“Vaccines cause autism.”
Ruling:
Pants on fire. Fraudulent research.
Analysis:
Based on a paper published in 1998, the publication was a small case series with no controls, linked three common conditions, and relied on parental recall and beliefs. Worse still, it has been shown that numerous facts about the patients’ medical histories were altered in order to manipulate certain results. Later evidence has shown that this fraudulent research was committed for both financial and political gain.
Over the following decade, actual epidemiological studies consistently found no evidence of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.
See other: Mythconceptions?
Knowledge Guild 