Rfk Jr Demanded a Vaccine Study Be Retracted – the Journal Said No
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr demanded a vaccine study be retracted, but the journal refused, sparking a heated debate about vaccine safety and the anti-vaccination movement.
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I'm not a scientist, but if you were to tell me "this trial shows that substance X is not harmful", I would think ideally it would give substance X to one group and a placebo to the other group. If not possible, it would look after the fact to see group A that received substance X compared to group B that didn't, large enough sample so it would be relatively controlled for extraneous variables. Seems like you would def want to compare the two groups, so what did this study actually do?
Another criticism:
> Among Kennedy’s criticisms of the Danish study are that the analysis excluded children who had died before the age of two. According to Kennedy, this means that the children “most likely to reveal injuries” associated with aluminum exposure were excluded.
From the opinion piece:
> The architects of this study meticulously designed it not to find harm. From the outset, Andersson et al. excluded the very children most likely to reveal injuries associated with high exposures to aluminum adjuvants in childhood vaccines. The exclusion included all children who died before age two, those diagnosed early with respiratory conditions, and an astonishing 34,547 children — 2.8% of the study population — whose vaccination records showed the highest aluminum exposure levels.
I remember looking at some Lending Club loan statistics and their stated yields by Lending Club. I thought it was pretty good at the time. But then I noticed in fine print that from the historical yield calculations, they exclude any loans that defaulted within the first X months. That was not something I expected.
I could see why Lending Club excluded these, but what's the rationale, if true, of excluding some populations from the vaccine trial results?
They excluded children from the study that didn't fit the demographic they were trying to study (didn't get their early-childhood vaccinations, e.g. because they died too young) or that had other diseases known to cause the chronic diseases they were trying to study (if you have a respiratory tract infection and develop asthma, is that because of vaccines or because of the infection?) so that they could deal with slightly less messy data.
Kennedy might've preferred it if they'd done a double-blind trial revealing injuries associated with high exposures to aluminum adjuvants in childhood vaccines, but that's not the question they were trying to answer.
I know it’s not inherently what you were trying to day but frankly, who gives a fuck what Kennedy’s preference is? He has zero medical training, and has no hesitation latching on to garbage conspiracy theories like chem trails, showing his lack of critical thinking skillsthinking skills.
About 350 million people have a good reason to care …
You dont need a placebo group, when you have alot of samples with varying exposures. Focusing on the unvaccinated is a strawman.
> Exclusion of N children.
Cleaning of data is really common practice in statistical analysis, you should declare it though. If you where tasked to summarize performance metrics in a company to find a base line, would you include days where eg. earth quakes hit?
Because he had the same cancer I think Hank Green might have a video about this, but years ago when I got diagnosed with Hodgkins I read the data and there's no placebo trials because scientific medicine (and thus placebo trials) was invented after they had some initial working cures for Hodgkins. So any fool can see a "placebo" trial is just arbitrarily killing a bunch of people to check a box which is awful and they never performed one.
We still have excellent reason to believe Hodgkins would kill you because some people, despite being told what's wrong and that we can cure it, will say "No". Crazy, religious, I guess maybe in the US too poor (?) doesn't matter, they decline the cure and those people die, because cancer is bad for you.
But they're self-selecting and so do not constitute a placebo trial. It seems ludicrous, but in theory maybe they only die because they're crazy or poor or they believe God will cure them or something. We can't prove it ain't so.
We do still run trials, but they're not A vs Placebo, they take the existing "gold standard" treatment you would get if there wasn't a trial and they compare something they think could be better against that.
You cannot give a placebo vaccine once is it standard of care. No IRB is going to approve a placebo control group for a study (nor should they) on a vaccine that is already SoC. This is why we let actual scientists and doctors design the experiments, and not random HN readers. It would be incredibly unethical to give a placebo vaccine for tetanus. Think about what you are suggesting here. You are suggesting that children potentially die of entirely avoidable tetanus, for the sake of running an experiment. At the bare minimum, that is medical malpractice. I won't get into what it is at the other end of the spectrum, beyond this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study
You are right. Indeed, all vaccines and drugs undergo clinical trials testing for safety first, efficacy then, before being approved for sale and distribution.
The study in question analyzes data that was routinely collected after the vaccine was approved, that is why they didn't do the randomization themselves.
One of these vaccines is DTaP-IPV/Hib aka Pentacel, and the clinical results for it are reported here: https://www.fda.gov/files/vaccines,%20blood%20&%20biologics/...
> The two controlled pivotal safety studies, overall rates of serious adverse events were similar in Pentacel and Control subjects.
(Tested on about 5,000 children younger than two years old and getting two or three doses of the vaccine).
Another trial for that vaccine was recently performed in Japan, also not finding significant rates of adverse events: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32307307/
See how that doesn't make sense?
Well, most of you is.
Isn’t it a coincidence that the loudest voices against vaccines also earned their wealth peddling supplements on their shows?
https://roganrecs.com/supplements (Joe Rogan founded Onnit)
https://thealexjonesstore.com/collections/supplements
(disclaimer - not anti-vax, just addressing a simplistic argument that didn't hold up to scrutiny)
In other words, we know where the aluminum is not coming from, namely, vaccines.
https://www.chop.edu/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety...
Goullé JP, Grangeot-Keros L. Aluminum and vaccines: Current state of knowledge. Med Mal Infect 2020 Feb;50:16-21.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0399077X1...
Although aluminum at high doses can cause a variety of clinical manifestations, the quantity of aluminum in vaccines is too small to cause a direct toxic effect. Indeed, the quantity of aluminum in biological specimens from those receiving aluminum-containing vaccines is indistinguishable from unvaccinated subjects. The concern that aluminum in vaccines might be associated with a rare autoimmune disease called macrophagic myofasciitis has been refuted by previous studies.
We remember the war dead; the lives saved, not so much.
You might be wondering what kind of nonsense I am spouting off. I’m wondering the same thing about these anti-vax arguments.
Wrong. There are oral vaccines, like polio. However the taste of it is disgusting.
I mean, I guess the growth medium the virus actually lives in (OPV is an attenuated virus, so it's actually polio, which is why the industrialized North which eradicated polio no longer uses this, too risky) probably tastes nasty but you're not supposed to be drinking growth medium, just get a dab on a sugar cube or something.
/s
It's a false equivalency to compare an amount of a substance eaten vs injected. Injected substances can get to places in the body and in different quantities than substances eaten.
There are different forms of aluminum, with different absorption rates, and different potential behaviors in the body.
Here's a study of aluminum accumulation in rodents after injection: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-...
I don't think there are any studies showing that aluminum doesn't accumulate or remain in the body long after injection - while I've found ~5 studies indicating that it does.
Doesn't mean it's dangerous, just that some amount of it does stick around long term and it is not clear to me that it's a drop in the bucket compared to the aluminum we eat. We also eat a lot more aluminum than people used to before the industrial revolution. The amounts of aluminum we eat now could be mildly harmful too - I don't know about that.
Below is the math on amount of aluminum that a normal baby ingests vs gets injected. I got a result that a baby's first year they get between 2x to 65x as much aluminum in their blood from injections vs from feeding.
A baby drinking breast milk (250L in the first year) would get 250 * 40µg = 10mg of aluminum in their first year from breast milk. A baby eats around 300000 calories in their first year, which leaves 120000 not from breast milk. At a rate of 8mg of aluminum per 2300 calories this would be another 416mg of aluminum from food for a total of 426mg.
The absorption rate into the bloodstream of that aluminum would vary between ~0.01% (for aluminum hydroxide) to ~0.3% (for aluminum citrate), so they would get 0.04mg to 1.3mg of aluminum in their blood across the first year from ingestion. Compared to 0.125mg to 0.85mg per dose of vaccine. They get around 10 doses of vaccines containing aluminum in the first year, for around ~2.6mg of aluminum total, but 100% of that is absorbed since it's injected. So the amount that gets into the blood during the first year from vaccination is somewhere from 2 to 65 times the amount a baby would get in their blood from eating/drinking.
I could be wrong on this logic or math somewhere, and welcome being corrected.
Another aspect of this is that the injected aluminum adjuvant comes in big (relative to ingestion) sudden doses with the intent to trigger a significant immune response to the antigen. That could affect the body differently than a gradual very small daily dose.
Again, not claiming that injecting aluminum is dangerous, but it seems to me babies could be getting far more persistent aluminum in their bodies from injections than from food, and as far as I know this has not undergone a long term study showing that it's safe. Almost all vaccine studies have aluminum injected in both arms of the study, and I haven't found a single aluminum vs placebo study - please share if you have one.
Infant kidneys may not be as efficient as adult kidneys, but any aluminum acquired through vaccines would still be excreted by the time they're able to talk.
Point being that for a given amount of aluminum, many orders of magnitude more of it is still in the body years later if it was injected as compared with ingested.
I'm not saying this is harmful necessarily, but it is not something I would simply dismiss.
Studies in humans show that if doesn't end up accumulating unless your kidneys aren't working.
showing aluminum accumulation in human brain: (not from vaccines it could be from other sources, point is just that it did accumulate in these brains) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28159219/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-64734-6
I may be missing something and this only happens in people whose kidneys don't work but my quick glancing at these studies didn't suggest that.
https://www.chop.edu/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety...
Goullé JP, Grangeot-Keros L. Aluminum and vaccines: Current state of knowledge. Med Mal Infect 2020 Feb;50:16-21.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0399077X1...
Although aluminum at high doses can cause a variety of clinical manifestations, the quantity of aluminum in vaccines is too small to cause a direct toxic effect. Indeed, the quantity of aluminum in biological specimens from those receiving aluminum-containing vaccines is indistinguishable from unvaccinated subjects. The concern that aluminum in vaccines might be associated with a rare autoimmune disease called macrophagic myofasciitis has been refuted by previous studies.
(Not trying to be flippant, more just curious) Want to link to those?
persistence in humans: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11522584/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22425036/ https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3...
persistence in animals: https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27908630
showing aluminum accumulation in human brain: (not known to be from vaccines it could be from other sources, point is just that it did accumulate in these brains) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28159219/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-64734-6
I don't know, I feel like we actually should generally dismiss the idea of things as harmful when there are no studies that demonstrate harm but there are studies showing a lack of harm. If the facts change, so should our assessment. But not before.
Really the debate about could something be harmful is missing the point, and likely intentional misdirection by certain actors. Many things could be proven to be harmful in the future. But bad actors aren't asking that we just keep our minds open to the possibility of that future discovery, they're demanding we make policy decisions now based on that potential outcome.
If we're going to ban vaccines with aluminum, it should be because we have scientific proof that it's bad or very likely to be bad, not just that the possibility exists that it could be bad and that badness might be demonstrated at some point in the future.
So if company X creates compound Y and they get some studies published showing that Y is safe, then everyone else should assume it's safe and no one should look further at it?
There have been many cases of drugs being created, with studies showing safety, then later shown to be dangerous after killing people - let alone causing mild or subtle harm, and banned.
I don't think we should ban aluminum now. I also think the question of possible harm from aluminum is not settled and we shouldn't ban discussion of it. And I hope that because aluminum is a neurotoxin and can persist in the body, that research continues to be done to hopefully one day find ways to make vaccines not need aluminum, similar to how vaccines have been moving away from using mercury as the adjuvant.
Meanwhile, the argument is made that the benefit of aluminum adjuvant outweighs any potential cost and that's fine. I also would like it if they did a placebo controlled study of vaccines with aluminum vs no vaccine.
I don't think the Danish study in this article should be retracted. I'd also appreciate if they revised it to address the flaws that have been pointed out.
If this is what you meant, there are already studies covering this.
If you instead meant to say a study comparing vaccines with aluminum to the same vaccine without, there are those studies as well.
> Knowledge of how to produce true soap emerged at some point between early mentions of proto-soaps and the first century AD.
Guess which came first, 2800 BC - 99 AD or 1800 AD?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap
Also, bacteria was "discovered" by Ignaz Semmelweis, in mid 19th century. Barely anyone believes his theory.
In 1847, he proposed hand washing with chlorinated lime solutions at Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors' wards had thrice the mortality of midwives' wards.[3] The maternal mortality rate dropped from 18% to less than 2%...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
Do you mean three quarters?
Is using the word fourths common place?
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=three+fourths/...
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