Vaccination as a cause of autism—myths and controversies
Open accessAbstract
Despite significant progress in the study of the epidemiology and genetics of autism, the etiology and patho-physiology of this condition is far from being elucidated and no curative treatment currently exists. Although solid scientific research continues, in an attempt to find explanations and solutions, a number of nonscientific and pure myths about autism have emerged. Myths that vaccines or mercury are associated with autism have been amplified by misguided scientists; frustrated, but effective parent groups; and politicians. Preventing the protection provided by vaccination or administration of mercury-chelating agents may cause real damage to autistic individuals and to innocent bystanders who as a result may be exposed to resurgent diseases that had already been "extinguished. " That such myths flourish is a consequence of the authority of scientific evidence obtained by scientific methodology losing ground to alternative truths and alternative science. This article presents a narrative of the origin of the myths around autism.
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Hallucinations pose risks, potentially misleading clinicians, misinforming patients, and harming public health.
“Hallucinations pose risks, potentially misleading clinicians, misinforming patients, and harming public health14.”
From Multi-model assurance analysis showing large language models are highly vulnerable to adversarial hallucination attacks during clinical decision support (2025) · cites this paper as [14]
The Introduction discusses myths about vaccines and autism, and the risks of avoiding vaccination. Our copy does not address hallucinations misleading clinicians or misinforming patients; searches for those terms and for artificial intelligence found no relevant passage. No page numbers are available in the indexed copy. (LLM, conf=0.76)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredMany families of children with autism spectrum disorder have concerns about vaccine safety.
“Vaccinations hold particular concern for many families of children identified with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).”
From SARS-CoV-2 vaccine testing and trials in the pediatric population: biologic, ethical, research, and implementation challenges (2021) · cites this paper as [36]
The scientific community has demonstrated no link between receiving vaccines and autism spectrum disorder.
“Although the scientific community has demonstrated no link between receiving vaccines and ASD, questions about the safety of vaccines persist.36”
From SARS-CoV-2 vaccine testing and trials in the pediatric population: biologic, ethical, research, and implementation challenges (2021) · cites this paper as [36]
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Do Decision Biases Predict Bad Decisions? Omission Bias, Naturalness Bias, and Influenza Vaccination
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Omar, M., Sorin, V., Collins, J. D., Reich, D., Freeman, R., Gavin, N., Charney, A., Stump, L., Bragazzi, N. L., Nadkarni, G. N., et al. (2025) · Communications Medicine · doi:10.1038/s43856-025-01021-3 · Cited by 204 · see citing works
“Hallucinations pose risks, potentially misleading clinicians, mis-informing patients, and harming public health 14 .”
Cooper, D. M., Afghani, B., Byington, C. L., Cunningham, C. K., Golub, S., Lu, K. D., Radom-Aizik, S., Ross, L. F., Singh, J., Smoyer, W. E., et al. (2021) · Pediatric Research · doi:10.1038/s41390-021-01402-z · Cited by 55 · see citing works
- Authors
- Davidson, M.
- Affiliations
- University of Nicosia (CY)
- Corresponding author
- Davidson, Michael
- ORCID
- Davidson, Michael
- Venue
- Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2017-12-31
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 403-407
- ISSN
- 1294-8322 (ISSN-L)
- 1958-5969
- PMC
- PMC5789217
- OpenAlex
- W2906826669
- Cited by
- 101
- References
- 12
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 2
- FWCI
- 2.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
- Keywords
- autism spectrum disorder, autism-vaccine controversy, mercury, thimerosal, autism etiology, myth, alternative science, anti-vaccine movement, re-emerging infectious diseases
- MeSH terms
- Autistic Disorder, Humans, Vaccination
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