Brian Deer
Notes
Brian Deer (born 1957), British investigative journalist, formerly of The Sunday Times. Over seven years from 2004 he exposed the Andrew Wakefield MMR paper as fraudulent: the undisclosed payments from litigation lawyers, the recruitment of the children through those lawyers, and the alteration of their medical histories. His findings drove the General Medical Council hearing that struck Wakefield off and the retraction of the paper by The Lancet, and were published in full in the BMJ in 2011 and in his 2020 book The Doctor Who Fooled the World.
He appears here because the vaccine-autism scare was undone by journalism, not by the medical establishment that published it, which is a point in favour of a free press and against the Appeal to Authority.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Deer