to be a little in love with Ben Goldacre?

[entropyglitter]

Just read 'bad science' (finally) and I think I am in love.....

my favourite bit was Gillian McKeith thinking that oxygen (generated by chlorophyll) in your gut is not only plausible, but at all a good idea....

presumably this is at the same time as main lining anti-oxidants (which had been shown to increase your risk of disease rather than decrease it).

They aren't conflicts of interest though. Not like, say, having a patent pending for single vaccines and then making a dodgy experiment the basis for denouncing your competitors. Thats a conflict of interest. Your dad doing a totally different job to you that doesn't impact your work at all, thats not really a CofI.

yes I thought I had already addressed the CoI thing too....

We are never going to get past the MMR thing - there are people who cannot hear the faintest criticism or even questioning of Wakefield et al. So it's no use trying.

Shall we move on to Ben Goldacre on homeopathy?does he have conflicts of interests here? Oh yes, he's a doctor, so obviously has a vested interest in supporting Big Pharma against the little guys, and his conventional narrow minded training means that he is not open to the idea of water having memory- but only if it is shaken in the right direction.

Do people really think that Goldacre senior being a co-author of a paper, which played a role in downplaying the dangers of a vaccine which had to be withdrawn in several countries - the very vaccine that some of the Lancet 12 received, and that we are constantly told was perfectly safe, (despite it having been withdrawn in several countries due to documented serious safety concerns) is completely irrelevant to Goldacre junior's career as a journalist influencing public opinion on this very vaccine?

Do people really think it is irrelevant that Goldacre senior is director of the Unit of Healthcare Epidemiology (a Department Health funded organisation that has produced several studies on the safety of MMR)?

Really? Seriously?

Do people really think it is also irrelevant that Goldacre is/was a research fellow of the IoP - an institution which has 2 prominent members who have published major studies on the safety of the same vaccine? An institution which has a strong collective opinion on ASD and which has (incorrectly) maintained for years that autism is genetic. An institution which has members whose careers and reputations are founded on now known to be erroneous beliefs about ASD?

Well, just, gosh. How odd.

And I repeat, Goldacre may be right that any MMR/autism connection is a load of hooey - I do not wish to debate that. We could spend hours and hundreds of posts rehashing MMR stuff that has already been said so many times on MN already. And it would all be irrelevant to my actual point, which is that Goldacre is not honest about his potential for bias. I think this is pretty concerning given the massive and major influence his journalism has had on public opinion.

I'm suggesting that his apparent tale that he is just some medic who wants to help the public understand that they aren't really able to understand science issues without the help of a good guy like him, and who, as luck would have it, suddenly got to write award winning articles in a major newspaper despite not having worked his way up in journalism (he just popped up out of nowhere), doesn't seem to be quite the whole story.

(As an aside the fact that his 2003 article won an award despite getting the whole content of the Lancet paper completely wrong is about as gobsmacking as people denying that Goldacre isn't very transparent about his connections to some major players in the MMR controversy. Incidentally the award was the GlaxoSmithKline sponsored Association of British Science Writers? best feature award.)

Still you've gotta love the guy for pure inappropriate brass neck, eh!

Sort of gives a whole new spin on the expression 'got the Tshirt' PMSL.

X posted with you seeker.

What I am saying has nowt to do with Wakefield.

I am purely discussing Goldacre.

But it would seem that nobody else has the slightest interest in who this man, who has been handed a major role in the influencing of public opinion, actually is or where he has come from.

As I said before, I find that a bit odd. I also find it odd that Goldacre has refused to explain himself despite repeated requests in the press and in particular in the BMJ.

Forgive me if I am getting in the way of a homeopathy bunfight (inevitable surely )

I know I said I'd hide this and I know I'll regret this, but I just don't see it. Surely a conflict of interests isn't just having associates, or belonging to the Institute of Psychiatry, or having a father in epidemiology?

I'm sure being an Oxbridge grad and having a father in epidemiology did his science and journalism career no end of good, but I just don't see it as an actual CofI. Plus where is the bias? He's reporting on others' scientific studies, not peddling his own.

Whereas Wakefield had a huge massive (and secret at the time of publishing) financial CofI with his funding of research in the Lancet, that even the Lancet have said they wouldn't have published it if they had known. Oh, plus the single vaccine patent! That kind of blows everything else out of the water.

Anyway, really will hide this now or I'll be in a mood all evening.

The COI with his father is that his father directed a government funded unit which produced safety studies on the MMR vaccine.

And that his father co-authored a paper which played a role in downplaying the dangers of a vaccine which had to be withdrawn and which is the subject of much controversy - a controversy which Goldacre has greatly influenced public opinion on.

Goldacre as a research fellow of the IoP presumably receives some sort of funding from them (or at least it would be pretty odd if he didn't). The IoP has played a major role in defining what ASD is and prominent members of the IoP have produced some of the big major studies concerning MMR safety (studies that Goldacre refers to in his journalism). The IoP has a clear position on the MMR controversy.

Forgive me if I seem to be a bit pernickety but I would quite like Goldacre to quit with the illusion that he is an impartial bystander to all this when it quite clearly isn't that simple.

I really am surprised that people don't see the significance of his role at the IoP and his fathers role in a government health body which produced studies on MMR.

For example Goldacre has cited major studies, written by fellow members of the IoP, in his articles, without ever mentioning that he is involved in the IoP himself.

If I were Goldacre, writing about a major medical controversy, it would feel pretty dishonest to me to not reveal my connections with a body which has played a major role in said medical controversy.

He is lying by omission.

I think the Guardian should be declaring this stuff.

Not just any old health journo's regurgitations.

I agree with all you've said SweetLilyTea.....

the fact that the parents of the children in Wakefield's orginal study where already receiving legal aid money to sue the DoH and the vaccine makers plus Wakefield himself received legal aid money to prove the link between MMR and autism kinda blows my mind

Not to mention his vaccine parties he was hosting, where he was giving out his alternative to the MMR for a fiver, I think

Membership of an Institute does not mean that everyone in it has a collective mind or speaks with one voice. I belong to an Institute and last time I looked, I had to give them money not the other way around!

"Not to mention his vaccine parties he was hosting, where he was giving out his alternative to the MMR for a fiver, I think"

oh dear god.

do any of you actually read anythign about Wakefield before you comment, or do you just rely on good old Chinese Whispers?

the mind boggles, it really does.

and quite why one (ill conceived) notion that Wakefield had a conflict of interest would mean that Goldacre's perceived conflict of interest does not matter is entirely beyond me... talk about illogicality.

No, he wasn't giving out an alternative to MMR for a fiver- he paid kids a fiver for blood samples. On, I understand, one occasion.

I've just sent him a email asking for a comment on the conflict of interest thing. I pesume I will either get no reply at all or a standard reply. Watch this space.

Ok, so Ben Goldacre's dad was involved in a study which confirmed a link between a mumps part of the MMR vaccine (which is now no longer used) and aseptic meningitis.

And this is a 'conflict of interest' which should be reported when discussing a discredited link between the MMR jab and autism because....?

Noblegiraffe I said the study played a role in downplaying the safety issues with the Urabe strain vaccine.

The link with meningitis had already been made when this study was published.

This particular study downplays the safety issue - it doesn't claim that there was not a safety issue and I didn't say that it did.

Is it not a wee bit libellous to describe 'having a father and colleagues working in the same field as you' as a conflict of interest?

We're not allowed to do libel on here, we get into trouble...

It is this bit that some people take issue with;

However, the possibility that the aseptic meningitis induced by vaccination was largely asymptomatic and a chance laboratory finding in children investigated for other clinical conditions, particularly febrile convulsions, could not be excluded. Comparison of national reports of virus-positive mumps meningitis cases before and after the introduction of this vaccine indicated that the risk from wild mumps was about 4-fold higher than from vaccine.

What's the issue with that?

Oh I see, Beachcomber. Could the possibility that the aseptic meningitis was largely asymptomatic be excluded? Y'know, based on the evidence?

It seems to me utterly bizarre to suggest that there is some sort of family interest in maintaining a triple vaccine based on a father confirming a problem with an MMR vaccine and a son reporting on a heavily and roundly discredited study. Where's the money?

Oh god, before anyone starts, a heavily and roundly discredited link between MMR and autism which was made by Andrew Wakefield following his research which was published in the Lancet.

How anyone can criticise a book they haven't read is just beyond me.

Please refer to my previous comment about 1000 posts ago.

There are quite a few issues with it - the main ones being the implication that the meningitis cases were largely asymptomatic and the failure to raise the question of a likely link with febrile convulsions and the vaccine. There is a distinct lack of intellectual curiosity going on here.

Indeed the whole study is a bit odd considering the fact that the UK government introduced the vaccine to the UK knowing perfectly well that it carried a risk of meningitis - they knew this because the vaccine had been withdrawn in Canada for that very reason.

www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3347742/Early-fears-about-MMR-in-secret-papers.html

Sorry to be a bit brief but on my way out.

Its not the norm to declare what your parents do when writing for the Guardian, you know.

And don't all vaccines carry a small risk of menigitis ?

So what are you basing your opinion of St Andrew of Wakefield on....

Because Silverfrog, Beachcomber is trying to discredit Goldacre by using the whole Wakefield MMR vaccine scare as the basis for their hatchet job on Goldarce. They themselves have intertwined these two individuals by trying to establish Goldacre's lack of credentials through the prism of the Wakefield scandal by linking his and his father's professional capacities in research on ASD and using their membership of the IoP to prove some sort of culpability. Not my illogicality but Beachcombers

I happened to have followed the whole Wakefield affair very throughly and dont listen to Chinese whispers. All of Wakefield's conflicts of interest were widely reported in the media as was Wakefield's receiving of legal aid money and the children of the study already being involved in litigation so I'm not sure where you get the ill concived bit from. I suggest you delve a little deeper and not listen to piteous stories that Wakefield was some kind of benign figure who was 'done over' by the establishment

There is no such implication. Just a statement that a possibility can't be excluded.

Wakefield Senior's paper confirming the link was published in 1993. Use of the Urabe strain had already been stopped in 1992.

Still not seeing the conflict of interest. Unless B Goldacre isn't allowed to write about anything if M Goldacre got there first?