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Scientific study PROVES MMR sceptics are dicks
February 10th, 2009 at 17:06
The excellent Ben Goldacre (who bought me a drink a few weeks ago – but this is far from the main reason why he is excellent), who writes the Guardian’s Bad Science column is in a spot of bother because of his tireless efforts to raise awareness that people who perpetuate the “MMR causes autism!” myth are crackers. LBC, the radio station that calls itself “London’s Big Conversation” have kicked up a fuss because he posted an audio clip of one of their presenters talking rubbish about MMR, to illustrate how hideous the programme was. Apparently London’s Big Conversation stops as soon as they start looking stupid.
LBC aren’t moaning about him disputing what the DJ, Jeni Barnett, was saying on the radio – chances are they know that she’s an idiot, but they’ve clearly been trying to cover their tracks and hide the fact such rubbish was actually broadcast. So they’ve threatened to sue Ben for “copyright infringement”.
Arguments about fair use, whistleblowing or public interest aside, I think LBC totally have a point there – if Ben Goldacre hadn’t put the recording on in the internet, I would have definitely bought a CD compilation of LBC’s Greatest MMR hits.
You’d think they’d be happy about having listeners redistribute material there’s never going to be any residual revenue on to boost awareness of the station – all of the TV news channels don’t complain about clips appearing on YouTube for much the same reason. So Ben’s had to remove the clip – but now it’s available all over the internet, including on Wikileaks.
As you probably know, this whole MMR causing autism myth started when a hilariously flawed and consistently debunked study by Andrew Wakefield was published in the Lancet – and more importantly, was picked up by the Daily Mail and Melanie Phillips began the uninformed scaremongering. And then the cases of mumps rocketed.
I’ve actually been looking into Wakefield’s methodology, and have conducted a study myself using it. And the results are quite amazing: it turns out that being a fan of Andrew Wakefield makes you a dick. I’ve even got a graph that proves it:
The results are pretty conclusive – the trend is very clear. The bigger fan of Wakefield you are, the more of a dick you are. Now, I know there may be “MMR sceptics” reading who might dispute this – you might argue that correlation does not prove causation, or perhaps allege that my research was completely fabricated or not conducted properly. If that’s the case, I ask you: why are you holding me to a higher standard than Andrew Wakefield?
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