Sometimes science is truly heartening. Not just for the amazing feel-good research, but also for the good old-fashioned “schadenfreudegasms” it can provide. Just last week, I wrote a pretty depressing piece about the fabrication of scientific results, and one of the concerns is the ability of funding, vested interests and pressure groups to tamper with results.
Now, when an anti-vaccination and autism advocacy group called SafeMinds decides to fund a six-year study looking for links between vaccinations and autism, despite plenty of research concluding it’s bunk, you might expect the results to come down in favour of the anti-vaxxers.
Nope. The study concluded that there is no evidence of a link between autism and vaccines.
Presumably the anti-vaxxers have changed their tune and joined the mainstream? Nah, they’ve just put their fingers in their ears, stating they have “concerns about changes in the study design protocol and analysis that may have led to these contradictory results”. The purported contradiction is that preliminary results from a smaller trial seemed to be more sympathetic to their position, but once it was expanded to more monkey subjects – complete with rigorous scientific standards – the results evaporated.
“We feel that embedded within these data sets there are animals that have potentially an adverse reaction to this vaccine schedule that would mirror what happens in human infants,” SafeMinds president Sallie Bernard told Newsweek.
Colour me not hugely surprised.
Someone should let Donald Trump in on this latest research.
Images: Steven Depolo and Alden Chadwick used under Creative Commons
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