Since you brought up Wakefield I'll give some details that I know about that:

- The Wakefield study didn't even claim autism and MMR were linked, this was inferred from the data which made everyone crazy. The paper only suggested to investigate it further.

- The paper was about the connection between gastrointestinal disorders and neurological issues.

- The "fraud" wasn't related to their data, despite the endless repetition of this in every news article under the sun. It was accusation that they didn't get sufficient approval from the ethics board for individual patients, and that some set of funds (like 50k pounds or similar) wasn't used for what it had been allocated for.

- Wakefield wasn't the senior author. It was another guy (Smith or something), and after both were accused, he solely appeal and won. He was reinstated and found that the claims against their work were not accurate and they had followed the guidelines as required.

There are a few other caveats if I remember when i took the time to look into it (not too long ago actually). I'll see if I can find what I was reading.