Dr. Jeffrey S. Morris was recently interviewed for two articles in New York Magazine and The Atlantic that examine the professional history of Mark Geier, M.D. and his son David Geier (B.S., Biology), who was recently appointed by HHS as a “senior data analyst” tasked with investigating Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) data.
The articles recount the Geiers’ long-standing involvement in vaccine-related litigation, their publication of studies alleging vaccine harms, and their legal troubles stemming from the unlicensed administration of hormonal therapy to autistic children based on an unproven theory.
Both pieces emphasize serious scientific flaws in their work, with specific focus on nine VSD-based studies from 2015–2017 that Dr. Morris critically analyzed. These studies purported links between thimerosal-containing hepatitis B vaccines and chronic diseases including autism but relied on a flawed case-control design using cases from 1991–1998 and controls only from 1991–1992, during a time when vaccine uptake surged from 0-10% in 1991-2 to ~90% by 1998. Dr. Morris demonstrated that this design artifact alone could falsely produce a five-fold association, even in the absence of a true effect, an error so fundamental the Atlantic article suggested “cast doubt on Geier’s abilities and intentions in assessing data.”
In this X.com thread, Dr. Morris outlines his critique and explains how the flawed study design leads to such massive bias.