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January 30

Autism and Vaccination - Wakefield’s Lancet Paper Vindicated – [Yet Again]

This paper, Wakefield’s Lancet Paper Vindicated – [Yet Again] claims that Andrew Wakefield paper linking autism to vaccination has been "vindicated". The BMJ appears to be respected, peer-reviewed journal. Why did they publish this? What am I missing? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:17, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

What you have linked to is not a "paper": it is a "Response," or an "electronic letter to the editor." It is not held to the same standard as the peer-reviewed research on which it provides commentary. See more on this topic: Responses, at Resources for the reader. That commentary is, in the most real sense, the actual equivalent of an internet-comment - not a "paper." It's some random guy's response to the paper - and that random guy may or may not hold any credentials. Heck, per the BMJ's policy on internet-responses, that guy might not even subscribe to the journal! The actual paper, in this case, was BMJ 2010;340:c1127, which is a bit more circumspect in its claims.

Nimur (talk) 00:24, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The random guy seems to be a commercial lawyer rather than a physician. The vindication that he's claiming is about bowel disease and autism, and not about vaccination. - Nunh-huh 01:57, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah I missed that in AQFK's original comment. I'm not sure whether AQFK didn't read the response or what, but there is absolutely nothing about vaccination in it. The only mention the author makes of vaccination is in another response but it has nothing really to do with research [1]. (Incidentally, I don't know if it's BMJ's fault or what but some of the formatting is very bad as reflected there. Also [2].) Nil Einne (talk) 03:38, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

(EC) Our Autistic enterocolitis article also reports some more papers published after that, especially [3]. Also you can see the other rapid responses including the responses to that response here [4]. Note that the headline research the response cites is this [5] [6] a conference paper. I'm not finding any signs the research was ever published in peer review form, for example looking at combinations of the various researchers [7] [8] I only found [9] [10] [11] [12] and well a bunch here [13] which don't have to do with ASD/autism. In other words, the research which 'vindicates' Wakefield's findings 'yet again' was apparently never properly published. Also if you actually look at the conference paper, it's not clear to me it even provides any real evidence for the basic hypothesis namely that there is some form of colitis unique to people with autism spectrum disorders, or at least some specific form of colitis more common among them. Instead it was just a report of finding GI symptoms in patients with ASD and how these lead to various problems. This is even more reflected in the other papers I listed, but it can be difficult to work out and manage conditions in someone with limited verbal communication. (I say this from experience although not autism.) The number of cases seems high, but these were people being enrolled so may be more likely to have problems plus even if GI symptoms are high (dietary management is also probably a common difficulty), it doesn't mean they are they are some specific form of colitis. It could be there is something more revealing presented at the conference, but I strongly doubt the author of that response attended it or is otherwise aware of any such thing. Nil Einne (talk) 02:37, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I earlier looked into research about autism published by the authors of the paper to try and confirm there was no publication of that research. If you are interested more generally in hypotheses surrounding possible connections between GI symptoms and ASD, this author seemed the only one who published anything remotely related [14]. (Note not all of these are by the author, I assume all KC ones are, K ones may be, Kx are obviously not.) See e.g. [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21]. I would also mention [22] by a different author mostly because it highlights you can't assume something is unique to ASD just because you found it in a study of ASD patients. Also [23] [24] seem to be related to my earlier mentioned possible dietary management difficulties. (And especially with the second result, it's worth remembering parents dealing with the pressures of a child with ASD may make different choices too.) Nil Einne (talk) 03:27, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]