In February 2010, The Lancet, a preeminent British medical journal, retracted a 1998 article that established a possible link between measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines and the development of bowel disease and autism in young children. Andrew Wakefield, the lead author, was convicted of manipulating patient data, distorting findings and receiving funding from solicitors who sought evidence to file litigation against vaccine manufacturers. Since then, subsequent studies have debunked the connection between MMR vaccines and autism.
Despite Wakefield's fall from grace, his discredited study has attracted a litany of anti-vaccination activists who continue to vouch for its validity. Misinformed opinions and speculations are chipping away at the scientific consensus that there is no reason to fear immunization. The British Medical Bulletin recently reported that MMR vaccination rates in the UK have fallen from a peak of 92 percent in the mid-1990s to a national level of 82 percent in 2003, creating a potential public health hazard in the case of the resurgence of long-dormant diseases. Exacerbating this problem, uninformed American parents have refused or delayed vaccines for their children, according to a study conducted by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Yet unethical individuals are hardly the only source of bad biomedical data. While major news sources such as BBC and The New York Times have debunked the link between vaccines and autism, rumors and conspiracy theories continue to circulate on the internet through independent blogs and websites.
The dissemination of false information can also cause hyped-up hopes, which lead to public frustration when the scientific community cannot deliver results according to inflated expectations. For example, the Human Genome Project generated huge expectations that the decoding of the human genome would revolutionize the treatment of illness and disease.
In reality, while the information has allowed scientists to seek out the origins of disease, viable treatments for genetic conditions are still in development even after decades of research. This is not to say that the knowledge gained from the Human Genome Project will never be used for curing diseases, but the hyped-up expectations of the $2.7-billion project may undermine its legitimacy and that of future scientific endeavors.
In order to protect the integrity of biomedical research discoveries, the scientific community must take control. This function is performed mainly by educated analysts and "opinion leaders" such as Francis Collins, Atul Gawande and Jerome Groopman who popularize science and push visions of the future for the general public through their writing. But because an individual's range of influence is limited, the public perception of medical research cannot only depend on the opinions of high-profile intellectuals. Instead, biomedical scientists must take control of their information by using healthcare providers, like doctors and nurses, to educate the wider public.
In a study published by the journal Human Vaccines, healthcare practitioners of unvaccinated children had lower confidence in vaccine safety and efficacy compared to the health providers of vaccinated children, suggesting that a physician's opinion has a significant sway over patient healthcare decisions. By pushing healthcare providers to address common medical misconceptions with their patients, the scientific community can bridge the gap between the layperson and researchers who are at the forefront of their field.
The sidelining of scientific knowledge by uninformed clamor demonstrates the biomedical community's inability to communicate with the public. The scientific community must find an effective way to solve this problem, lest its message be swept or distorted by the tide of misinformation.
