#1748: Brian Hooker

The 2004 study “Age at first measles-mumps-rubella vaccination in children with autism and school-matched control subjects: a population-based study in metropolitan Atlanta” is one of an almost endless string of solid studies refuting the delusional idea that there is an association between vaccines and autism. Antivaxx conspiracy theorists, on their side, naturally want the evidence to fit what they have convinced themselves is true for non-evidence-based reasons and are accordingly very interested in anything that can be used to discredit such studies. Enter enter William Thompson, one of the coauthors of that study. The original study couldn’t do a comparison of certain subgroups of subjects based on race since the data on race were incomplete (that’s a simplification; you can read the complete explanation here). Well, Thompson was unhappy with that decision, so he suggested Brian Hooker take a look at andd analyze the data (and let’s be clear; the CDC did not“hide” any data as conspiracy theorists claim; they are and have always been available – instructions here – in fact Hooker himself got the data he used from the CDC.) And that was the start of what has later been called “the CDC whistleblower affair”, and it really, truly is a whole lot of nothing (even Thompson has been careful to avoid endorsing the antivaxx spin – Hooker thinks that’s because the powers that be have gotten to him).

But who is Brian Hooker? Hooker has a degree in biochemistry, but has no formal training in statistics, epidemiology, or any field pertinent to the study of vaccines or autism. But he is a hardcore anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. Hooker also has a son with autism and an open case claiming vaccine injury before the Vaccine Court. He is also a board member of an anti-vaccine organization called Focus Autism. When the quackery-friendly journal Health Impact News got Hooker to comment on a 2013 DiStefano et al. study that for the nth time undermined the idea behind the antivaxx conspiracy theorist rally cry “too many too soon”, they introduced him, audaciously, as follows: “There are probably very few people in the world who have spent as much time looking at CDC studies related to vaccines and autism as Dr. Hooker. Dr. Brian Hooker, a PhD scientist, has been fighting the CDC since 2004 in trying to get them to comply with Freedom of Information Acts to see the CDC research that supposedly shows there is no link between mercury in vaccines and autism.” Well, yeah. That’s what cranks do. It’s quite a bit like getting Jim Fetzer to talk about 9/11 and terrorism, I suppose (Hooker has himself participated inseveral “conspiracy realist” conferences and movements to talk about how the CDC covers up the data that would vindicate what Hooker has convinced himself into believing without accessing those data). Health Impact News elegantly sidestepped the question of whether Hooker has anything resembling any competenceon or education or training related to the issue. At least Hooker’s comment amply displayed his lack of relevant competence.

Anyways, Hooker reanalazyed the CDC data. If the data had been reanalyzed properly they would have made no difference, but Hooker’s goal wasn’t proper analysis but to force a conclusion that supported his ideological stance, and by mangling the data – he basically treated data for a case control study as data for a cohort study (he doesn’t really understand what a case control study is), and then used inappropriate statistical methods to analyze them (Hookeradmitted in a presentation at an anti-vaccine conference that he used a very simple technique, that “simplicity is elegance”, and that he prefers to do simple things rather than intellectually challenging things; that’s, to put it bluntly, not how statistics work). Well, to make a long story short (full story here) he managed to make it look as if there was a slight association between vaccines and autism for African American boys given their first MMR vaccine between 24 and 31 months of age: no one else! – so even if you ignore all of the flaws in the study and assume that his findings are accurate, Hooker’s study actually shows that the MMR is not associated with autism. Thus, even Hooker’s analysis disproves the conclusions of Andrew Wakefield’s debunked and retracted 1998 study – often cited as the main instigator of the modern antivaxx movement – though Wakefield nevertheless and absurdly took Hooker’s analysis to vindicate him, which is not surprising in light of recent research on conspiracy thinking.

The results were published in the journal Translational Neurodegeneration, though when the incompetency of the analysis was exposed the paper was retracted, and the anti-vaxx community screamed ‘conspiracy’: if you can game the system and get your pseudoscience published, you won, and it is unfair for the referees to change their mind later and disqualify the victory just because the results were false and the methodology disastrously flawed. Actually, the journal retracted the study because inappropriate and incompetent statistical methods and analysis, and because Hooker had dishonestly failed to disclose glaring conflicts of interest: though he admitted that he “has been involved in vaccine/biologic litigation,” which implies that he is no longer involved in such litigation, he failed to mention that he was at the time of submitting the paperinvolved in a case involving his own son, and hence that he stood to benefit greatly from studies that could support a connection between vaccines and autism. Makes a bit of a difference with regard to conflicts of interest, don’t you think? We don’t wish to imply that Hooker was lying, but he was.

Nor did he mention that he is board member of Focus Autism, the anti-vaxx organization that funded the study. Nor did he mention an email he sent to former director of the CDC, Julie Gerberding, in which he wrote, that “I would personally urge you to review the Book of Matthew 18:6 and consider your own responsibility to all children of the U.S. including my own son” (But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea), but I suppose he might have dropped that just because he didn’t want to up the word count of the paper.

Hooker seems otherwise to be one of the fringe lunatics who still thinks thimerosal, which is safe (and notthe same as the unsafe methylmercury, a point lost on the chemistry challenged) in vaccines causes autism. The MMR vaccine never contained thimerosal. He also really, truly thinks that the CDC knows this but is desperately trying to cover up the truth for nefarious reasons (though, of course, you cannot really be a vaccine skeptic and not be a conspiracy theorist). Hooker and Focus Autism have no qualms about extending their conspiracy mongering beyond the CDC, either. In 2014 they attacked a high school student film (!) “Invisible Threat” that investigated the vaccine/autism link from a reasonable point of view. Suffice to say that Focus Autism’s (and it’s founder Barry Segal’s) response cannot be called “reasonable”: They accused the film of being scripted by Big Pharma and “approved by Common Core” (no less) and even put out a press release “encouraging citizens to contact their legislators to counter ECBT’s public relations effort targeting legislators”. Idiots.

The Hooker-Thompson affair is the basis for the “documentary” Vaxxed, produced by Del Bigtree and featuring e.g. anti-vaxx activist Jim Sears (who, like most anti-vaxxers, claims to be “not anti-vaccine”), Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), and anti-GMO activist Stephanie Seneff (who has absolutely no expertise in epidemiology but who thinks that GMOs are gonna make us all autistic), which was initially supposed to be shown at the Tribeca film festival (because it was endorsed by Robert De Niro, one of the founders of the festival and a celebrity anti-vaccine loon). Actually, the Thompson-Hooker link doesn’t figure very prominently in the movie (review here) since even a cursory glance reveals it to be nothing; instead, the movie explores a range of anti-vaxx tropes and conspiracy theories.