This week, in the last of his series of three articles on the secrets of the MMR scare (doi:10.1136/bmj.c7001), Brian Deer describes the events of 2004 when he first raised concerns about Andrew Wakefield’s research with the Lancet’s editor. Rather than calling for an investigation as Deer had expected, Richard Horton moved quickly—with Wakefield, his co-authors, and their former institution—to publicly deny all but one of Deer’s allegations. Six years later, at an estimated cost of £6m, the General Medical Council found all the allegations to be true.

In his observations column, Harvey Marcovitch asks again why it took so long to uncover Wakefield’s fraud (doi:10.1136/bmj.d284). He compares it with other major …