So there are several things going on here. They include:

1. Evidence that Wakefield was employed by vaccine claim lawyers to help find a syndrome of damage from vaccines.
2. Evidence that suitable cases were subsequently directed to Wakefield for inclusion in a study.
3. Evidence that Wakefield conducted or oversaw a series of unnecessary invasive investigations on these cases under the guise of clinical need (what autistic child needs a colonoscopy and bowel biopsy under general anesthetic and a spinal tap?).
4. Evidence that Wakefield did not have correct valid consent and ethical approval for the study/procedures.
5. Evidence that Wakefield / his team caused serious side effects in at least one child, perforating his bowel multiple times, resulting in him ending up in ITU and suffering long term disability.
6. Evidence that Wakefield quite improperly paid children at his own son's birthday party to have blood tests to act as controls in his study, and even joked about this at public lectures.
7. Evidence that Wakefield misrepresented the clinical histories of most of the children in his study, suggesting they all developed autism immediately following vaccination with MMR when in fact the hospital and GP records show most had neurological problems before vaccination, and the remainder took as long as 4 months to develop signs of autism, making a causal role for MMR highly suspect.
8. Evidence that Wakefield's histopathology colleagues doubted the gut biopsy specimens had any abnormal changes present, whereas the published paper states they all had significant inflammation (being attributed by Wakefield to measles virus damage from the vaccine).
9. Evidence that Wakefield's samples of gut tissue were falsely identified as having measles virus in them, when in fact there was no virus and all the results were laboratory errors.
10. Evidence that Wakefield knew prior to publication of his paper that these results were errors, but still went ahead and published them as being positive for measles.
11. Evidence that 10 (of 12) of Wakefield's colleagues disassociated themselves from him and his Lancet journal publication as soon as they knew the extent of the significant financial conflict of interest that existed (from his association with the vaccine damage lawyers and the $700,000 he received for his work in preparing reports on these few cases).
12. Evidence that despite several attempts to do so, no-one has yet replicated Wakefield's findings.
13. Evidence that Wakefield and Krigsman say they have replicated their own findings, but somehow 5 years later this work remains unpublished, despite being referred to several times by Wakefield.
14. Evidence that Wakefield took out a patent for a new single measles vaccine just before he held a press conference denouncing the combined Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine and suggesting single vaccines would be safer.

This is ample evidence of why Wakefield's scientific standing is virtually nonexistent. How anyone can read about the major financial conflicts of interest, the litany of abysmal research methodology, and what appears to be deliberate manipulation of data and not come to the conclusion that this man is a total charlatan is quite beyond me.