"abacus" wrote in message
m...
"Mark Probert-February 23, 2004" Mark
wrote in message . net...

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/a...ing%20Standard


The Government claims Dr Andrew Wakefield had a conflict of interest
when he
produced a study suggesting a link between the vaccine and autism,
because
he was paid £55,000 by lawyers to investigate whether MMR was safe.

£55,000= around $75,000 just for starters....

Where is the outrage of the anti-vacs? They have none! They will,
instead,
point out that the pro-vacs also have conflicts. However, Wakefield kept
this gem a secret....

I'm not sure exactly what the problem here is.

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.

Was he hiding the source of his funding? That would be a problem, but
I'm not clear about whether he was not disclosing the source of his
funding or whether it simply was not given adequate acknowledgement by
those who were reporting his results. If Wakefield did, as you claim,
keep this "secret" then outrage would be appropriate (a list of
funding sources should accompany research results) and it would make
his results suspect, but it doesn't, by itself, constitute a conflict
of interest. It depends on what other work he was accepting payment
for.

Is he sitting on vaccine policy-making committees? Then there is a
conflict of interest. Even so, that alone is not necessarily a serious
problem. If he was keeping the funding source 'secret', then it is.
But as long as the issue is on the table and everyone is aware of the
potential bias, the conflict of interest is not an insurmountable
problem.

Is he sitting on vaccine policy-making committees composed primarily
or entirely of people with the same bias as he has? This would be a
serious problem and make all decisions put forth by such a committee
suspect. That sort of situation should and does cause outrage.

For more examples of such situations (not about vaccines though) in
the U.S. and the seriousness and extent of the problem, I suggest you
check out the report on "Scientific Integrity in Policymaking" put out
earlier this week by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Their entire
report in online at
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/rsi/index.html