Topic: Research Fraud

The discussion focuses on Robert Gallo and the original research used to link HIV to AIDS. Rappaport claims Gallo failed to find the virus in a majority of his study subjects and essentially stole a virus specimen from the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He characterizes Gallo as a criminal figure who committed research fraud to establish himself as the discoverer of the cause of AIDS.

John Rappaport details the story of William Thompson, a CDC scientist who confessed to omitting data in a 2004 study regarding the MMR vaccine and autism. Thompson claimed that he and his co-authors cooked the data to hide a significant link between the vaccine and autism in certain populations. Rappaport highlights the total media blackout on this admission of internal research fraud at the CDC.