Ian Hislop was interviewed by Radio 5 Live’s Simon Mayo on Friday. In a discussion about the Eye’s campaigning journalism Mayo brought up the Eye’s coverage of MMR vaccine. The Eye published a special edition about MMR in May of 2002 subtitled “The story so far: a comprehensive review of the MMR vaccination/autism controversy”. It was an appalling piece of scare-mongering journalism. Here are the views of David Elliman and Helen Bedford on the Private Eye publication at the time:
Perhaps not surprisingly the style is of a journalistic exposé rather than a well argued scientific treatise, with Andrew Wakefield held up as a crusader for truth, opposing the mighty drug companies and Department of Health. Private Eye seems to have used the kind of lay, anecdotal information that you might read in What Doctors Don’t Tell You and the Informed Parent rather than what you would find in the BMJ or Lancet. Understandably, much space is given to the harrowing accounts of parents who believe that the triple vaccine caused their child’s autism. However, the overwhelming evidence suggesting no link between the vaccine and autism and bowel problems is either not mentioned or dismissed out of hand, while the suggestion of a link is given uncritical prominence.
For example, in telling the story of the evolution of Wakefield’s hypothesis the report fails to mention that at almost each stage independent researchers as well as the original investigators have been unable to replicate the findings. The scientists/researchers listed in the “Who’s who in the MMR story” is nowhere near complete (but then to publish the names of all those who continue to support the vaccine would leave little space for anything else) and reflects the Eye’s bias with seven of the nine doubting the safety of the vaccine. If one were to quantify the evidence for and against a link, the ratio would be in the other direction.
Having read that, have a listen to Ian Hislop’s admission that MMR vaccine is not related to MMR vaccine, and his utter failure to take responsibility for the actions of his publication over MMR vaccine. Simon Mayo’s quiet interview technique can be quite effective at times.
6 Comments
That’s a fascinating interview. While I’m generally a fan of Private Eye, their MMR coverage appalled me, and seemed to demonstrate the sort of selective anti-establishment bias that you’d see in a lot of conspiracy theorists.
It’s particularly interesting that Hislop remarks at the end that “it wasn’t quite as black and white as you’re suggesting.” And clearly he’s not got much of a grasp of meta-analysis when he starts on about “a bunch of statisticians.” There’s obviously a bit of a knowledge gap there.
BTW, I’ve been meaning to ask you if you want to be included on the BPSDB aggregator (http://layscience.net/bosdb). It collects links to posts from a variety of blogs dealing with junk science, and all you have to do is ask me to include your feed, and then mark any posts you want aggregated with the letters BPSDB somewhere (it then gets picked up automatically).It’s pretty popular, and probably worth a few hits to you. Give me a shout if you’re up for it.
Listening to Hislop, it’s quite clear how a lack of knowledge and critical thinking makes some journalists vulnerable to quackery, especially when it comes from an emotive source with an anti-establishment narrative.
Martin, I have no objection to being aggregated in that manner.
Indeed. I think if you’re looking for stories like MMR hard enough, you’ll find them. As someone once said,given the millions of doctors in the world you can find one for virtually any position imaginable.
I’ll add you to BPSDB. All you need to do, is when you write a post relating to junk science just put the letters “BPSDB” in it somewhere. You can do this for your last few existing posts if you like and they’ll be picked up too. Welcome aboard
I’ve never bought private eye since they published their MMR ’special’, and I’m not sure I heard anything in that interview to make me change my mind. I found his explanation very unsatisfactory, and I’m disappointed that presented with an opportunity to admit that he had got it wrong he failed to do so. Journalists have got to accept responsibility for their role in the current rise in measles cases, and look at how they change their practice to ensure it never happens again. I am not, however, particularly hopeful this will ever happen.
You know if I win Euromillions I’m going to offer £1m to any medical professional who is willing to take a dose of MMR scaled up for their bodyweight compared to that given babies of 12-13 months. Somehow I think my money will be safe.
Apparently the evil anti-MMR press have reported that there have been over 1000 cases of measles this year. Somehow these evil journalists forgot to mention the hundreds oif those who died from the illness – or maybe there weren’t any?????
More childrens lives would be saved by making parents use seat belts for their children and employing a few more social workers to stop people battering/starvingtheir children to death.
Your suggestion to scale up the dose is nonsensical given this is an live vaccine. The dose is designed to give an “infection” which multiplies in the body and provokes an immune response in the same way an infection does (without the harmful effects of the disease). Therefore, you do not need to scale up the dose, or scale it down either.