"The Hidden Ways Manipulated Science Harms Our Health"

As the current measles vaccine flap shows, bad science (from the fraudulent to the sloppy) sometimes pollutes public health policy discussions. Especially environmental health policy. Mainstream media with a weak understanding of the subject can make it worse.

"The current outbreak of measles, the largest since the disease was declared eliminated in the U.S. more than a decade ago, was made possible in large part by a single black mark in the medical research literature -- a discredited 1998 study from Dr. Andrew Wakefield that purported to link the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism.

The Lancet, the journal in which Wakefield's study appeared, pulled the study after investigations by a British journalist and a medical panel uncovered cherry-picked data and an array of financial conflicts of interest, among other trappings of fraudulent science. Wakefield, a British gastroenterologist, had gone as far as to pay children at his son's birthday party to have their blood drawn for the research. He had also collected funds for his work from personal injury lawyers who represented parents seeking to sue vaccine makers. ...

Wakefield isn't the only scientist to leave a legacy of discredited work and serious health threats -- although his case may be the most famous and the least ambiguous. The results of fabricated data and other forms of research misconduct often make their way into our policy and public discourse before they are identified and addressed within the scientific community. "

Lynne Peeples reports for the Huffington Post February 11, 2015.