Lancet Fully Retracts Paper Linking Autism to MMR Vaccine
Today The Lancet announced: "it has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation. In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were "consecutively referred" and that investigations were "approved" by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record."
Though this final, and finally complete, retraction is based on a determination of ethical lapses on the part of the author the fact remains that the results reported in the article have never been replicated. Nevertheless, contrary to what most lay people might assume published scientific papers aren't retracted just because the "science" within them turns out to be wrong.
