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January 7, 2011
The Autism Scam: Why it should be springtime for exposing medical and scientific frauds
The Last Psychiatrist: Wakefield And The Autism Fraud-- The Other Part Of The Story Peer Review is a joke-- why do you call it that?They're not my peers, they're my close friends or my mortal enemies depending on my/my department's relationship with the editor; and they're not reviewing it, they're writing asinine, self-important comments that will never be noted after publication. Why doesn't it change? The answer is precisely in what Wakefield did: he wrote a tiny paper that he hoped would not be scrutinized (or even read.) He just wanted to be able to say he wrote it, he wrote it not for science but for himself. Now pick up any journal. How many articles within are not for clinicians to act on, they're to put on a CV, get a promotion, get a grant, establish a name. That's why we have ten million journals, none of which anyone reads, ever.Fortunately enough good science gets done, loudly, powerfully, that medicine moves forward. But the amazement shouldn't be that Wakefield's study was a fraud, the amazement should be why we haven't discovered hundreds of studies that are frauds.
Posted by Vanderleun at January 7, 2011 6:00 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
This is quite possibly the best response to the debauching of science:
Posted by: Jewel at January 8, 2011 8:18 AM