Scientists say they have new evidence that autism begins in the womb

> When Wakefield got coverage for his bullshit for most people there was no "this is obviously wrong" because they had no evidence to suggest Wakefield was wrong. As a result his position became commonly and widely accepted.

My gut says that isn't responsible for the acceptance. Antivaccine beliefs crop up from time to time, apparently independently, all across the world. They are generally cultural phenomena; e.g. the polio vaccine was rejected as being part of a Western conspiracy to do nefarious things to the people getting it. I'd be more inclined to blame the fact that getting injections makes some people pretty uncomfortable.

I'm not actually sure how widely accepted antivaxxers are; they're certainly vocal about their (deserved) persecution by saner people. As you mention, they're a problem more because even small concentrated groups of antivaxxers can cause big problems to everyone around them than because there are so many; UFO junkies aren't exactly accepted by the mainstream, but there are a lot of them in an absolute numbers sense and they're harmless.

I can't tell you how shocked I was when my sister's best friend, a graduate of UC Berkeley, came into our house and started telling us about the evils of wheat. Among other preposterous claims, apparently the wheat we eat today has been genetically engineered to be nefariously addictive, and has all kinds of ill effects on your bodily health. I was able to trace most of her ideas back to this guy, the natural culmination of the gluten-free food fad:

http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/

but, as is always the case, her ideas were garbled, and attributed even more evil to wheat, compared to what is presented in that awful, scaremongering book.

You can't stop completely crazy ideas from springing up in the most unlikely places, and skills, time, and access are much less protective than you might hope.

When Brazil had its antivax scare at the turn of the 20th century, the government showed up in full military force and vaccinated everyone anyway. That's the sensible way to handle antivaxx beliefs.

This has been a long, rambling comment. Let me try to sum up:

- Antivaxxers aren't doing it because they're convinced by any research. They're doing it as a weird cultural phenomenon, like many, many other crackpot quasireligious groups (UFOs / astrology / cryptozoology / 9/11 truthers / vegans / what have you). As with other quasireligious believers, they're not going to be convinced by argument or evidence. What makes them different is not that people weren't around to defend reality when they formed, it's that their beliefs and practices are quite harmful to everyone around them.

- Given the long and distinguished history of antivax movements, it doesn't make sense to me to blame this one on Andrew Wakefield and a failure to publish counterpapers in a timely manner. It makes more sense to view it as another antivax movement, fueled by whatever keeps causing and sustaining them, where the trigger is basically just a coincidence.

edit-addendum:

> Most people don't have the skills [...] to go and view medical papers

This is no less true now than it was in 1998. For all of those people, they have no evidence now to suggest that Wakefield was wrong. The publication of research discrediting him further and further can never help; by assumption, those people cannot understand medical papers. They don't understand Wakefield's paper either (which is what I'm getting at when I say "Antivaxxers aren't doing it because they're convinced by any research").