Authors reacted after journals took action against studies, including removing one and retracting another.
Studies promoted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or others promoting changes in vaccine recommendations are facing fresh scrutiny in recent weeks.
Journals have retracted or removed two of the papers, and are investigating at least two others, based in part on complaints from self-identified vaccine advocates.
Researchers who conducted the studies say they’re being unfairly targeted.
“Any paper that would raise a question regarding vaccines and the safety, especially of the childhood vaccination schedule, are under question,” Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer at Children’s Health Defense, and author of one of the studies, told The Epoch Times.
The studies were published years ago. One was released in 2010.
Hooker and Kennedy referenced two in their 2023 book, “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak.” Those and other papers show “the complexities of vaccine safety science beyond the very simplistic picture that health officials and the media customarily paint,” Hooker and Kennedy said in the book.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which Kennedy now leads, did not return a request for comment by the time of publication.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, part of the department, in 2025 cited one of the papers when reversing its stance on whether vaccines can cause autism. The CDC now says it is possible.
Charlotte Kuperwasser, director of the Tufts Convergence Laboratory of Biomedical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, cited another study when presenting to the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel in the fall of 2025. At the next meeting, Aaron Siri, Kennedy’s onetime lawyer, pointed to three of the papers when presenting to the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, which voted to recommend narrowing federal guidance for several vaccines. The CDC adopted the recommendations, but a federal judge blocked them in March.
“These attacks have nothing to do with an objective search for the truth,” Siri told The Epoch Times via email. “Rather, they are targeted assassinations of articles that do not fit the religious belief of vaccine proponents.”
