The most damning condemnation of Wakefield's "research" isn't even his own retraction of it. It's the number of his "subjects" (N=12, remember) that have come out and said he outright fabricated his data, as regards their child.
When a double-digit percentage fraction of the subjects in your "seminal" work cry foul about that work, you either have to give up that story, or admit that you're just making shit up.
When a double-digit percentage fraction of the subjects in your "seminal" work cry foul about that work, you either have to give up that story, or admit that you're just making shit up.