Vaccines, The Lancet retraction and open scientific debate

Last week, the promi­nent British med­ical jour­nal The Lancet for­mally retracted a deeply flawed 1998 study that linked child­hood measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vac­cine to autism. Despite a wealth of research that con­cludes there is no link, a decade of anti-vaccine sen­ti­ment is prov­ing more dif­fi­cult to retract. In an inter­view for On The Media, The Lancet’s edi­tor Dr. Richard Hor­ton weighs in on the state of open sci­en­tific debate:

We used to think that we could pub­lish spec­u­la­tive research which advanced inter­est­ing new ideas which may be wrong, but which were impor­tant to pro­voke debate and dis­cus­sion. We don’t think that now. We don’t seem able to have a ratio­nal con­ver­sa­tion in the pub­lic space about dif­fi­cult con­tro­ver­sial issues with­out peo­ple draw­ing a con­clu­sion which could be very averse.…The 19th-century days where you could sit in the salon at the Royal Soci­ety and have a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion amongst your fel­lows just doesn’t exist any­more. So I think yeah, too much infor­ma­tion in this par­tic­u­lar case is a bad thing, which seems to go against every kind of demo­c­ra­tic prin­ci­ple that we believe in. But in the case of sci­ence, it seems to be true.

But it is not. I can’t help but won­der if we had had this con­ver­sa­tion, in pub­lic, ten years ago when the study was still “spec­u­la­tive research” we may well have averted the flawed deci­sion to pub­lish it in the first place. We need more infor­ma­tion, not less, and more inclu­sive con­ver­sa­tions, not nar­rowly con­fined to the med­ical com­mu­nity. The pub­lic may well have to engage the med­ical com­mu­nity in the pub­lic space “dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions with­out draw­ing a con­clu­sion that could be very averse…”