Brian Deer on Autism, Vaccination, and Scientific Fraud

EconTalk

Library of Economics and Liberty

Ethics, Philosophy, Economics, Books, Science, Business, Courses, Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Interviews, Education, History

4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2011

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Investigative journalist Brian Deer talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Deer's seven years of reporting and legal issues surrounding the 1998 article in The Lancet claiming that the MMR vaccine causes autism and bowel problems. Deer's dogged pursuit of the truth led to the discovery that the 1998 article was fraudulent and that the lead author had hidden payments he received from lawyers to finance the original study. In this podcast, Deer describes how he uncovered the truth and the legal consequences that followed. The conversation closes with a discussion of the elusiveness of truth in science and medicine.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	other information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mailadicontalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you.
0:36.8	Today's January 25th, 2011, and my guest is investigative journalist Brian Deere. Brian has
0:46.4	spent seven years or so investigating claims that vaccination causes autism among children, particularly
0:53.6	looking at an influential 1998 study that made that claim. In a recent set of reports, he has
0:59.4	shown that those claims were not just inaccurate, but fraudulent and corrupt. Brian, welcome to Econ Talk.
1:05.3	Hi, Brian.
1:07.0	So in 1998, Lancet, which is one of the most prestigious, if not the most prestigious medical journal
1:12.4	in the world, published a study claiming a link between vaccination and both autism and bowel disease. Tell us
1:19.9	what that original study claimed and what it's the basis for those claims were published in the
1:28.0	Lancet, which is a British-based medical journal, comes out weekly. It's reckoned to be secondary to
1:36.1	the two most prestigious journals, which would be the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal
1:41.1	of the American Medical Association, but nevertheless, immensely influential journal. In February
1:47.8	1998, February 28th, edition of 1998, it published a five-page paper by a team of doctors at
1:55.6	the North London Medical School. They were led by a Dr Andrew Wakefield, who was at the time,
2:02.9	he was a former trainee surgeon. He'd never finished training as a surgeon, but it moved into
2:08.1	laboratory research. And with 12 other doctors, including pediatricians and pathologists,
2:18.0	he published a paper claiming that, if I give the scenario, that 12 families had turned up
2:27.3	at the hospital associated with this medical school, the Royal Free, which is in Hampstead in
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Library of Economics and Liberty, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Library of Economics and Liberty and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.