On 25 Feb 2004 11:10:39 -0800, (abacus) wrote:

Is it that he is accepting funding for his research? Do you expect
him to do it for free? Simply accepting funding for research does
not constitute a conflict of interest. Conflict of interest occurs
when one is accepting funding from different sources with different
and potentially conflicting goals.

As I understand it, he was particially funded by a group of
what would in the US be referred to as medical malpractice lawyers,
and did not declare that when submitting a paper claiming to find a
cause for autism (which cause would be eminently litigatable).

At a minimum, the conflict needed to be declared (at a mazimum, as the
Lancet article suggested, that specific article would not have been
accepted for publication). It doesn't just strain credulity to accept
that Wakefield didn't think he needed to declare the conflict, it breaks
credulity.