This study suggests that falsely balanced reporting of an alleged autism–vaccine link heightens readers’ uncertainty regarding vaccine safety and lowers their intention to vaccinate their future children. Whereas similar research has found that one-sided, anti-vaccine-only website messages lower individuals’ vaccine intentions our results suggest that two-sided news messages with claims both for/against an autism–vaccine link can have a similar effect.

The authors then conclude that “results suggest that balancing conflicting views of the autism–vaccine controversy may lead readers to erroneously infer the state of expert knowledge regarding vaccine safety and negatively impact vaccine intentions.” In other words, manufacturing a controversy, where there is no controversy, does a great disservice to readers who are looking for information about vaccines.

In case there is a concern about the evidence that thoroughly dismisses any link between vaccines and autism, here it is:

• The Cochrane Reviews state that MMR vaccine does not cause autism. 
• There is no scientific or medical controversy about this conclusion. 
• Medical and scientific experts agree.
• It lead to a public health crisis based on a fraud.
• Well constructed epidemiological studies also showed no link between MMR vaccine and autism in Denmark, England, Japan, Japan, Japan, Poland, and the United States.
• Despite claims that Wakefield’s findings were reproduced, not one single peer-reviewed paper ever supported the Wakefield’s claims.
• Numerous studies actually invalidate his claim.
• The Autism Omnibus trials has rejected all three test cases and subsequent appeals claiming that vaccines cause autism. 
• In October 2004, a meta review, financed by the European Union, was published in the October 2004 edition of Vaccine and assessed the evidence given in 120 other studies and considered unintended effects of the MMR vaccine. The authors concluded that “exposure to MMR is unlikely to be associated with Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, autism or aseptic meningitis.”
• In February 2005, a study compared autism in Japan before and after the 1993 withdrawal of the MMR vaccine and concluded that “MMR vaccination is most unlikely to be a main cause of ASD, that it cannot explain the rise over time in the incidence of ASD (autism spectrum disorder), and that withdrawal of MMR in countries where it is still being used cannot be expected to lead to a reduction in the incidence of ASD.”
• In October 2005, the Cochrane Library published a review of 31 scientific studies, and concluded that, “Exposure to MMR was unlikely to be associated with Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, autism or aseptic meningitis.”
• A 2007 review of independent studies, performed after the publication of Wakefield’s fraudulent article, found that evidence did not support a causal association between vaccines and autism.
• A 2009 review of studies on links between vaccines and autism concludes that “twenty epidemiologic studies have shown that neither thimerosal nor MMR vaccine causes autism. These studies have been performed in several countries by many different investigators who have employed a multitude of epidemiologic and statistical methods.” They also stated that the large size of these studies would have identified even minor correlations, and even then nothing was found.