Fact:
Christopher Gillberg is a scientific board member of Cure Autism Now http://www.canfoundation.org/aboutcan/sciboard.cfm  Ray Gallup rees wrote:

ALAN REES Ginstgatan 7
230 44 Bunkeflostrand SWEDEN Mobile : +46 707 444841 mailto:rees@pp.sbbs.se
8 February 2003 Has Gillberg been caught cheating? Pass it on.

Headlines in the Swedish press yesterday. Professor Christoper Gillberg, the co-author of The Biology of the Autistic Syndromes is involved in yet another scandal. This time he has been accused of fraudulent scientific research and his critics have been granted a court order to force him to reveal his raw data - something he has previously refused to do (as have Roy Meadows and Brent Taylor before him). Gillberg is, of course, no stranger to controversy. He is already notorious for admitting to a number of people in private that he had not vaccinated his own offspring, while declaring in public that there is no link between vaccines and autism. He even conducted an epidemiological study in the Gothenburg region to prove there is no link. This study was roundly condemned as worthless and it was elegantly torn apart by David Thrower in his customary fashion. You can find David s analysis of this and many other vaccine studies at:
http://www.whale.to/vaccines.html  or http://66.70.140.217/vaccines.html  http://click.topica.com/maaaO5paaVN7Ga4JkBVb/  www.freewebz.com/schafer/URL/g.htm

Sloppy research is bad enough, but now he is being accused of actually cheating. The study was a 15-year follow-up of 42 children diagnosed as having DAMP. On the basis of this study, 3,000 Swedish children have been prescribed amphetamines (Ritalin) and Gillberg and his colleagues argue that another 70,000 children are in need of it. Given the horrific effects of amphetamine, this is a very serious matter.

Leif Elinder, a paediatrician in Uppsala and Eva Kärfve, a sociologist at the University of Lund have pointed out a number of peculiar features of the study:

- Nearly all the patients turned time after time up for comprehensive examinations without receiving any diagnosis or treatment.

- Leif Elinder has commented that the dropout rate appears to be incredibly low, when it is usually quite large in studies such as these.

- Eva Kärfve has pointed out that the dropout rate seems to be not just low, but positively non-existent. Indeed, the number of participants appears to have actually increased over the course of the study! She has therefore accused the researchers of subsequently recruiting participants who did not belong to the original study.

- DAMP, like autism, affects far more boys than girls. However, while more than half of the control group consisted of girls, most of whom came from stable families and prosperous homes, 75% of the DAMP children were boys from dysfunctional families in run-down areas with poor housing.

And so on and so forth& Gillberg was asked to produce his raw data. He refused on the grounds that the information was confidential. Since participants in such studies are usually only identified by numbers or codes and their identities are concealed, this is a remarkable objection and clearly one that did not impress the court. So now Gillberg must hand over his data.

What will happen to him? Perhaps he will follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Stephen Breuning, who also studied the effects of amphetamines on hyperactive children in the 1980 s. He was found to have faked his data and was sent to jail for fraud. That is exactly where a lot of people think Christopher Gillberg belongs. After all, this study is one of many, and how many of them would stand up to close inspection?

Just ask David Thrower. And how about the finances? This study received grants from a foundation (Allmänna Arvsfonden) but the money was not to be used for salaries or computers. According to a newspaper article the money was used for&um&salaries and computers. No legal action has been taken on this matter&yet.

Actually, the financing of these studies is a study in itself. It has been pointed out that Gillberg & colleagues all seem to sit on boards that vet research projects and approve grants. Some cynics have implied that they are in fact dishing money out to each other. Personally I think this is a monstrous libel, but why was all that money given to someone called Carina Gillberg? Could she possibly be related to Chris?
One wonders.

Gillberg seems to consider himself misunderstood. He has said that he is being persecuted by Eva Kärfve. I am told he has even referred to me in less than complimentary terms. No doubt he will set the record straight.

His mail address is:
mailto:christopher.gillberg@pediat.gu.se Fax: +46 31 341 5545 Phone +46 31 341 6749 I am, as usual, overworked and short of time and will be off base for a couple of days. I am therefore sending this to a few people in the hope that everyone will pass it on and word will spread. Someone with more time and resources than I have may like to follow this up.