by Beatrice Winkler
While lifesaving public health programs are cut and dedicated public servants lose their jobs in the name of “government efficiency,” our tax dollars pay the salary of a fraud named David Geier.
In March, DHHS Sec. Kennedy chose Geier, who does not have a medical degree and who was disciplined by the State of Maryland’s Board of Physicians for practicing medicine without a license, to conduct a study looking for a link between vaccines and autism. Instead of spending our money on legitimate research on the causes of autism and how to help the people it affects, Sec. Kennedy hired the person responsible for most of the junk science on autism and vaccines that has been published since the early 2000s.
This week, a meeting of RFK Jr., Geier, and leaders of the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) database, was abruptly canceled just hours before they were likely to discuss using this database to investigate whether there is a link between autism and the national childhood vaccine schedule. In 2004, Geier lost access to the VSD after managers learned he was pursuing a research question different from the one for which his access to the VSD had been granted.
This excellent article closely examines one of Geier’s research papers and uses it as an example for how to recognize junk science. At a time when health disinformation is coming from the top of our government, the ability to spot it is a skill we all need in order to protect ourselves and our families, and to help people in our community understand what the facts are.
(If the gift link expires and you hit the paywall, you can get a free one-day pass to read anything in the New York Times, from the East Baton Rouge Parish Library.)