Health

University Pulls Study Linking Vaccine Ingredient To Autism

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David Krayden Ottawa Bureau Chief
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The University of British Columbia (UBC) is disavowing a scientific paper that links aluminum in vaccines to autism in mice. One of the researchers and co-authors of the report now says the data was purposely distorted to reach the document’s conclusion, CBC News reports.

But the revelation has led to more questions about just what happened.

Dr. Chris Shaw, one of the co-authors, isn’t saying how or why it might have been changed and is even claiming he no longer has access to the original data — something that UBC’S scientific research policy does not allow.

When asked how such an apparent error could go unnoticed, Shaw called it “a good question.”

Shaw told CBC News Thursday that he came to doubt the veracity of his figures based on criticism that he read on the internet.

The paper looked at the effects of aluminum components in vaccines on immune response in a mouse’s brain. It was published in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry on Sept. 5, reporting that mice exhibited

Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic examined how aluminum-laced vaccines affect the brain of a mouse. Their conclusions were published last month by the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry and indicated that aluminum created reactions in mice “consistent with those in autism.”

But the scientific pair have been subject to criticism before and their current paper generated a storm of controversy in on-line debate, with one critic labeling the study “anti-vaccine pseudoscience.”

Then PubPeer, a discussion room for those interested in the latest scientific research, suggested the paper’s data had been corrupted or even borrowed from a previous study by the same pair of researchers.

“It appears as if some of the images in mostly what were non-significant results had been flipped,” Shaw told CBC. “We don’t know why, we don’t know how … but there was a screw-up, there’s no question about that.”

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