It takes AGES for malfeasance to get consequences. The Wakefield MMR study (responsible for energizing the modern anti vaccination movement), published in 1998, wasn’t retracted until 2010. (He was also stripped of his license to practice medicine and has consistently doubled down since which has paid off dearly, marrying supermodels and being a literal millionaire).

The amyloid plaque hypothesis for Alzheimer’s that was based on falsified data from 2006 wasn’t retracted until 2024. This had thousands of citations, possibly tens of thousands, and the first author continues to defend the data manipulation as overblown. Essentially something like that the underlying experiments were sound, we just edited the images for clarity, there was no intent, all (8!) of my coauthors agreed to the retraction because they’re laaaaame, basically every drug made based on this hypothesis doesn’t work because of some other reason, trust me bro.

It’s very difficult to counter this. It takes serious effort to generate data contrary to the evidence presented. However, funding would help. But additionally this is something where criminal charges would be merited. Wakefield has created a world in which we moved backward for his own financial enrichment. One could argue that the children dead from measles outbreaks are in part his fault. He lost his license, sure, but this is meaningless. He is an antivax icon, he married Elle McPherson, he does podcasts and documentaries, speaking engagements, etc. he is paid far more than many doctors with none of the stress and liability. And it’s fairly clear his original intent was to discourage people from the MMR vaccine to push them towards a product he had a vested financial interest in. The antivax stuff was not his goal but it worked out because he is a sociopathic grifter.

Lesne is different. He is a scientist that is probably pushed to publish at all costs and did so. Perhaps he is honest and his manipulation was simply to improve clarity. If it was not and he was pushing to get an influential paper out then he is guilty of wasting billions in funding and tens of thousands of hours of researcher time as well as countless lives wasted doing clinical trials for treatments that were never worth exploring.

What’s a viable consequence for these people? Life in prison? This is such a huge crime against society. Similarly the Monsanto and Coca Cola ghost writing research, everything involved in tobacco, Purdue and OxyContin addiction, etc. the last one was treated as a civil matter but are these not criminal? Countless lives were destroyed