In April 2017, anti-vaccine groups seemed to have finally gotten what amounted to the Holy Grail for their cause: an allegedly large-scale, peer-reviewed study showing the links between vaccines and autism among a large population of children. Vaccine skeptic groups, who reject the wide body of scientific literature refuting that link between vaccines and autism, have long sought such a study, but they’ve been hampered by practical concerns, most notably the ethical implications of withholding vaccines from a large group of children.
Released to heavy promotional fanfare on anti-vaccine websites and social media, a 24 April 2017
study published by the
Journal of Translational Science claimed to be that Grail. The study (titled “Pilot Comparative Study on the Health of Vaccinated and Unvaccinated 6- to 12-Year Old U.S. Children”) neatly solved the problem of withholding vaccines by surveying parents who had already chosen not to vaccinate their children. Using an online survey of 415 mothers of homeschooled children, the study concluded that vaccines can increase the risk of neurological developmental disorders, particularly in cases of preterm birth.
The anti-vaccine website Age of Autism, which also helped
raise money for the study,
reported its findings in glowing terms:
As parents have long expected, the rate of autism is significantly higher in the vaccinated group, a finding that could shake vaccine safety claims just as the first president who has ever stated a belief in a link between vaccines and autism has taken office.
The only problem? The paper is a identical version of a paper briefly published in
Frontiers in Public Health in 2016 before
being disowned by the publisher. This
Translational Science version, as well, was pulled from the website with some reports that it had been
retracted as well. As of 18 May 2017, however, the study reappeared on that journal’s website with no public comment for why it was removed or returned.
As we will describe below, these de facto retractions and high level of scrutiny stem not from a conspiracy to silence work critical of the medical establishment, but from the myriad ethical, methodological, and quantitative problems inherent in the study and to the research group behind it.
The Researchers, Their Funding, and the “Peer-Reviewed” Journals
Though hailed by some blog posts as a truly “independent” research project, the lead author of the study, Anthony Mawson, is far from an impartial player in this debate: he is a vocal
supporter of Andrew Wakefield, a controversial doctor who is arguably the the father of the anti-vaccine movement. Wakefield first proposed the connection between vaccination and autism in a 12-child case study built with data that was
misrepresented and collected without ethical
approval, a work that has since been retracted. At the time of the study, Wakefield was
working with a lawyer to create a class-action lawsuit against makers of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Wakefield had also filed a patent for a replacement MMR vaccine that he hoped to develop.
Mawson, who
signed a petition called “We Support Andrew Wakefield,” alleged in a 2011
lawsuit that he lost an academic post due to his views on vaccine safety. (That lawsuit was
dismissed.)
Mawson’s vaccine study was
funded by two anti-vaccine groups:
Generation Rescue, founded by anti-vaccine activist Jenny McCarthy, and the Children’s Medical Safety Research Institute, founded by vaccine skeptic
Claire Dwoskin. Web sites such as Age of Autism ran
ads calling for donations to Generation Rescue, containing an explicit statement that the money would go toward funding the study.
The journals that published the study are just as a problematic as the donors, though for different reasons: both journals have been
accused of predatory practices. These types of journals profit from academia’s relentless focus on publication by charging large publishing fees in lieu of editorial
oversight.
Translational Science charged Mawson et al
$2,000 to publish their study.
Additionally, both journals’ commitment to the peer-review process is questionable at best. For the study’s 2016 incarnation, Frontiers in Public Health asked Linda Mullin Elkins, a chiropractor with no published research to her name on the subject of autism, or any background in vaccine research or epidemiology, to review the study. This same journal, just four months prior, retracted a paper about “chemtrails”, a popular topic in conspiracy circles alleging government-hidden harm from chemical trails made by planes in the sky.
While there is less of a publication history by which to judge the
Journal of Translational Science — its first issue was released in
July 2015 — it is not widely cited and is
not indexed on the National Institute of Health’s MEDLINE database, a repository for abstracts of medically relevant research.
'First Ever' Study Comparing Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Children Shows Harm from Vaccines?
