Amid a slew of evidence disputing any link between autism and vaccines, the online magazine Salon.com has retracted a 2005 report on the topic co-published in Rolling Stone.

In the article, titled “Deadly Immunity,” writer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he was “convinced that the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real.”

The report was fact-checked by Rolling Stone magazine, which also published the piece under an agreement with Salon.com, but within days of publication the online magazine issued five corrections. The amended version remained on the website.

Now, however, Salon’s editor-in-chief Kerry Lauerman says that new questions about the integrity of the report “further eroded any faith we had in the story’s value” and led the publication to remove the story from its website altogether earlier this month.

“I regret we didn’t move on this more quickly, as evidence continued to emerge debunking the vaccines and autism link,” says former Salon editor-in-chief Joan Walsh who now acts as the publication’s editor-at-large. “But continued revelations of the flaws and even fraud tainting the science behind the connection make taking down the story the right thing to do.”

The link to Kennedy’s story now directs to Salon’s autism page, which includes an interview with author Seth Mnookin whose new book “The Panic Virus” includes criticism of Kennedy’s report.

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