The conspiracy is that there are those in academia who will do anything to get published. Clearly, this desire is so profound that it seems be
pathological. Academicians know what the ethical boundaries are and they know that the scientific method is essential to controlling for all types of
variables, including unintentional bias.
What the method cannot do is control the ethical standards of those who desire notoriety so much that they will not only cheat, but collude to defraud
the system.
As the MD in the video points out, the studies conducted by the British researchers has already been debunked a few years ago when other researchers
tested one of the foundations of the scientific method (reproducible results) by replicating the studies to see if they would indeed arrive at the
same findings.
They did not.
What is of note today is that these British researchers will now be punished and their careers and possibly their lives will be ruined as a result of
their dishonesty.
The truth may be manipulated in myriad ways, but the truth must always perforce emerge triumphant.
However, the damage has been done by unscrupulous researchers and journalists who don't bother to report only the facts and run with these kinds of
stories because they bring notoriety, ratings, and bucks--big bucks.
How many families have been given some sense of false hope that by refusing to vaccinate their children that the risk of autism could be diminished,
when all that has been accomplished is the increase of their children's risk of contracting diseases that have become so rare that few living
individuals can remember the horror of their symptoms and the pain and suffering brought to entire communities by these epidemic illnesses?
How many families came to believe that they had a reason for their suffering, even though there was no direct solution to their loved ones'
disabilities?
What these researchers have done is beyond unethical. It is purely evil, because the damage that they have done is incalculable and will continue for
generations, not only because of the misinformation, but because of those who will fall ill and suffer needlessly.
So the story today really should be that even though the damage is widespread and deeply entrenched, evil has been defeated on one small front and
that it is up to us all not to latch on to convenient answers or even "inconvenient truths," but to continue in all things to seek and manifest
goodness and truth and to do so unceasingly.
edit on 2011/1/5 by GradyPhilpott because: (no reason given)