Did a CDC whistleblower admit vaccines cause autism?

In the before times, this video was published as part of the marketing for Andrew Wakefield’s movie and for Brian Hooker’s reanalysis of the work described in the video.

The reanalysis was published in the Journal of Translational Neurodegeneration, and then–notably–retracted. The new publishing journal is an arm of the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons–a small group that takes make spurious positions.

The original publication was part of an anti-vaccine publicity campaign by the defrocked doctor Andrew Wakefield, which included his controversial film VAXXED

Experts criticized Hooker’s re-analysis, saying it was flawed and didn’t consider other variables that could influence the results. They questioned how he used the CDC data set and argued that the study design was inappropriate for his analysis.

Brian Hooker used a cohort design to analyze a dataset originally intended for case-control analysis. Subsequently, he performed multiple subset analyses, which can be susceptible to false positives.

When evidence is excessively segmented or divided into smaller subsets for analysis, there is a higher likelihood of observing apparent correlations that may not actually be meaningful or valid. This phenomenon is often called the “multiple comparisons problem” or “data dredging.”

Hooker’s reanalysis concludes that African-American males who receive the MMR between ages 24 months and 36 months were more likely to the diagnosed with autism. These were children who received the vaccine late. It is possible that they received the vaccine after diagnosis and when their parents were seeking early childhood special education services which may have required immunization.

In scientific research, it is crucial to be cautious about interpreting correlations. And about taking medical advice from environmental lawyers.