Opinion: RFK Jr. ally’s ‘smoking gun’ study on vaccines and chronic illness is fundamentally flawed

On Tuesday, Aaron Siri, personal lawyer and close adviser to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., presented his “smoking gun” at a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing on vaccine science. Siri, who has represented Kennedy in multiple lawsuits against federal health agencies and reportedly helped interview candidates for Department of Health and Human Services positions, unveiled a study riddled with the exact flaws that peer review is designed to catch: fundamental study design errors, statistical impossibilities inconsistent with known prevalence, and results that collapse under routine epidemiologic scrutiny. Notably, even this study’s own data showed no association between vaccines and autism, the condition most frequently cited by vaccine critics.

The study, known as the Henry Ford Health system analysis, was completed years ago and remains unpublished. It purports to show that vaccinated children have dramatically higher rates of chronic conditions than unvaccinated children. That it remains unpublished isn’t suppression, as Siri alleged, but rather quality control. The bitter irony of this hearing’s title — “How the Corruption of Science Has Impacted Public Perception” — is that, as I testified to the subcommittee, the real corruption on display isn’t in journals rejecting flawed studies. It’s in bypassing peer review entirely, shopping for any analysis that supports predetermined conclusions, then presenting it as evidence on a Senate stage. The analysis contains fundamental mistakes that any credible journal would flag.

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