commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/francis_sedgemore/2007/07/more_bad_science_colu.html

I think I’d have more respect for the ‘it’s not journalists’, it’s scientists’ fault’ arguments if they were made better – scientists can be involved in dodgy spinning of their own data (Wakefield) but he’s just throwing around references to the ‘medical establishment’ without any actual basis, it’s handwaving argument of the worst kind – I’m not convined he even knows the difference between medical research and comments from the Tory shadown health secretary.

Dear Sir,
Your recent coverage of autism and its possible connection to MMR highlights the potential conflict between a reporter’s desire to get the story out, and their obligation to ensure reasonable accuracy. This is especially so when, as in the case of MMR, this pertains to matters of grave public interest, affecting the safety of children.

After reading Simon Pritchard’s responses there still appears to be a gulf between the Observer and dissatisfied readers regarding what are a newspaper’s reasonable duties to accuracy. I support the proposal that the Observer should join with those readers who, like myself, remain dissatisfied and refer the matter – jointly and with agreement – to the Press Complaints Commission for adjudication.

This MMR/autism debacle has confirmed my decision. Shame on them.

They have failed in a duty of care they owe the public in reporting, and they have increased FUD on a difficult topic leading ultimately to a worse public health outcome.

For what it’s worth, I’ve posted on my own blog about this too, hobcot.blogspot.com/2007/07/pathetic-observer-non-apology.html

Good work Ben on pushing this and doing such a thorough job.

That this was sanctioned from the top in the first place is the only possible explanation I can think of for why the Observer is now having to have an apology dragged out of it like a small child.

Incidentally the Guardian is overseen by the Scott trustees – how do things work at the Observer? – is there a board of trustees to whom one could complain about the editor??

It looks like Scott was only temporarily drawn to the dark side, unlike Stott, who is a true believer. Five years ago I thought Wakefield might be right. But no-one offered me any serious money for my opinion, which has changed, BTW!

although the placement of the Fiona Scott part is confusing, coming, as you say, under a heading of “Dr Carol Stott” and following discussion of Stott’s links with Wakefield, the article does in fact draw a distinction between Scott and Stott early on: “…we did not reveal the links between Dr Carol Stott, and Dr Andrew Wakefield…and that we did not accurately reflect the views of another of the authors, Dr Fiona Scott…”

www.badscience.net/?p=464#comment-14942

Even if it were true, damn right. The Observer needs beating into shape. It’s a disgrace.

news.independent.co.uk/media/article2791090.ece

One of the things that really gets to me is that this was a science report written by a sports journalist. Imagine the uproar if a cricket reporter wrote an inaccurate piece about football. Retractions, chastisements… It’s such a joke.

The lack of understanding on the process of writing a scientific paper is also damning. I’ve often seen colleagues use writing a paper as a way of getting a better handle on the data. The whole process focuses your attention on the data in a way that makes you see mistakes and polishes the whole dataset into something that is coherent. And along the way your interpretation can change radically – I’ve been involved in papers whose conclusions changed completely from those in the very early drafts as we redid analyses to try to understand what was going on and found that, frankly, we were wrong initially and our data supported conclusions that we did not see at first. And that’s the whole point of doing multiple drafts – to strengthen your argument and to make sure, before you make a public fool of yourself, that you’re not deluding yourself and that you’ve done the absolute best with the data you have, even if you don’t like the outcome.