Retracted after 12 years

One of the reasons that some parents refused to have their children vaccinated against swine flu was a fear that there is a link between autism and childhood vaccinations. This theory traced to a 1998 article by a doctor in Lancet, the British medical journal.

In addition to the swine flu vaccine, some parents shunned vaccines for measles, whooping cough and other childhood diseases, which then saw increases after years of decreases.

For the record, Lancet retracted its 1998 article as bogus last month. Unfortunately, as one researcher told the New York Post, “It’s very easy to scare people. It’s very hard to unscare them.”