Preprint server removes study attributing increased infant mortality to vaccines

[Gary C]

The paper, posted at Preprints.org last December, was written by Karl Jablonowski and Brian Hooker of Children's Health Defense, a New Jersey-based nonprofit organization founded by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The group is known for anti-vaccination advocacy.

https://retractionwatch.com/2026/03...uting-increased-infant-mortality-to-vaccines/

 

[Mendel]

The paper, posted at Preprints.org last December, was written by Karl Jablonowski and Brian Hooker of Children's Health Defense, a New Jersey-based nonprofit organization founded by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The group is known for anti-vaccination advocacy.

https://retractionwatch.com/2026/03...uting-increased-infant-mortality-to-vaccines/

More excerpts:

Jablonowski and Hooker conducted their analysis using a dataset provided by the Louisiana Department of Health. It included 1,775 children who died before turning 3 years old between 2013 and 2024 and had a record of being vaccinated. The preprint suggested children who received six recommended vaccinations in the second month of life were more likely to die in their third month compared to those who had not received the vaccinations.

Hooker has had two articles on vaccines retracted. One, published and retracted in 2014, suggested the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine increased the risk of autism in African American boys. It was retracted for compromised peer review and concerns about the methods and analysis. The other, published in 2015 and retracted in 2017, focused on alleged conflicts of interest in autism research. It was retracted in part for the authors' failure to disclose conflicts of interest.

Loren Mell, a physician-scientist and clinical investigator at the University of California San Diego who reviewed the paper at our request, said the study has methodological shortcomings.

"There are numerous weaknesses to the scientific conduct of the study," which "eat into the validity of the conclusions," Mell said.

Mell took issue with the way the retrospective study selected the data. "There's a lot of assumptions that are baked into that that you would have to buy to be assured of the validity of their conclusions," he said. "There's too many flaws in that type of design."

"I think that the paper seemed to be more about advancing a predetermined position as opposed to a good faith scientific inquiry," Mell told us, referring to the paper as of "dubious scientific value."

"The way this particular article was written, you can tell right out of the gate that these authors have a vested stake in the outcome of their study and a prior bias," Mell said. "There's nothing quite as useless as a scientist who's already made up their mind about a subject."

After their latest preprint was withdrawn, Jablonowski and Hooker immediately reposted the paper on Zenodo, a repository run by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

 

[FatPhil]

Apparently he republished the retracted 2014 paper in 2018. It looks like it was withdrawn mostly for a technicality that he couldn't realistically deny so the matter could be resolved quickly. So the paper wasn't put into the shredder as garbage.

Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons

Winter 2018 - Volume 23 No. 4

Featured Articles
105 Reanalysis of the U.S. CDC Data on Autism Incidence and Time of First MMR Vaccination
Brian S. Hooker, Ph.D., P.E.

https://www.jpands.org/jpands2304.htm

 

[Gary C]

Apparently he republished the retracted 2014 paper in 2018. It looks like it was withdrawn mostly for a technicality that he couldn't realistically deny so the matter could be resolved quickly. So the paper wasn't put into the shredder as garbage.

Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons

Winter 2018 - Volume 23 No. 4

Featured Articles
105 Reanalysis of the U.S. CDC Data on Autism Incidence and Time of First MMR Vaccination
Brian S. Hooker, Ph.D., P.E.

https://www.jpands.org/jpands2304.htm

And for the sake of cosmic irony the same issue includes this article:

From the President:
Corruption in Medicine
Albert L. Fisher, M.D.

 

[FatPhil]

And for the sake of cosmic irony the same issue includes this article:

The journal has also carried papers by other serial retractees, e.g. Peter McCullough.

Peter Andrew McCullough (/məˈkʌlə/[1]) (born December 29, 1962) is an American former cardiologist.[2] He was vice chief of internal medicine at Baylor University Medical Center and a professor at Texas A&M University.[3] From the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic, McCullough has promoted misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19, its treatments, and mRNA vaccines.[4][5][6]

In October 2022, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) recommended that McCullough's board certifications be revoked due to his promotion of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines,[7][8] and by January 2025, the ABIM had revoked both of his certifications.[9][10]

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_A._McCullough

Most recently seen:

A journal [FP: the arguably-not-a-real-journal Cureus] is retracting a paper on the purported harms of vaccines against COVID-19 written in part by authors who have had similar work retracted before.
...
he senior author on the work was Peter McCullough, a cardiologist at the Institute of Pure and Applied Knowledge who lost his board certification after the American Board of Internal Medicine found he had "provided false or inaccurate medical information to the public."

Indeed, McCullough had already lost one paper, in Current Problems in Cardiology, from Elsevier, when he and his colleagues submitted their latest opus to Cureus. And SSRN, which hosts preprints for The Lancet, another Elsevier journal, had removed work by him and colleagues claiming large numbers of deaths from COVID-19 vaccines.

-- https://retractionwatch.com/2024/02...e-harms-of-covid-19-vaccines-to-be-retracted/

The comments section of that RW article contains several comments by McCullough where he supports his reputation by drawing attention to how many papers he's published.

If the problem is you're publishing things you shouldn't be, then telling people how much you're publishing isn't a particularly strong counter.

Deets for no-click/paraphrase sticklers:

Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH says: February 20, 2024 at 11:11 am

Dr. Peter McCullough, http://www.petermcculloughmd.com
Chief Scientific Officer, The Wellness Company, http://www.twc.health
President, McCullough Foundation, http://www.mcculloughfnd.org
Author, Courage to Face COVID-19, http://www.couragetofacecovid.com
Radio Show, http://www.americaoutloud.com/author/dr-peter-mccullough/
Substack, petermcculloughmd.substack.com/ ...

Not all of those are as impressive as you think they sound, good sir.
But if any MB readers are short of Ivermectin, make sure you pick up some here: https://www.twc.health/products/ivermectin-mebendazole?variant=50071846027480 for a mere $539.99, reduced from $599.99!

...
Dr. McCullough is an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist holding degrees from Baylor University, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, University of Michigan, and Southern Methodist University. ...

Dr. McCullough also likes to refer to himself in the third person, it seems. And the connection to the above journal:

...
Subsequently he published the first detoxification approach titled "Clinical Rationale for SARS-CoV-2 Base Spike Protein Detoxification in Post COVID-19 and Vaccine Injury Syndromes" in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. He has dozens of peer-reviewed publications on the infection and has commented extensively on the medical response to the COVID-19 crisis in TheHill, America Out Loud, and on FOX NEWS Channel.

-- https://retractionwatch.com/2024/02...-19-vaccines-to-be-retracted/#comment-2214374
(same RW article/url - just the fragment #comment-2214374 added to take you directly to his post)

So I'd say the journal's reputation for what it publishes has some blemishes, and, if it doesn't, perhaps it ought to.