In case you missed it, Dr. Wakefield is a co-author on a series of studies vaccinating macaques. They have been touted as “blockbuster” studies, and also critiqued sharply.
With a hat-tip to KWombles for the information: The paper has been withdrawn
If you check the Neurotoxicology website, the paper now has “Withdrawn” added to the tile:
“WITHDRAWN: Delayed acquisition of neonatal reflexes in newborn primates receiving a thimerosal-containing Hepatitis B vaccine: Influence of gestational age and birth weight”
with the statement at the bottom:
This article has been withdrawn at the request of the editor. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause.
The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy.
Note to users: Withdrawn Articles in Press are proofs of articles which have been peer reviewed and initially accepted, but have since been withdrawn before being published in this journal. Reasons for withdrawal may be due to a decision by the author and/or editor, accidental duplication of an article elsewhere, or because the content contravenes the Elsevier publishing policy in some way. Withdrawn Articles in Press are only visible to users when following an external link, e.g., an end user following a PubMed or DOI link. Such Withdrawn Articles in Press are not searchable or otherwise available in ScienceDirect.
If you follow the link for the Elsevier policy on withdrawing papers, you will find these statements:
Article Withdrawal: Only used for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like.
and
Article Withdrawal
Articles in Press (articles that have been accepted for publication but which have not been formally published and will not yet have the complete volume/issue/page information) that include errors, or are discovered to be accidental duplicates of other published article(s), or are determined to violate our journal publishing ethics guidelines in the view of the editors, may be “Withdrawn” from ScienceDirect. Withdrawn means that the article content (HTML and PDF) is removed and replaced with a HTML page and PDF simply stating that the article has been withdrawn according to the Elsevier Policy on Article in Press Withdrawal with a link to the current policy document.
Left Brain Right Brain 
I’m curious as to the precise reason for the withdrawal. Maybe they realized that the results of the study are essentially impossible, and given Wakefield’s history, likely fraudulent.
I’m appalled that they published that study in the first place (http://daisymayfattypants.blogspot.com/2008/07/autism-no-rats-will-be-harmed-but-keep.html). Although, as I pointed out over at Photon in the Darkness, there was some reason to think about conflicts of interest here:
From that comment: My guess is that reviewers (who oughta be ashamed) asked about the training question, hence the defensive and telling elaboration.
Love that startle p value “trend.” I wish I could take a p value of 0.11 with no corrections for multiple comparisons and call it near significance. No, really. I don’t wish that.
The n values for the groups in this study were nowhere near large enough for the “granularity” introduced by the way criterion intervals were measured. And the lack of Bonferroni correction or whatever correction would be needed undermines any putative significance. My guess is that it would be effaced completely with the appropriate stats.
But most disturbing is the introduction of that “extra” set of controls. Well, most disturbing is the utter lack of relevance of the study question and that they did this to a bunch of baby macaques for no damned good reason.
Neurotox has an impact factor of about 2.5. Even that low, it seems a little high for a journal that let this one get by. Here is a link to a listing of their associate editors and editorial board in case anyone wants to let them know: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaleditorialboard.cws_home/621355/editorialboard. In particular, I’d look into R.A. Yokel
Lexington, KY, USA. Why? Because of these related authors:
D. Atwood , Chemistry, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY
L. Blue, Chemistry, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY
E. R. White , Chemistry, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY.
Yokel: http://pharmacy.mc.uky.edu/faculty/RobertYokel.php. “Dr. Yokel’s research focuses on neurotoxic metals, their toxicokinetics and chelation.”
AoA will go apeshit.
Hello friends –
My dollars are going towards the reason for the retraction being that massive unannounced conflict of interest of the lead author having a claim in front of the vaccine court. That this wasn’t discosed says a lot about the forethought involved.
– pD
Did any of the macaques’ parents complain?
I think not.
They’ll (AoA) will probably start claiming that it was Brian Deer who complained!
I have to correct a statement about the COIs. This is how they appeared in the corrected proof:
Now what is blatantly omitted are Thoughtful House and what they do there, that CS, LH and AW are employed there. Also, that DA is a patent holder for OSR, Boyd Haley’s industrial chelator that he sells as an autistic treatment, which Prometheus pointed out. The funding sources for the study also have a stake in ‘positive’ findings as well.
Hi Science Mom –
My money! Mr. Gorski had a thing a while ago on this study that seemed to indicate this relationship wasn’t revealed. I didn’t follow it as closely as you did, it would seem. Nicely done.
– pD
pD-
there is a long history to this. The “monkey studies” were first discussed in a series of IMFAR presentations (at least one was a poster, I am not sure about the others). At that time, IMFAR, there was no mention of the COI involved in Dr. Hewiston being a litigant.
As Science Mom has pointed, this was more clear in the (now withdrawn) paper.
That is an important distinction Sullivan. At the time Dr. Gorski wrote about the IMFAR abstracts: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=100 there was no mention of Dr. Hewitson’s involvement with the NVICP.
Her involvement was discovered by someone who posted a comment to that post, as I recall. I wonder if that COI would’ve been disclosed otherwise.
note that there is apparently another study ongoing:
“Based on the success of our pilot study in Phase I, Phase 2 of the study is already underway in collaboration with researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle. Phase II is investigating more closely which vaccine(s), or vaccine combinations, result in behavioral and gastrointestinal impairments in infant male rhesus macaques to try to identify any synergistic effects. The study is expected to be completed in 2012.”
In a 2008 IMFAR abstract, they mention 9 more macaques for an MMR study–7 vaccinated, 2 unvaccinated. It appears all were killed at 14 weeks.
Sullivan,
“Phase II is investigating more closely which vaccine(s), or vaccine combinations”
That seems almost reasonable. They should have had 4 (equal) lots of monkeys
-Vaccine alone
-Thimerosal alone
-Vaccine+Thimerosal
-Controls (placebo)
Instead, they had a (small) group with vaccine+thimerosal (they added the th since the current vaccine doesn’t contains it anymore), and 2 odd smallish control groups (one with … saline!).
Together with the Lancet retraction of Wakefield’s 1998 article, the withdrawal of the primate study from another Elsevier journal – Neurotoxicology – shows the power of the corporation (in this case one whose former boss had important pharma and media interests) gaining ground over science. How many more of Wakefield’s 150 publications do you think will fall? A snowballing effect might please some, but what does it say about the integrity of the corporate science?
Janet: You can peddle your conspiracy theories if it makes you feel good, but why not be a little clearer. What are you saying? Are you saying that some official in the chief executive’s office of Reed Elsvier issued a memo, or made a phone call, saying that his/her ex-boss would like papers by Wakefield withdrawn or something, so as to assist a company he used to be on the board of?
Get real, for godsake. Do something for the good of children. Put your labour to a proper use, or if you are so consumed with hatred that you really believe what you are saying, go for some kind of spiritual or emotional counselling.
Editors of scientific journals are academics. Where’s the connection to corporations?
The taint of Wakefield?
———————–
I see nothing illegitimate with the journal reacting to the GMC decision finding that Wakefield had been dishonest, beyond a reasonable doubt, in the paper he submitted to The Lancet in 1998.
Considering he was under investigation for this and with a decision only months away when the paper was accepted by the journal, the prudent thing would have been to hold off until the decision was rendered.
But once it is rendered, withdrawing the paper seems proper. If an author of a paper, especially where other authors work or are connected to, is found to have committed scientific fraud, that calls into question the accuracy of his reporting in this paper.
“the power of the corporation (in this case one whose former boss had important pharma and media interests) gaining ground over science.”
Then why didn’t the corporate types squash the “monkey study” sooner? Presumably because media magnates don’t generally know or care much about the publications they theoretically manage.
I suppose someone could try to put credit/blame on me, but I suspect this evelopment is comparable to a “Saving Pvt. Ryan” scene where a tank blows up as Tom Hanks empties a .45 at it.
Thoughtful House has pulled it’s links to the Neurotoxicology study but the link to the 1998 retracted Lancet paper remains, even though the PubMed link shows its been retracted.
http://www.thoughtfulhouse.org/publications.php