Vaccines and Autism

[Pat Mustard]

so to say the paper had no credibility for publication at all is not entirely accurate - at best we'd say the paper should have been rejected at the time so the authors could fix the problems and re-submit it.

Well, the fact that Wakefield was selecting his subjects in such a way to appear to bolster his hypothesis, that he was carrying out the research while secretly being funded by a lawyer who was trying to prepare a tort case against providers of the MMR vaccine, and generally lied about a) what his research was in the paper itself and b) about the results of his "research" in press conferences designed to fuel the MMR scare, the paper had absolutely no credibility at all.

The only way it could be accurately be resubmitted was by Wakefield submitting a new paper "my previous research was a pack of lies designed to fuel a health scare hoax. I am a shit of a man. I am sorry."