Health

Members of the scientific community have been raising concerns about the paper since immediately after it was published. Top and other scientists wrote about some of its methodological issues within days of publication. In an email, Top said in the six years since then, the paper had been cited in other studies and used to justify changes to vaccine policy and undermine confidence in vaccines, “likely contributing to decreased vaccination rates and outbreaks of serious preventable infections, like measles and whooping cough”.

Top called for the publisher and editors to conduct a thorough review of the peer review process and their response to the previous complaints, and to commit to improving the timeliness of their response in future.

While they battled to get their jobs back, Tighe and several other fired CDC employees banded together to create an improvised mutual aid network they called Fired But Fighting. But as the months dragged on, Fired But Fighting’s members watched as the administration, under the direction of Robert F Kennedy, the US health secretary, transformed the agency into something scarcely recognizable. Rather than focus on fighting for jobs that may no longer exist, they decided to grow into something new – to advocate for public health the way the CDC had always done it.