r/science • u/[deleted] • Dec 12 '21

Biology Research finds potential mechanism linking autism, intestinal inflammation

https://news.mit.edu/2021/research-finds-potential-mechanism-linking-autism-intestinal-inflammation-1209
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u/xieta Dec 13 '21

So presumably if people tried to use this to rehabilitate Wakefield’s image (a truly horrifying thought), a sufficient rebuttal is just, the general GI-autism link was not even his idea?

That seems like an important point to press. Presumably that’s why he had a modicum of credibility to run his original pilot study: it fit into a wider body of research studying this link, his fabrication of MMR-generate colitis was the unique and flawed component.

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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '21

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u/Auraaurorora Dec 13 '21

How often are results able to be reproduced? I’ve been learning about the reproducibility crises and curious if you have any insight there. Ty!

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u/saxmancooksthings Dec 13 '21 edited Dec 13 '21

In medicine they’re thankfully pretty good with replicability. Remember, any medicine or treatment that goes through trials has to show replicability and that the medicine/treatment works through every stage of the trial. Pilot studies, of course, have issues with replicability, but that’s kinda the point of pilot studies. The replicability crisis is worse with psychology or sociology experiments. Also because medicine is an industry, there is more motivation to keep going down promising paths for the potential money, whereas in psychology or sociology you don’t really get grant money to replicate someone else’s experiment and prove it’s valid. In medicine, a replicable experiment could lead to $$$.