TinFoilHatPreacherBear said:
rigorous placebo-controlled trials????
https://www.facebook.com/reel/588909457638485
Just an interesting, educated, individual taking issues with how the safety studies were performed.
Misinformation or Legit?
But it was funny that Jake Scott said "we haven't even analyzed all of the 661 trials" yet he confidently states at the beginning that the placebo testing was sound.
Short answer: partly. Siri's narrow technical point has some truth to it, but he gets to "zero" by redefining the question. His conclusion that childhood vaccines have never been properly tested doesn't follow from his breakdown.
What the dispute was. At a 2025 Senate hearing led by Ron Johnson, Stanford infectious disease doctor Jake Scott presented a crowdsourced database of vaccine trials. Scott said they had documented 661 trials using inert placebo controls such as saline, sterile water, or other biologically inactive substances. His claim was that all 16 antigens routinely recommended for children have been studied in placebo-controlled trials. Siri argued that 567 of the trials were not for a routinely injected vaccine against a disease on the CDC childhood schedule, and that the rest were "totally irrelevant" to childhood vaccine safety, giving trials in HIV-positive adults as an example. His bottom line was that none of the 661 was relied on to license a routinely injected CDC-schedule vaccine with a placebo.
The Defender +4Where Siri has a real point- Many trials in the list aren't the licensing trials for the specific products U.S. kids get today. Some cover adults, other countries, experimental vaccines, or older formulations. "661 trials" sounds more relevant to the current schedule than it is.
- It's true that many modern pediatric vaccines were licensed in trials that compared the new vaccine with an existing vaccine, or used a control containing an adjuvant such as aluminum, rather than plain saline. Siri cited an HPV trial where the few hundred participants who got placebo had first received three doses of Gardasil 4. podscripts
- Some scientists accept a legitimate methodological concern here: a control that isn't inert can make it harder to detect side effects caused by shared ingredients.
Where his breakdown is misleading- He moved the goalposts. Scott claimed every childhood antigen has been studied against an inert placebo somewhere. Siri rebutted a different, much narrower claim: that a placebo trial was the one used to license the current injected product. Each qualifier ("relied upon to license," "routine," "injected," "on the CDC schedule") excludes more trials. For example, "injected" drops the oral rotavirus vaccines, which were licensed in very large placebo-controlled trials.
- Placebo trials do exist for many childhood diseases. Saline placebo trials have been done for vaccines against rubella, pneumococcal disease, Hib, HPV, polio (the Salk vaccine), measles, Tdap, and COVID-19. The 1950s Salk polio trial alone had a placebo-controlled portion with more than 400,000 schoolchildren. voicesforvaccinesabc17news
- His standard can't ethically be met. Once a vaccine works, giving children saline instead leaves them unprotected. Under WHO guidance, placebos are not allowed when a safe and effective vaccine already exists where the trial is planned, because withholding it could endanger participants. That's why updated vaccines are usually tested against the older version. This is standard trial ethics, not evidence of a cover-up, and it applies to things like cancer drugs too. voicesforvaccines
- Safety evidence doesn't come only from licensing trials. Large post-licensure monitoring and observational studies of millions of children are a major part of the safety record. Siri's framing leaves them out.
Context on the two sides. Siri is the lead lawyer for ICAN, a vaccine-skeptic group, and litigates against vaccine makers. Most coverage of his "breakdown" comes from allied outlets like The HighWire and Children's Health Defense. Scott is an outspoken vaccine advocate, and his "661" figure was a rhetorical number that oversold how directly the list addresses today's schedule.
Overall, Siri accurately pointed out that most of the list isn't licensing data for current U.S. pediatric products. But his "zero" comes from narrowing the definition until almost nothing qualifies, and his larger implication that the schedule is untested isn't supported. If you'd like, I can look up the actual licensing trial design for a specific vaccine on the schedule.
