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The U.S. Secretary for Health and Human Services is once again questioning a publisher on an editorial action regarding a paper on vaccination.
Published in Sage Open Medicine in 2020, the article looks at health outcomes in vaccinated versus unvaccinated children. Its authors are Brian Hooker and Neil Z. Miller, both longtime vaccine critics.
Sage Open Medicine put an expression of concern on the paper on May 18. “The following article is under investigation,” it reads. “This expression of concern will remain in place until the investigation concludes, and a final decision has been made.”
Last week in a post on X, HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote, “Today, I sent a letter to SAGE Open Medicine requesting an explanation for its decision to append an expression of concern to the article … without publicly explaining the reasons for doing so.”
In the screenshots of the letter, addressed to Prajakta Mane, the managing editor of the journal, Kennedy referenced COPE’s guideline on expressions of concern, which states notices “should “state the reason or reasons for concern.”
He asked the journal to provide the “full internal written analysis and/or external scientific feedback” for the expression of concern, as well as “clarification of the ‘reason or reasons for concern’ that presumably justified your journal’s decision.” He gave a deadline of August 15. “To rebuild the American public’s trust in public health and medical science, full transparency regarding these decisions is essential,” he concluded.
A spokesperson for Sage said the publisher doesn’t “have any information to share beyond what’s in the Expression of Concern while the investigation is ongoing.”
Hooker is the chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit founded by Kennedy. Hooker and Kennedy coauthored the 2023 book Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak, which contains a chapter discussing the Sage paper at length. Miller is the author of numerous studies and books suggesting vaccines are harmful. Neither Hooker nor Miller responded to our request for comment.
The Sage Open Medicine paper was one of three articles presented at last December’s meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that are now under scrutiny. A presentation by Aaron Siri, an attorney who specializes in class action cases, is an adviser to Kennedy and represented him during his presidential campaign, came just before ACIP decided to no longer recommend infants receive the hepatitis B vaccine at birth if the mother tests negative for the virus. The paper has been cited 14 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
A complaint sent to the journal in January 2025 that Retraction Watch has seen outlined several concerns with the paper, including questions around conflict of interest and data collection. The physician who sent it anonymously told us they received an acknowledgement but nothing else from Sage until January of this year, after the physician posted one part of the original complaint on PubPeer. Based on publicly available videos of Hooker, the commenter alleges the Pediatric Health Outcomes Initiative, an organization founded by physician and vaccine critic Paul Thomas, solicited Hooker and Miller to write the article and provided data from Thomas’ private practice for it.
On July 30, Hooker posted on X, “The journal has yet to tell the coauthors (Neil Miller and me) what the specific allegations are. Trying to rebut these “hidden lies” is like trying to beat the air… Thanks SAGE Open Medicine.”
According to a Substack post by independent researcher Jessica Rose, Hooker heard from Sage’s research integrity department on April 23, “regarding potential undisclosed conflicts of interest and re-use of data from another published article,” referencing the PubPeer comment. A screenshot of the email also alleges Hooker and Miller’s article uses the same dataset in a 2020 article by Thomas that has been retracted. The screenshot cuts off after that allegation.
Hooker told The Defender, Children’s Health Defense’s news blog, “the investigation stems from conflict-of-interest allegations posted to the platform PubPeer by a handful of pro-pharma actors,” The Defender reported. Hooker told Sage the PubPeer allegations aren’t true, according to the article.
Kennedy has previously used his platform to try to influence retraction decisions, with one critic suggesting he is “politicizing” the process. His latest letter follows a similar template to one he sent in June about the retraction of another of Miller’s papers, this one on vaccination and sudden infant death syndrome.
“Is Secretary Kennedy the best person to write this letter, given the huge (and undisclosed) conflict of interest regarding this specific case?” asked René Aquarius, a sleuth and neurosurgery researcher at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in a post on LinkedIn, referring to Hooker and Kennedy’s longstanding relationship, as well as the book they wrote together.
“Is Secretary Kennedy worried that this expression of concern will undermine the claims made in his book? Is Secretary Kennedy only interested in ‘Letting the Science Speak’ when it agrees with him?” Aquarius wrote. “This is a clear example of weaponizing research integrity to actually undermine science. Not surprising, but very worrying nonetheless.”
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