Unlike politicians, clergymen or philosophers, scientists have pretty universally established standards for establishing when "your own mind" about a causal relationship between x and y is almost certainly wrong; rejecting their approach to doing it (i.e. go to school and learn for several years so you can critique the research rather than basing your view on anecdotes collected by yellow journalists) is tantamount to rejecting science as a discipline. Yes, it's elitist, but there's a reason I don't ask the man on the street to prescribe me medicine whilst being perfectly willing to debate the merits of the current government with him.
The thing is that this article isn't about how the public was wrong, it's an example the rampant corruption in mainstream science. And it's one of hundreds of examples of how the current states of science, peer review, and publishing are horrifically broken.
Let's look at the facts of this case. The author didn't cite his financial connections, but the journal failed to catch this. The author made up data, but the journal failed to catch this. The public demanded an investigation into the vaccines, but the government refused to start an investigation or even answer their questions. When the government finally did start an investigation many years later they did it behind closed doors, and the public wasn't even allowed to read the transcript of the conversation for several more years. The scientific establishment has been in the wrong here at literally every turn, and yet you're spinning the story and trying to use it as an example of how the general public shouldn't be allowed to make their own medical decisions. Yes, the anti-vaccine crowd was also in the wrong for putting excessive weight on this study in the first place, but this apologism for the scientific establishment is completely unwarranted.
I think it's pretty evident the scientific establishment isn't perfect and thus has differences of opinion, and you make a good point about lack of openness. But the pertinent facts are that the majority of medical professionals and the NHS that paid for the treatments stood behind the drug companies' testing and the vaccination's safety record whilst the angry parents' law firm, their outspoken shill medic and the media coverage all encouraged large segments of the British public to wrongly challenge the balance of medical opinion.
"media coverage encouraged large segments of the British public to wrongly challenge the balance of medical opinion."
This study came out in 1998, and the media coverage didn't peak until late 2005. The vast majority of those in the anti-vaccine movement had never even read the original article, and only gave it credence because of the lack of transparency. In between when the study was released and when the media hype peaked:
* The largest companies in the world were going bankrupt because the government was encouraging them to use fraudulent mark-to-market accounting methods
* The government prevented any investigation into 9/11 for over a year, and then stonewalled and lied to the investigating committee once it was finally formed.
* The government lied about the safety of the air at ground zero.
* The government lied about Iraq having WMDs and being connected to 9/11, and started a war based on these lies.
Even if it was scientifically unjustified to believe that vaccines caused autism based on one study, there was nothing unreasonable about parents avoiding the vaccinations once they heard that the government was once again lying.
You don't get to claim that people should trust you if you are constantly lying to them. What happened with regards to falling vaccination rates was completely reasonable and predictable given the circumstances, whether scientifically justifiable or not. And it was only after an epic government fuckup of 7+ years that the issue went from being a fringe concern to a mainstream panic.
In that environment, whether medical professionals or the NHS were for or against the treatments was really not pertinent at all.
The 2005 media coverage was all over Wakefield's attempts to pretend he wasn't in the pocket of trial lawyers fighting drug companies over the MMR vaccine. The peak hysteria over the threat of the vaccine itself was pre-Iraq war.
But I'm finding it hard to see an argument in your post against the original point that people without medical backgrounds really shouldn't be making medical judgements. Especially if they consider the views of medical professionals and the NHS less pertinent to their kid's health than knee-jerk distrust in anything government-approved provoked by entirely irrelevant military intelligence scandals...
Funny, but I bet this is exactly the way flat earthers argued earlier in history - "Everyone knows the Earth is flat! Unless you're a trained natural philosopher, keep your mouth shut!" Questioning 'facts' is only natural, and right. You should only take as fact that which you are ready to accept - what you've verified, however inexpertly, on your own.
Actually, that entire story is a myth invented in modern times to paint ancient thinkers as "backwards." And I quote:
The myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth is flat appears to date from the 17th century as part of the campaign by Protestants against Catholic teaching. But it gained currency in the 19th century, thanks to inaccurate histories such as John William Draper's History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (1874) and Andrew Dickson White's History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896).
