I love the Lancet. I have my own subscription, and it isn’t cheap. However, the Lancet took a cheap shot last week, when it retracted a paper on autism by Wakefield et al. immediately following a ruling by the UK’s General Medical Counsel. The Lancet has been embroiled in controversy (and repeatedly tried to extract itself, but that’s another story) since publishing the 1998 Wakefield et al. paper that put the issue of autism and measles vaccine on the map. But the retraction didn’t have to happen. The abstract discussed in the post just below this one shows that DHHS doctors came to a similar conclusion (that measles vaccine and neurologic damage in children should be investigated) the same year as Wakefield. Those authors were never put on trial, have retracted nothing, and Caserta is currently running the vaccine injury compensation program for swine flu vaccine. Why is the Lancet retracting the paper now? The editors list two reasons: the children were not “consecutively referred” and the studies weren’t approved by the local ethics committee. Well, after the many prior investigations of this paper, I am astonished that it took 12 years for Lancet to discover the lack of IRB approval. Sounds fishy. Lancet is upset the children were not “consecutively referred”? Isn’t that reaching a bit, editors? Have you forgotten that JAMA recently published a paper claiming that 10% of your published papers are written by ghost authors

Original Source of Lancet vs. Wakefield