Why RFK Jr.’s pick for a vaccine-autism review may be familiar to Retraction Watch readers

When it comes to conversations about vaccines and autism, we always have plenty to write about. And the latest news that the Trump administration has tapped David Geier for a study on possible links between immunizations and autism, first reported by the Washington Post, is no exception.

Geier has a long history of promoting the debunked claim of a link between vaccines and autism, STAT and others report. He has published on the topic as recently as 2020. A December 2020 paper lists his affiliation as the Institute of Chronic Illnesses, an organization he founded with his father Mark Geier, court documents say. In 2011, the Maryland State Board of Physicians disciplined Geier for practicing medicine without a license. He’s currently listed in the HHS employee directory as a senior data analyst, the Post reports. 

Geier’s first appearance in Retraction Watch was in 2017, when Science and Engineering Ethics, a Springer Nature title, retracted a paper on how conflicts of interest might influence research on the link between vaccines and autism. That paper has been cited 13 times according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

While there’s irony in the retraction of a paper on conflicts of interest for issues with conflicts of interest, the key part of that story is that the journal replaced it with a new version of the paper with an updated conflict of interest statement and changes throughout — and this paper remains intact. It has been cited seven times. 

Geier was one of 10 authors on that paper, including his father Mark. Coauthors Brian Hooker and Geir Bjorklund have appeared in Retraction Watch for their own retractions.

Geier’s history with lost papers begins more than a decade earlier, with a 2006 paper withdrawn before it was even officially published, Brian Deer reported in BMJ in 2007 — three years before Retraction Watch was founded:

Last October, Autoimmunity Reviews published online the draft of a seven page paper by reporting laboratory and clinical tests suggesting that thiomersal, a mercury based preservative once routinely added to most vaccines, was the main culprit for a sharp rise in diagnoses of behavioural disorders. The paper was written by Dr Mark Geier, a self employed American geneticist, and his son David. The pair also reported treating autistic children with a hormone product, leuprorelin acetate, which is sometimes prescribed for precocious puberty. They claimed that the drug produced “very significant overall clinical improvements” with “minimal” adverse effects.

But before that draft was finalized, Autoimmunity Reviews, an Elsevier title, withdrew the paper with no specific reason listed. (We’ve criticized Elsevier’s practices for withdrawals, which seem to violate Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines, before.) Deer reported that autism activist Kathleen Seidel had sent a letter to the journal’s editor in chief and entire editorial board detailing issues with the work, including an institutional review board that included the Geiers themselves. 

The Trump administration wants to prioritize replicating medical research, Axios and others have reported, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggesting in his confirmation hearing that at least 20 percent of the NIH budget should go toward replication efforts. But studies of a link between vaccines and autism diagnoses have failed to find a connection time and time again.

“We have already done that many times over. It wastes valuable resources to revisit the same question instead of using them to address critical health challenges,” David Higgins, a practicing pediatrician and health services researcher at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, told Axios. “Reexamining settled questions that have already been repeated, replicated, and tested many times is not healthy skepticism; it’s cynicism and science denial.”

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