Twenty years ago, a paper published in JAMA changed the way doctors thought about antidepressant use during pregnancy.

The study concluded that women who discontinued the medication during pregnancy were five times more likely to relapse into major depression than those who remained on the medication. It quickly became one of the most influential papers in perinatal psychiatry.

Its findings were incorporated into clinical guidelines, cited by regulators, and eventually referenced in FDA prescribing information.

For many clinicians, it became the definitive evidence that discontinuing SSRIs during pregnancy carried a substantial risk of depressive relapse.

At the time, maternal-foetal medicine specialist Dr Adam Urato noticed something was missing from the study’s disclosures.

He recognised that many of the authors’ financial relationships with manufacturers of antidepressants had not been disclosed.

Urato wrote a letter to JAMA, published weeks later, pointing out that nine physician authors had financial relationships with antidepressant manufacturers, yet only two had disclosed them in the published paper.

“For readers to be able to make informed judgments about potential biases in this study,” he wrote, “they should have been made aware of all of these associations and potential conflicts of interest.”

The Wall Street Journal also published an investigation that documented more than sixty undisclosed financial relationships between the study’s authors and manufacturers of antidepressants.

The investigation revealed consulting fees, research funding, speakers’ bureau payments and advisory roles involving companies whose products were directly affected by the study’s conclusions.

The study’s authors initially defended the omissions. Because the paper was not evaluating any one manufacturer’s antidepressant, they concluded there was “no inherent conflict of interest” arising from their industry ties.

They nevertheless apologised for failing to disclose them.

“In retrospect,” they wrote, “we regret that we failed to include disclosures of the financial associations of all of the authors. Such disclosures would have provided utmost transparency.”

The controversy also caught the attention of the New York Times editorial board, which wrote a scathing editorial criticising the authors’ explanation for the omissions.

JAMA responded by publishing the expanded disclosures as a separate correction and later strengthened its conflict-of-interest disclosure policy.

The problem is that the correction was never incorporated into the original article. Twenty years later, anyone reading the paper online still sees the original, incomplete disclosures, with no indication that they were later corrected.

Instead, the updated disclosures remain buried in the journal’s correspondence pages.

When I asked JAMA why the online article had never been updated, the journal responded:

“This article was published 20 years ago, when we did not have the technical capabilities available today. At that time, the procedure was to append the correction notice to the end of the article PDF. That is what is displayed online.”

In a recent interview with MD Reports, Urato called JAMA’s explanation “ridiculous,” saying it failed to explain why the article remains unchanged today.

“We’ve been in an online era for more than 20 years,” he said. “Their argument that they didn’t have the technical capabilities is laughable.”

He says the issue centres on what readers see today.

“When you look this paper up online, you find the free full-text version of the original article, which is missing more than sixty financial disclosures,” he said.

“The original article is inaccurate, and there is no indication whatsoever that there is a correction to this paper.”

“The vast majority of readers will simply be misinformed.”

Urato says the solution is straightforward.

“JAMA needs to make it clear to readers, preferably with an obvious warning at the top of the article webpage, that there is a correction to this article, and JAMA needs to make that correction freely and easily available.”

More than missing disclosures

The financial disclosures are only part of the story.

The paper repeatedly attributes symptoms after stopping antidepressants to a relapse of depression. It never discusses the possibility that, in some women, those symptoms could instead represent antidepressant withdrawal.

“There’s no discussion about withdrawal at all in the paper,” Urato said. “They don’t mention the word withdrawal once.”

For Urato, that omission makes the undisclosed financial relationships all the more significant.

“The pharmaceutical industry wants those symptoms to be regarded as a relapse of depression,” he said. “That’s why readers need to know the authors were being paid by the manufacturers.”

The paper’s central finding has also proved difficult to replicate.

Subsequent studies have reported considerably lower and more variable relapse rates, and none has reproduced the dramatic five-fold increase reported in the original paper.

“Now, here we are twenty years later, after it’s influenced guidelines and been cited over and over again, and people accessing it online wouldn’t even know there was ever a correction,” he said.

Beyond one paper

For Urato, the JAMA paper is more than an isolated case. He believes the controversy reflects a wider problem throughout medicine.

“The organisations that are supposed to be working on behalf of the public are instead working for the pharmaceutical industry,” he said.

He cites organisations including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the American Academy of Pediatrics, regulators such as the FDA, and major academic institutions as examples of bodies that receive substantial industry funding.

“The public needs to understand this,” he said. “Everybody understands that money influences politics and business. But when it comes to medicine, people somehow think it doesn’t influence judgement.”

Twenty years after JAMA acknowledged the missing disclosures, the version of the paper that most readers see still does not tell the full story. For a study that shaped doctors' decisions about prescribing antidepressants during pregnancy, that is more than a historical oversight.

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This week, Dr Erica Schwartz appeared before the Senate HELP Committee to make her case for leading the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

But before the nominee had answered a single question, the terms of her confirmation had already been laid down.

HELP Committee chairman Bill Cassidy wasted no time.

“A lot of this conversation for me is going to revolve around vaccines,” he announced. “Vaccines should be settled.”

He blamed “a flurry of misinformation” around immunisation, saying some people cast doubt on mRNA vaccines “for no other reason than people don’t understand them.”

Mothers and fathers, he said, had become “confused as to whether vaccines are safe to give their children.” The result was thousands of measles infections, with children hospitalised or dying from vaccine-preventable diseases.

Then came the ultimatum.

“Vaccines are overwhelmingly safe and effective,” Cassidy declared. “Study after study shows they do not cause autism.”

“Any equivocation on these facts,” he warned Schwartz, “and I shall not be able to support your nomination.”

Only then did the questioning begin.

Confirmation hearings are meant to test a nominee’s judgment, independence and fitness to lead. Instead, Cassidy announced the conclusions he expected Schwartz to affirm before she had given a single substantive answer.

From the outset, it was clear there was no room for dissent.

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Recently, I wrote about how blood pressure guidelines have steadily shifted lower. Treatment thresholds fell, risk calculators expanded, and far more people now start medication years before they develop any symptoms.

After that piece, several clinicians contacted me with a different concern. This time, they weren’t worried about blood pressure being too high. They were worried about it being pushed too low.

What are the harms of lowering blood pressure too much in older people?

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Study 329, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 2001, concluded that the antidepressant Paxil was “generally well tolerated and effective” in adolescents.

It has since become one of the most controversial papers in modern psychiatry after internal company documents and subsequent legal proceedings uncovered evidence that its published findings were misleading.

Earlier this year, a lawsuit seeking to force the paper’s retraction was dismissed after a judge found the plaintiff lacked legal standing.

Now, attorney George W. Murgatroyd III has returned with a different legal strategy—one that shifts the focus from the paper itself to Elsevier’s sale of Study 329.

Instead of asking the court to order a retraction, Murgatroyd wants Elsevier to attach a corrective notice to the article before customers pay to access it through its ScienceDirect platform.

At its core, the lawsuit asks whether a publisher can continue selling a paper as trustworthy once it knows the paper no longer meets its own standards.

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One of the world’s leading biostatisticians has concluded that key analyses used to reassure regulators and the public about Merck’s HPV vaccine Gardasil was fundamentally unsound.

His report, released through the recently settled Robi v. Merck lawsuit, argues that key studies created an illusion of safety rather than providing rigorous proof.

Martin Kulldorff—a biostatistician, former Harvard professor, and senior scientific officer at the US Department of Health and Human Services—examined the data and reports Merck submitted to defend Gardasil.

He identified what he describes as fatal methodological flaws, statistical manipulations, and inadequate analyses that failed to properly evaluate potential risks.

“Merck has done a great disservice to public health,” Kulldorff concludes.

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The Lancet’s latest review of mRNA vaccines, by Blakney and colleagues, presents itself as an authoritative synthesis of the evidence.

Titled “Safety and efficacy of mRNA vaccines: a mechanistic and public health perspective,” it promises to examine the mRNA platform from mechanistic, preclinical, clinical and public health perspectives.

Instead, it delivers a remarkably confident account that gives little attention to many of the scientific and regulatory questions that have shaped debate over the past five years.

What makes the review effective as messaging is not that it ignores controversy, but that it appears to engage with it.

It names difficult issues — residual DNA, biodistribution, frameshifting and IgG4 class switching — only to swiftly minimise them with reassuring language.

The effect is to create the appearance of critical scrutiny while reassuring readers that these concerns are either resolved or insignificant.

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For more than two decades, Karl Stefanovic was one of Australia’s most recognisable and highest-paid television personalities, helping to shape breakfast television for millions of viewers.

So when Channel Nine parted ways with him after an interview with Tommy Robinson on his independent podcast, it once again sparked the familiar debate about free speech in the media.

Robinson is a polarising British figure. His critics describe him as a far-right, anti-immigration activist, while his supporters argue he has been willing to raise issues that others are reluctant to discuss.

Whether you agree with Robinson, or with Stefanovic’s decision to interview him, is beside the point.

Journalism has never required reporters to agree with the people they speak to — particularly in podcasting, where the boundaries between journalism, commentary and entertainment are often blurred.

What stood out to me, however, was something Stefanovic said afterwards.

Speaking with Piers Morgan this week, he observed that to survive in high-profile anchor roles, presenters often become “bland” in order to stay within the bounds of what the establishment will accept.

To me, it was a quiet admission that staying in those roles often means narrowing the range of questions you're prepared to ask.

I had learned the same lesson years earlier when I was fired from the ABC.

Large institutions, including media organisations, have invisible boundaries. No one sits you down and explains where they lie — you only discover them after you cross one.

While making factual documentaries for the national broadcaster, I came to understand that journalism often makes institutions uncomfortable when it asks questions they would rather not confront.

You don’t necessarily get into trouble because your reporting is inaccurate — mine wasn’t. More often, it’s because you’ve moved outside the range of opinions your organisation is willing to defend.

Years later, while reporting for The BMJ on topics such as regulatory capture, Covid vaccines and the UK Covid Inquiry, I encountered a similar problem. Certain experts would quietly become off-limits. Some were regarded as too controversial to interview. Others, I was told, had effectively been “blacklisted.”

But journalism isn’t about protecting audiences from difficult voices. It’s about challenging claims, testing arguments, and trusting readers to weigh the evidence for themselves.

That’s why the Stefanovic story resonated with me. Not because I hold any strong view about Tommy Robinson — to be honest, I knew very little about him until this controversy broke, and I wasn’t a regular viewer of breakfast television.

What interests me is the larger question it raises — why have we become so uncomfortable listening to people we disagree with?

Journalists have always interviewed controversial figures. It’s part of understanding the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.

What worries me is that we’ve become less confident—both in our own ability and in the public’s—to hear competing ideas without feeling threatened.

A healthy democracy should trust its citizens to listen, think critically, and reach their own conclusions.

I’ve now spent enough time in both mainstream media and independent journalism to know that neither model is perfect.

Every approach comes with its own pressures and incentives — advertising, sponsorships, algorithms, and the constant need to capture attention in a crowded media landscape.

The internet is full of commentators, influencers and entertainers competing for attention. Many have built successful businesses around opinion, outrage and the free speech debate. Good luck to them. Audiences clearly value that kind of content.

I didn’t become an independent journalist to become an influencer. I did it because I want my work to be influential.

My goal has always been to produce original reporting — obtaining documents, interviewing sources, scrutinising evidence, and holding powerful institutions to account.

That kind of work is slower and often less financially rewarding than reacting to headlines, but I believe it still matters.

I've deliberately chosen to remain free of advertising on Substack and independent of industry funding. I'm fortunate that the Brownstone Institute helps supports me through a fellowship, giving me the freedom to pursue investigations that might otherwise be difficult to sustain.

I still hope that, over time, MD Reports will be sustained primarily by readers who value careful, evidence-based, independent journalism.

If you believe this kind of reporting still matters, I’d be grateful if you considered becoming a paid subscriber.

A subscription costs US$75 / year, which amounts to about US$6.25 / month, and helps fund the time and research required for this work.

If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you — your support means a lot to me. And if you know someone who might value this kind of journalism, I’d appreciate it if you considered gifting them a subscription.

Thank you for reading, for sharing my work, and for making it possible for me to keep digging into important stories and asking the tough questions.

Maryanne

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The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced it will end the emergency declarations that allowed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to fast-track Covid-19 products under Emergency Use Authorisations (EUAs).

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the extraordinary circumstances that justified those emergency powers “no longer exist.”

On the surface, it sounds like a major shift, but for most people, very little will actually change.

Read more

Behind closed doors at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2016, senior figures from the Gates Foundation and the World Bank proposed a new approach to pandemic preparedness: large-scale simulations modelled on military war games.

Newly obtained internal emails show how the idea — referred to as “Germ Games” — gained rapid momentum and drew in the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

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A cache of internal emails obtained from within the US National Institutes of Health has exposed years of strategic planning for future pandemics involving governments, foundations, international organisations, and pharmaceutical companies.

The documents, stretching back to at least 2016, show that Dr Francis Collins, Director of the NIH from 2009 to 2021, was at the centre of these efforts.

In that role, he oversaw the allocation of the agency’s substantial research budget, which ran into tens of billions of dollars annually.

The emails reveal Collins working closely with the Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, World Bank, World Economic Forum, the African Academy of Sciences, and major pharmaceutical companies to strengthen research infrastructure, regulatory readiness, and international coordination well before Covid appeared.

For the public, the Covid response was presented as an unexpected crisis. Governments appeared to be making difficult decisions while navigating profound uncertainty.

But these emails tell a different story.

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Five years after publication, Toxicology Reports removed a study by independent researcher Neil Miller that analysed reports of sudden infant death following vaccination.

The journal said the paper contained “serious methodological flaws” and that its conclusions were not supported by the data.

Miller strongly disagreed, but the journal withdrew the study nonetheless.

Ordinarily, a dispute over statistical methods would have attracted little attention outside academic circles.

But because the study concerned vaccines and the unexplained deaths of apparently healthy infants, it quickly became part of a much larger debate about scientific publishing, transparency, and how controversial research should be handled.

The controversy escalated when US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote to the journal seeking details about how the decision had been reached, who reviewed the paper, and what evidence justified its removal.

At its core, the dispute raised two questions.

The first concerned the science: did Miller identify a genuine safety signal, or did he misuse a database and draw conclusions the evidence could not support?

The second concerned the process: even if the paper contained methodological problems, was removal the appropriate remedy?

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The Trump administration has already chosen its nominee to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

But after attending a Brownstone conference in Connecticut this past weekend, I found myself reflecting on the remarks of the physician who didn’t get the job.

Dr Joseph Marine, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins University who was considered for the role, delivered a remarkably candid assessment of what he believes the CDC must do if it hopes to recover from the damage caused during the Covid years.

His message is simple — before the CDC can regain public trust, it must first confront its own mistakes.

That may be easier said than done. The CDC remains one of the most influential public health agencies in the world, but after the pandemic, it is also one of the most criticised and least trusted.

Policies on lockdowns, school closures, masks, vaccine mandates, and the evidence used to justify many of those decisions have left the agency facing a crisis of credibility that could take years to repair.

Marine’s talk was not a call to dismantle the agency, but rather an attempt to answer a question that few public health leaders seem willing to ask — what does genuine reform actually look like?

His answer begins with ethics.

Public health, he argues, needs a clearer moral foundation — one that respects individual rights, acknowledges uncertainty, avoids unnecessary harm, and uses the least restrictive measures possible to achieve a public health goal.

That principle leads directly to one of his strongest criticisms of the pandemic response: lockdowns.

Marine believes the CDC should formally renounce mass lockdowns as a public health strategy.

Traditional quarantine has long been used to isolate individuals known to have been exposed to a serious threat. Locking down entire populations for months at a time was something very different.

Even if such policies could be shown to reduce transmission, Marine argues, they would still raise profound ethical questions in a free society. The social, educational, and economic costs fell disproportionately on those least able to bear them.

He is equally critical of the role “fear” played during the pandemic.

Doctors are taught that manipulating patients through fear is unethical. Public health, he argues, should be held to the same standard.

“The CDC should lead with courage and confidence, and never with fear,” he says.

Fear may produce compliance in the short term, but it comes at a cost. It damages trust, weakens social cohesion, and can leave the public feeling misled when worst-case scenarios fail to materialise.

Another lesson, he says, is the importance of acknowledging uncertainty.

One of the defining failures of the pandemic response was the tendency to present unsettled questions as ‘settled science.’ Yet science advances through questioning, testing, and revising conclusions as new evidence emerges.

Marine says that the CDC should become more comfortable saying “we don’t know” when the evidence is uncertain, rather than projecting confidence that the data do not support.

That concern extends to the quality of evidence behind public health recommendations.

Marine argues that too many pandemic-era policies rested on observational studies, modelling assumptions, or expert opinion rather than strong clinical evidence.

He cites examples such as six-foot distancing rules, masking recommendations for young children, and prolonged school closures — policies that, in his view, were often presented with greater certainty than the underlying evidence justified.

As a cardiologist, he points to cardiovascular medicine as a model. Clinical recommendations are routinely graded according to the strength of the evidence supporting them. Findings from multiple randomised controlled trials carry more weight than expert opinion alone.

He says public health should adopt the same discipline.

But perhaps Marine’s most striking observation is how little reflection has occurred since the pandemic ended.

Despite what he describes as the “most significant medical event in 100 years,” there has been remarkably little effort by institutions to examine what worked, what failed, and what should be done differently next time.

In medicine, physicians routinely conduct morbidity and mortality conferences where mistakes and poor outcomes are openly reviewed. The goal is not blame — the goal is to learn.

Marine sees no reason why public health should be exempt from the same scrutiny.

He suggests the CDC could lead a national re-examination of the pandemic response through seminars, grand rounds, and public discussions that critically assess both successes and failures.

The absence of that conversation concerns him.

Marine also believes reform requires greater intellectual diversity within public health institutions.

He points to reports showing that nearly all political donations made by CDC employees went to a single political party and questions whether a broader range of perspectives has been excluded from public health institutions.

His broader point is that public trust becomes harder to maintain when an agency is perceived as politically aligned rather than politically independent.

Finally, Marine urges public health leaders to widen their focus.

Future pandemics matter, but so do the chronic diseases that kill far more Americans every year.

Heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer continue to impose a far greater burden on population health than any infectious outbreak. Building a healthier population is itself a form of pandemic preparedness.

Whether the CDC is capable of reform remains an open question.

But if reform is possible, Marine’s prescription is to acknowledge mistakes, strengthen scientific standards, reject fear-based messaging, embrace uncertainty, and return to the ethical principles that should guide medicine and public health.

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Earlier this year, the FDA issued Moderna a Refusal-to-File letter, effectively rejecting the company’s application before a full scientific review could begin.

At the centre of the decision was Vinay Prasad, then director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), who argued that Moderna had tested its vaccine against the wrong benchmark.

Because the vaccine was intended for older adults, the FDA said Moderna should have compared it against one of the influenza vaccines routinely recommended for people aged 65 and older, rather than a standard-dose flu shot.

The decision immediately sparked controversy.

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has committed more than $735 million to purchase children’s Covid-19 vaccines from Pfizer through the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program, according to federal procurement records.

The agreement was signed on June 1, 2026, and covers updated paediatric Covid-19 vaccines through fiscal years 2026 and 2027.

The purchase, however, presents a legal dilemma.

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For nearly a year, attorney George W. Murgatroyd III tried to compel the retraction of one of the most notorious papers in modern psychiatry.

Now, that effort has come to an end.

A judge dismissed Murgatroyd’s lawsuit against the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) and publisher Elsevier over Study 329 — a paper that has been at the centre of scientific controversy for more than two decades.

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The landmark lawsuit that put Merck’s Gardasil HPV vaccine on trial has ended in a confidential settlement.

After years of litigation, extensive discovery, and weeks of courtroom testimony, attorneys for plaintiff Jennifer Robi confirmed that her claims against Merck have ended.

Michael Baum, an attorney with Wisner Baum representing Robi, confirmed the settlement in a statement to MD Reports.

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Today, Professor Wafik El-Deiry will testify at a U.S. Senate hearing titled, “Plausible Mechanisms of COVID-19 Injections Causing Cancer and Attacks on Scientific Publications.”

The hearing will examine not only the biological mechanisms by which mRNA vaccines may contribute to cancer, but also what lawmakers describe as attacks on scientific publications and the researchers behind them.

For El-Deiry, those two issues have become inseparable.

For nearly two years, the Brown University cancer researcher has found himself under sustained attack on PubPeer, a website originally created to improve scientific accountability through post-publication peer review.

PubPeer began with good intentions.

It was launched as a digital extension of the peer review process—an open forum where scientists could flag concerns about published research and continue scrutinising research beyond the walls of academic journals.

At its best, PubPeer offered a space for scientists to highlight genuine errors, expose unethical practices, and improve the quality of the scientific record.

But somewhere along the way, critics say, that mission got lost.

In recent years, PubPeer has morphed into something darker. Anonymous users now comb through scientific papers not to improve science, but to discredit scientists—often over minor, debatable, or decades-old issues.

Critics argue that the platform has become a vehicle for reputational attacks rather than constructive scientific critique.

These anonymous commenters often operate behind pseudonyms. Increasingly, their targets are not fraudsters or charlatans, but respected researchers whose work challenges prevailing narratives or powerful interests.

And when these serial complainers succeed in forcing a correction, investigation, or retraction, it is often celebrated not as a service to science but as a trophy—a scalp to display.

Some have built entire careers around hunting alleged misconduct, earning financial rewards, media attention, speaking engagements and public recognition.

Critics call them something else — vigilantes.

They argue that PubPeer has created a system where anonymous individuals can publicly accuse scientists of misconduct, trigger institutional investigations, and inflict reputational damage without being subject to the same standards of transparency they demand from others.

The result, they say, is a climate of fear. Researchers are increasingly reluctant to pursue controversial questions, challenge orthodoxies, or publish findings that conflict with prevailing narratives.

The risk is not merely criticism, but becoming the target of a prolonged campaign of anonymous allegations that can follow a scientist for years, and shape public perceptions long before any wrongdoing has been established.

The platform has even acquired a nickname among some researchers: Pub-Smear.

El-Deiry is the latest scientist to find himself in the crosshairs.

He is no fringe figure. Over three decades, El-Deiry has built an international reputation in cancer biology, pioneered discoveries in tumour suppressor pathways, founded biotechnology companies, developed cancer therapeutics, and published hundreds of scientific papers.

More recently, he presented concerns about mRNA vaccines and cancer-related pathways to the CDC’s Covid-19 vaccine workgroup and co-authored a paper on the subject with Professor Charlotte Kuperwasser of Tufts University School of Medicine.

According to El-Deiry, the trouble began in 2024.

He published a provocative study suggesting that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein may interfere with the p53 pathway, one of the body’s most important tumour-suppressor mechanisms.

The paper did not claim that Covid-19 vaccines cause cancer. But it raised uncomfortable questions about whether the spike protein could affect pathways involved in cancer protection, and whether future vaccines could be designed to avoid such effects.

It was a politically charged topic. And in today’s scientific climate, questioning dominant narratives can come at a cost.

Within weeks, anonymous PubPeer users were combing through decades of El-Deiry’s previous publications, alleging flaws, demanding retractions, contacting journals and institutions, and casting doubt on his integrity.

Who were they? What were their scientific qualifications? Did they have conflicts of interest? And who, if anyone, was holding them accountable?

This isn’t about shielding scientists from scrutiny or excusing fraud.

Post-publication review, when conducted transparently and fairly, plays an important role in science. Fraud should be exposed and errors should be corrected.

But there is a profound difference between flagging genuine misconduct and launching a reputational ambush against scientists whose work challenges prevailing narratives.

Science thrives on debate.

It does not thrive on anonymous policing, online vigilantism, or self-proclaimed “science sleuths” pursuing personal crusades under the guise of scientific critique.

The impact on El-Deiry’s own career has been impossible to ignore.

In April, Brown University’s Dean of Medicine announced that El-Deiry would be “stepping down” as director of the Legorreta Cancer Center after seven years in the role.

No public explanation was provided for the change in leadership.

But for many scientists following the case, the development raised uncomfortable questions about the power anonymous actors can wield over careers, institutions, and the direction of scientific inquiry itself.

In the following interview, El-Deiry discusses the personal and professional consequences of becoming a target, the impact the controversy has had on his career, and why he believes PubPeer has become something very different from what its founders originally intended.

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For months, a clear message was circulating through Republican political circles.

Vaccine issues were becoming a liability.

As the Trump administration looked ahead to the 2026 midterm elections, strategists were reportedly urging the president to steer clear of vaccine policy and instead focus on other health priorities, alongside inflation, immigration, and the economy.

Concerns about pharmaceutical industry influence, childhood vaccine mandates and the expanding vaccine schedule were increasingly portrayed as politically risky terrain.

That narrative was reinforced by a polling memo released by Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio in late 2025, which was widely interpreted as showing that scaling back the childhood vaccine schedule was unpopular with voters.

The New York Times, for example, reported that polls indicated “Kennedy’s vaccine agenda is a dud, unpopular even with Republicans” and that the White House wanted Kennedy to downplay vaccine issues and focus instead on his more popular healthy-eating initiatives.

But there was a problem.

At roughly the same time that message was taking hold, another Fabrizio poll was telling a very different story.

According to a recent article by Daily Caller journalist Emily Kopp, Fabrizio conducted a survey in October 2025 that found widespread concern about both childhood vaccine mandates and the influence of pharmaceutical companies.

The poll reportedly found that 73% of voters were concerned about childhood vaccine mandates, while 90% expressed concern about the influence of pharmaceutical companies.

What made the findings particularly noteworthy was that Kopp reported that the survey had been commissioned by MAHA Action, the political organisation aligned with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again movement.

Yet the poll was never publicly released.

Kopp’s report on what she described as a “secret poll” immediately raised questions about whether MAHA Action had effectively buried findings that could have bolstered Kennedy’s vaccine agenda.

The story took an unexpected turn when Kopp’s article was later highlighted by The MAHA Report, a publication affiliated with MAHA Action itself.

The article acknowledged that the October survey had never been publicly released, but did not address the obvious question — why hadn’t MAHA Action released the poll.

Seeking clarification, I contacted Tony Lyons, founder of MAHA Action and president of Skyhorse Publishing.

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President Donald Trump has signed an Executive Order directing federal health agencies to re-examine America’s childhood vaccine schedule, reviving an effort that was halted by a federal court earlier this year.

The order instructs the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to revisit a government review that found significant differences between U.S. vaccine recommendations and those used in several other developed countries.

According to the White House, the goal is to align vaccine recommendations more closely with scientific evidence and international practice while preserving vaccine access and parental choice.

The move reopens a debate that has simmered for months.

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The documentary follows David Feldman, a software engineer who unexpectedly found himself at the centre of one of the most contentious debates in modern medicine — whether high cholesterol drives heart disease.

I first met Feldman around 2018 at a low-carb conference in Colorado. Back then, he was walking around with a laptop full of graphs and data, enthusiastically showing anyone who would listen his theories about cholesterol metabolism.

He wasn’t famous. He wasn’t trying to build a brand. He was just a curious engineer trying to solve a problem that didn’t make sense to him.

Like many people, Feldman had adopted a low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet to improve his health. He lost weight, improved his blood sugar, slept better, and felt healthier overall.

“Everything got better, except one thing. One thing that could not be ignored,” he says in the film.

His LDL cholesterol level skyrocketed.

For most people, that would have been the end of the experiment. They would have abandoned the diet and followed conventional advice, assuming the high cholesterol meant they were heading toward a heart attack.

But not Feldman.

“Suddenly a lot of my fear became fascination,” he says.

Instead of backing away, he started investigating. He tracked everything — meals, blood tests, weight changes, energy intake, and metabolic patterns. What began as self-experimentation soon became an obsession with understanding what was actually happening inside the body.

And that led to the central question driving the entire film:

Why were some people becoming dramatically healthier on ketogenic diets while simultaneously developing extremely high LDL cholesterol?

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