatter” suggests. She alleged Dr Andrew Wakefield committed fraud. Godlee came out with the allegation in a BMJ Editorial in January, having been convinced by her commissioned author, the occasional journalist, Mr Brian Deer in a piece she published for him in January this year.
But now, when challenged over the reliability of Mr Deer’s allegations by the Journal Nature, the oldest and most respected science journal in the world [and no doubt to Dr Godlee's horror], Nature reports “Deer notes that he never accused Wakefield of fraud“: Fresh dispute about MMR ‘fraud’: Nature News 9 November 2011 | Nature 479, 157-158 (2011).
Ha!!
This leaves Dr Godlee standing naked and alone. The good doctor should have taken more careful note of Mr Deer’s ranting in his one and only blog in the UK’s The Guardian newspaper where he revealed his malevolent attitude to the BMJ and Lancet medical journals. In the blog bizarrely titled “The medical establishment shielded Andrew Wakefield from fraud claims” Mr Deer attacks the entire medical profession for protecting Andrew Wakefield when it has hounded him mercilessly for speaking out about vaccine safety. But about The Lancet and British Medical Journal Mr Deer says:
One of the most insidious cartels at the heart of British science is being torn apart: the two top journals in medical science.”
Sorry Mr Deer, we just have to laugh. Aside from those claims being in our opinion [and you are welcome to disagree] barking mad, Dr Godlee must now “face the music” alone.
Worse still for Godlee is that even the BMJ’s own expert agreed there was no realistic basis for alleging fraud, with Nature reporting:
the BMJ asked Ingvar Bjarnason, a gastroenterologist at King’s College Hospital, London, to review the materials. Bjarnason …… says that the forms don’t clearly support charges that Wakefield deliberately misinterpreted the records. “The data are subjective. It’s different to say it’s deliberate falsification,” he says.
And the US expert Dr David Lewis, is also reported by Nature:
The documents that Lewis reviewed include confidential forms …… The forms were filled out by pathologists Andrew Anthony and Paul Dhillon, who worked with Wakefield at the Royal Free. ….. Lewis believes that the sheets show that Anthony and Dhillon were making good-faith diagnoses of colitis. …… (Neither has been accused of manipulating data.)
In summary, Mr Deer says he did not accuse Dr Wakefield of fraud and both Drs Lewis and Bjarnason concur there appears no basis to allege fraud.
Heh, so what did Dr Godlee say?
Fiona Godlee, the editor of the BMJ, says that the journal’s conclusion of fraud was not based on the pathology but on a number of discrepancies between the children’s records and the claims in the Lancet paper. “
Sure thing Doc. So what exactly are these “number of discrepancies“? And while you are about it how come Dr Bjarnason made a fundamental error too? Bjarnason is reported in Nature saying “… he doesn’t believe they [the materials reviewed by him] are sufficient to support claims in the Lancet paper of a new disease process. “
Heh, Doc, the Lancet paper did not lay claim to a new disease process. It was reporting on the bowel conditions found in children who were developing normally and then regressed. How can you rely on an expert who does not pay attention to what he is meant to be doing? Dr Bjarnason, remember, next time read the question first before attempting to answer it.
Naturally, this cannot be the BMJ’s new method of trashing papers the Editor does not like. You know:
- claiming a paper says it has found something it has not claimed to find and then;
- trashing the paper by claiming the data and results do not justify the claims the BMJ says the paper has made [ie. when the authors have not made those claims].
Hey, just a minute, isn’t that just what the BMJ did to Andrew Wakefield’s 1998 Lancet paper? The BMJ and Mr Deer changed the presentations of the 12 children’s conditions and the paper’s findings, reported them being different from what they were and then claimed the data and results did not justify the claims made in Wakefield’s paper. Is doing something like that research fraud or is it legitimately getting something wrong and then claiming later “Oops sorry Dr Wakefield, we made a mistake“? Answers on a postcard please.
Like this:
Filed under: ADHD, Aspergers, autism, MMR, vaccination, Vaccine Damage, Vaccines Tagged: | ADHD, Anti-vaccine Safety, Aspergers, autism, Cervarix, Corruption, fraud, Gardasil, GlaxoSmithKline, HPV vaccine, John Poling, mercury, MMR, swine flu, thimerosal, thiomersal, vaccination, vaccine, vaccine court, Vaccine Damage, Vaccines
THE INSTITUTE FOR NEARLY GENUINE RESEARCH
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Godlee is along with Deer the biggest fall guys walking just now…Deer will follow with his xxxx flapping out the window covered in it…
Angus
Brian Deer’s latest comments in the BMJ and Scientific American, in response to David Lewis’s BMJ letter, are an embarrassment. Deer targeted Lewis with his usual ad hominem nastiness, and also ‘rubbished’ the properly organised scientific vaccine safety conference where Wakefield and Lewis met. In the SA Deer calls this a ‘Mexican Freebie’ complete with ‘lavish hospitality’ and in the BMJ The vaccine conference is called a ‘high season Caribbean trip’ at a ‘five star holidayspot’, paid for by ‘anti vaccine’ promoters! Deer wrote that Wakefield ‘headlined the cabaret’. In fact Dr Wakefield was just one of a number of scientists invited to speak at this conference.
Deer’s fanciful and insulting Murdoch press style language, attracted the ire of two of the conference organisers, well respected academics, Professor Christopher A. Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic, Neuroscientist, both University of British Columbia; their responses treated Deer’s comments with the contempt they deserved. It begs the question. Why is this unpleasant unqualified hack (Deer’s own word) being given journal space in thev BMJ at all?
http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5347?tab=responses
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=discredited-vaccine-autism&posted=1#comments
Fantastic read. More people need to know about this!
Sorry. The conference where Andrew Wakefield and David Lewis met was held in Jamaica, not Mexico. Deer actually called it a ‘Jamaican freebie’ .
In his BMJ Rapid Response, Professor Christopher A. Shaw made the point that speakers’ expenses at scientific conferences are paid out of the conference budget, usually by charging attendees a fee. ‘Lavish hospitality’ is only affordable with institutional or corporate sponsorship.
A conference debating aspects of vaccine safety would be most unlikely to receive any sponsorship from the pharmaceutical industry, unlike Deer’s recent US and Canadian speaking tours, including his anti Wakefield talk at the US Johns Hopkins University. An eye witness account of this rather shameful episode, (JHU has not issued a transcript), recounted how Deer used all kinds of Powerpoint tricks, (I won’t call this cabaret), including allusions to playing cards and other forms of gambling.
During this lecture, Deer alleged that Dr Wakefield and his Royal Free colleagues all expected ‘jackpots of money’ from marketing what Deer called an MMR competing vaccine, but was actually nothing of the sort, just an ameliorating substance designed to combat the effects of the wild measles, discovered by Dr Wakefield during his research. The patent was in the name of the Royal Free Hospital and any profits would have gone to UCL.
Professor Mark Pepys, UCL medical director, has admitted on a Radio 4 programme, telling Dr Wakefield to leave his job at the Royal Free, after which Pepys lost no time in setting up another UCL ‘commercial arm’ in partnership with MMR manufacturers GSK, which benefits from any subsequent marketable research discoveries at UCL. As Deer says ‘You couldn’t make this up’
“UCL Professor Mark Pepys hailed as an ‘academic superstar’ by GlaxoSmithKline”
http://uclb.com/ucl-professor-mark-pepys-hailed-as-an-academic-superstar-by-glaxosmithklineucl-professor-mark-pepys-hailed-as-an-academic-superstar-by-glaxosmithkline
Dr Godlee has also been busy this October speading the anti Wakefield poison in Bethesda, US. This time a film of her mumbling shambling lecture was made available online. I wonder who or what paid HER expenses?
Skeptiks Cry Fraud
You’ll hear a lot from the ‘skeptiks’ about the original pathology examinations undertaken by Dr Susan Davies and how it was ‘normal’.
What you won’t hear is that research and clinical science is undertaken by a cohesive team of professionals with many, many years of experience and up to date with a variety of current and past findings in their particular field of expertise and those closely allied.
In other words these are professionals highly skilled, highly knowledgeable and with positions of trust and authority in one of the leading teaching hospitals in the United Kingdom.
Sworn testimony by Professor Simon Murch gives us a brief insight into why there were differences between the pathology described by Davies and the Lancet paper (Day 113 GMC transcripts) … skeptiks ‘believe’ that Andy Wakefield surreptitiously and fraudulently changed key bowel pathology data to suit his own conclusions.
Guess what it isn’t so.
Here’s the simple reason why …taken from the official transcripts and sworn testimony of Professor Simon Murch.
GMC – Day 113 Friday 16 January 2008 Pages 43/44
“Q Was there any meeting about the histology section?
A Yes, I recall a meeting. I suspect that I may not be alone with that, but I do have a very good recollection of the meeting. I think the reason was initially that Dr Davies had seen the draft of the paper and just wondered whether the description of the histology perhaps oversold it. In other words, was the description in the paper something that was rather more florid than the lesion she remembered and thus my recollection is that she arranged a lunchtime meeting – I believe it was Friday, that is possibly irrelevant – in the manner of our normal histology meeting in the same place, in the histology seminar room, where the various pathologists who had seen the tissues attended at the same time and so this would be from the paper Dr Anthony —
Q I want to run through a list of names and then if I miss out anyone then of course add them in. Let us start off with Dr Davies; was she present at that meeting?
A She was indeed.
Q Professor Walker-Smith?
A Yes.
Q Dr Thomson?
A Yes.
Q Obviously yourself.
A Yes.
Q Dr Andrew Anthony?
A Yes.
Q Dr Dhillon?
A Yes.
Q Dr Heuschkel?
A I believe that Dr Heuschkel was present, yes. I am less certain about that, but that is my recollection from that meeting.
Q Dr Casson?
A I believe so, yes.
Q Dr Malik?
A I also believe so, yes.
Q Dr Wakefield?
A Yes.
Q Are there any others you remember being present at that meeting?
A I think Dr Alan Phillips may have been there as well but I cannot recall with certainty.
Q Were the original histology slides that had gone to Dr Davies’ lab looked at at that meeting?
A They were.
Q What was the outcome of that meeting about the description of the histology?
A That all the pathologists present when the slides were reviewed case by case agreed that the wording in the paper – we had a table of the histological findings, which I believe will be as seen in the paper here – they all agreed that the wording was reasonable. So I think that Dr Davies was then satisfied that the paper could go forward for publication without change in the histological description.”
———————————————————————————–
Up to 11 highly respected and eminent professionals made that decision not one man and it certainly wasn’t changed. It was agreed and published.
Professor Walker-Smith
Dr Thomson
Professor Simon Murch
Dr Andrew Anthony
Dr Dhillon
Dr Heuschkel
.
Dr Casson
Dr Malik
.
Dr Wakefield
Dr Alan Phillips (?)
Dr Davies
As well as the ORIGINAL histology slides.
——————————————————————————–
The situation of the British Medical Journal is simply untenable. They have shown bias and tried to “Poison the Well” a popular ‘skeptik’ tactic.
The British Medical Journal promised that they had diligently reviewed both editorially and by peer review the substance and evidence of any allegation put forward.
This was to be the impetus for a Parliamentary enquiry, that would have cost the British taxpayer millions , probably started a new vaccine scare and wasted valuable resources and the time and energy of valuable medical professionals that are focussed on the care and treatment of vulnerable , sick and disabled children
I would not be surprised if disability groups take a very dim view of the behaviour exhibited in this affair and make recommendations against any support of the British Medical Journal position.
The work of those researchers particularly, the invaluable insights into autistic bowel pathology that has led to new understandings between gut and behaviour in autistic children should now be recognised as one of the break through moments in autism. As was envisaged back in a 1998 Press Conference and a Lancet published paper.
* The spelling of ‘skeptiks’ is not an error it is used to differentiate true objective scepticism and the new militant, prejudiced one that appears most regularly on the net.