Professor Chris Exley has been accused of ‘bad science’ and ‘scaremongering’

A controversial British academic who claims childhood vaccines can cause autism has been blocked from raising research funds after protests by other scientists.

Professor Chris Exley, of Keele University, infuriated health experts by telling parents the aluminium in vaccines given to babies to protect them from diseases such as whooping cough, and in the human papillomavirus vaccine given to teenagers, may cause “severe and disabling” autism.

It echoes the “anti-vax” controversy surrounding Andrew Wakefield, whose 1998 claim that the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine caused autism led to a fall in immunisation rates.

Supporters of Exley, a professor of bioinorganic chemistry, turned to crowd-funding site GoFundMe to raise cash after his grant applications were refused by scientific research councils.

Now the site has also