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During a U.S. Senate hearing on Tuesday, staunch vaccine supporter Dr. Jake Scott testified that 661 placebo-controlled trials show the safety of childhood vaccines.
But attorney Aaron Siri, who also testified during the hearing, said none of those trials used a true placebo for testing a vaccine on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) schedule.
Scott, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford Medicine, created a database of clinical trials to discredit U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s assertion that inert placebo-controlled studies haven’t been done for any federally recommended childhood vaccines, except for the COVID-19 shot.
The CDC makes recommendations for the Child and Adolescent Immunization Schedule based on vaccines approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland attended the hearing, which focused on corruption in science and its effect on vaccine policy. She said the exchange between Siri and Scott showed the public how “slipshod” Scott’s research was.
Holland said:
“What became crystal clear in the hearing is that this database is a total sham. Attorney Aaron Siri decimated Dr. Scott’s testimony and database, taking apart all 661 studies and proving, bit by bit, that nothing undermines Secretary Kennedy’s claim.
“Dr. Scott then astonishingly acknowledged that he hadn’t reviewed all the studies in the database as Siri had.”
Holland said she and other audience members were left “dumbfounded” by Scott’s “ignorance and simultaneous arrogance.”
Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., CHD senior research scientist, said, “Anyone who really has a grasp of the available literature supporting vaccine safety research would notice how dismally barren the record is when it comes to inert placebo-controlled trials of childhood vaccines.”
CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker agreed. He said:
“The fact is that none of the FDA-approved vaccines on the infant/child schedule had placebo-controlled trials in the paperwork that they submitted to the FDA with their New Drug Application package (i.e., for final approval).
“The only exception is the COVID-19 vaccine — but they offered the vaccine to the control group 12 weeks after the start of the trial, thus abolishing the control group.”
‘This is what transparency looks like,’ Scott boasted
Scott began compiling studies in his database in April. By early June, he’d compiled 127 randomized controlled clinical trials that used an inert placebo, according to CNN.
Now that number is up to 661, he told senators on Tuesday.
Scott’s written testimony, from which he read aloud, states:
“We set out to answer a fundamental question. What does the complete trial record actually show about vaccine testing?
“We’ve cataloged 1,088 randomized control trials from 1941 to 2025 involving over 10.5 million participants. Every entry is publicly verifiable through PubMed links. The entire database is openly accessible. Anyone with Internet access can verify our findings. This is what transparency looks like.
“Our findings directly refute false claims about vaccine testing. We documented 661 trials using inert placebo controls: saline, sterile water or other biologically inactive substances.”
In a June 12 X post, Scott said he had “reviewed” and “catalogued” the safety trials for vaccines on the CDC’s immunization schedule to “fact-check” Kennedy. (Scott’s account has since been deleted from X.)
Siri breaks down the 661 studies to find that zero include a true placebo
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which held the hearing, asked Siri to discuss the 661 studies Scott listed on his database.
Siri drilled down into the studies to show that they don’t refute Kennedy’s claim. First, he pointed out that 567 of the trials were for vaccines that the CDC doesn’t recommend for children, such as the HIV vaccine.
Those trials are “totally irrelevant to the safety of routine injected childhood vaccines,” Siri said.
Of the remaining 94 trials, 70 did not involve healthy children. “For example, trials of HIV-positive adults. Again, completely irrelevant to the safety of childhood vaccines,” Siri said.
That left 24. Of those, 21 used substances for the control group that either weren’t inert or weren’t licensed in the U.S.
“For example, a Chinese flu shot. Stuff like that,” Siri said. “That leaves us with three studies.”
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One study was a trial for the chickenpox, or varicella, vaccine in which the control group received an injection with neomycin, an antibiotic. “Neomycin used topically can cause issues, let alone injected,” he said.
The second study was a trial for a Gardasil 4 vaccine. Nearly all of the women and girls in the control group were given an aluminum adjuvant injection. The rest of the control group received “everything in the vial” except the antigen and the aluminum — “which included L-histidine, polysorbate 80, sodium borate, yeast protein.”
The third trial was for a Gardasil 9 vaccine. The women and girls in the control group were given a saline solution — “but they only got it if they first got three doses of Gardasil 4,” Siri said.
“The result is there’s zero trials — zero — which were relied upon in this list of 661 to license a routine injected vaccine on the CDC schedule that included a placebo,” he said.
Proper vaccine safety studies need to include an effective control group and enough people to effectively detect possible injuries. They also must follow the participants long enough to detect health issues, Siri said.
“There’s not a single routine injected childhood vaccine on the schedule that meets those criteria,” he said.
Scott said he doubted Siri had actually reviewed the studies. “I’d be very surprised if you went through all 661 trials,” he said. “We haven’t even conducted the full analysis yet. … This is a work in progress.”
Toby Rogers, Ph.D., who also testified at the hearing, accused Scott of “playing fast and loose” with his definitions of what constitutes an inert placebo.
“Inert should mean that the substance does not cause a chemical or biological reaction in the body,” Rogers said. ‘When supporters of the status quo use the word inert, they can mean just about anything.”
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