Weaponization of Science Round Table
Flaws & Fraud in Research
Newsmakers Hour
Panel 1: Media, Industry & Research Integrity
Moderator: Justin Santopietro, MAHA Institute
Maryanne Demasi, PhD - Investigative Journalist & Science Commentator
Maryanne Demasi, PhD, is an award-winning investigative journalist from Australia. For more than a decade, she worked as a filmmaker and television presenter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC TV) and has received three National Press Club awards for Excellence in Health Journalism. Dr Demasi is renowned for her investigations into the chemical, medical, food, and pharmaceutical industries, and for raising awareness about the harms of overdiagnosis and unnecessary treatments. She has written for The Guardian and The Huffington Post, and produces investigative reports for The BMJ. Dr Demasi lectures internationally on topics such as scientific bias and censorship, conflicts of interest, and flaws in clinical research. She holds a PhD in rheumatology from the University of Adelaide and has served as a speechwriter and policy advisor to the South Australian Minister for Science and Information Technology. Her work appears on Substack “Maryanne Demasi reports” and she can be found on X (formerly Twitter) @MaryanneDemasi.
Paul D. Thacker- Investigative Journalist Covering Corruption in Science & Medicine
Paul D. Thacker is an investigative journalist who runs The DisInformation Chronicle. He has spent the last two decades uncovering campaigns to distort science and has written for the New York Times, JAMA, Washington Post, NEJM, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Mother Jones, UnHerd, and Real Clear Investigations. Thacker won a 2021 British Journalism Award for a series in The BMJ that investigated the financial interests of medical experts advising U.S. and U.K. governments during the COVID-19 pandemic. A separate investigation he wrote for The BMJ looked at problems in the clinical trial for Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine. That article was the finalist for an investigative journalism award and is the most highly viewed article in all of science in 2021.
For several years, Thacker led a series of high-profile investigations in the United States Senate examining corruption in science and medicine. This work led to reforms in medicine, including passage of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act and improved conflicts of interest policies at the National Institutes of Health. Paul’s work can be found on X- @Thackerpd and on his Substack “The Disinformation Chronicle”
Chris Masterjohn, PhD- Scientific Director, Mitome; PhD in Nutritional Sciences
Chris Masterjohn, PhD, believes mitochondrial dysfunction is the hidden epidemic behind modern disease — and that idiosyncratic genetic bottlenecks in energy metabolism are the key to understanding how each of us can maximize our own potential.
A PhD in Nutritional Sciences, former professor, and leading mitochondrial health expert, Chris spent years researching mitochondrial biology before founding the world’s first mitochondrial analysis, mito.me. His work reveals that mitochondrial testing, once thought to be only relevant to rare diseases, can uncover key actionable insights about how each person can best advance their own health.
Chris’s mission is to bring mitochondrial testing out of the rare-disease space and into everyday health, helping people identify and fix the specific energy bottlenecks holding them back.
As an outspoken opponent of COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandates, Chris is honored to take part in the MAHA renaissance. Chris can also be found on X- @ChrisMasterjohn and on his Substack.
Panel 2: Risk, Policy & Accountability
Moderator: Patriek Karayil, MAHA Institute
Brian Hooker, PhD- Children’s Health Defense, Chief Scientific Officer
Brian S. Hooker, PhD, is the Chief Scientific Officer at Children’s Health Defense, an organization committed to the best health for children in the U.S. and worldwide. He is also Emeritus Professor of Biology at Simpson University in Redding California where he specialized in microbiology and biotechnology.
Brian Hooker has many accomplishments to his credit including: co-inventor for five patents, recipient of the Battelle Entrepreneurial Award in 2001, and a Federal Laboratory Consortium Recognition Award in 1999, for his work on “Reactive Transport in 3-Dimensions.” The breadth of Hooker’s over 80 science and engineering papers have been published in internationally recognized, peer reviewed journals. His most recent publications focus on the epidemiology of vaccine adverse events.
Dr. Hooker has been active in vaccine safety since 2001 and has a 27-year-old son who sustained severe injuries from his infant vaccines. In 2013 and 2014, Dr. Hooker worked with the CDC Whistleblower, Dr. William Thompson, to expose fraud and corruption within vaccine safety research in the CDC which led to the release of over 10,000 pages of documents. Dr. Hooker can be found on Instagram - drbrianhooker, X - @BrianHookerPhD, and Facebook - Brian Hooker PhD
Jason Locasale, PhD (Internationally Recongized Scholar)
Jason Locasale, Ph.D. is an internationally recognized scholar and scientist who has made contributions to our understanding of metabolism and its impact on health.
Beyond his scientific contributions, Dr. Locasale is deeply interested and engaged in academic and scientific reform, advocating for transparency, accountability, and integrity in research institutions. His interests extend to how science is funded, governed, and communicated to better serve discovery and the public good.
Dr. Locasale graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Rutgers University with degrees in Chemistry and Physics and earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he trained in Chemistry and Biological Engineering. He moved into biomedical research during a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School where he pioneered new technologies to study the metabolism and made foundational discoveries. He has held faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School, Cornell University, and Duke University, where he obtained university tenure. He currently is founder and CEO of Locasale Research Group LLC, and holds adjunct faculty appointments at North Carolina State University and Duke University.
He has authored more than 200 scientific publications, contributed to major textbooks, and serves on editorial boards including PLoS Biology. He has advised the National Institutes of Health in numerous capacities as well as various philanthropic organizations and industry where he contributed to the founding and establishment of several biotechnology companies.
He is considered a pioneer in the application of metabolomics, a technology used to study multiple aspects of metabolism at once, to study biology leading newfound understanding of metabolic health. Dr. Locasale’s discoveries — including defining one carbon metabolism in cancer and healthy aging, elucidating the quantitative logic of glucose metabolism in health and cancer, and uncovering how diet and metabolism shape both metabolic pathways and the epigenome have become foundational in several fields. He has for seven consecutive years been recognized as one of the most highly cited researchers in the world. Dr. Locasale’s work can be found on X (formally twitter) X - @LocasaleLab, Instagram - LocasaleLab, and on his Substack!
Mark Skidmore, PhD- Professor of Economics and Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Michigan State University
Professor of Economics and Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Michigan State University
Mark Skidmore holds the Morris Chair in State and Local Government Finance and Policy and Michigan State University and is a Distinguished Scholar at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. He also served as Director of the USDA-funded North Central Regional Center for Rural Development from 2016-2020, and as Co-editor of the Journal of Urban Affairs from 2011-2021.
Professor Skidmore’s research covers topics in urban/regional economics, public finance/policy, disasters, and health (including COVID-19). He has published more than 100 peer reviewed articles and edited three books. He has received more than $10 million in grant funding from the National Science Foundation, US Department of Health and Human Services, and the US Department of Agriculture, among other organizations.
In recent years, Professor Skidmore published three articles relating to COVID-19, one of which examined the potential scale of COVID-19 vaccine adverse events. The 2023 article originally published in BMC Infectious Diseases indicated that those who observed adverse events among family and friends were much less likely to be inoculated. The evaluation also indicated that as many 278,000 people may have died from the COVID-19 vaccine in the first year of the vaccine rollout. The article was improperly retracted, taking Skidmore on a journey into the world of weaponized retractions.
James Lyons-Weiler, PhD- Biomedical Research Scientist & President, IPAK
Dr. James Lyons-Weiler has been a publishing biomedical research scientist for over 25 years, leading a movement to restore science as a tool for truth and public accountability. He founded and is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Science, Public Health Policy & the Law, a journal that had massive impact during the COVID-19 disinformation period and then again during Sec. Kennedy’s confirmation hearings.
Dr. Lyons-Weiler is the President of the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge (IPAK), and creator of IPAK-EDU, an innovative educational platform that helps thousands of students—from teens to retirees—develop the skills and confidence to engage with science, medicine, and public policy. With over 60 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Lyons-Weiler has contributed to mission-first research cancer biology, genomics, vaccine safety, neurodevelopment, autoimmunity, and environmental toxicology. He is best known for originating the concept of pathogenic priming, identifying systemic flaws in vaccine trial designs, and helping build the foundation for independent, community-rooted research networks across the U.S. The author of The Environmental and Genetic Causes of Autism, Cures vs. Profits, and Ebola: An Evolving Story, and is widely respected for his fearless, objective analysis and scientific integrity. His Substack, Popular Rationalism, reaches over 60,000 readers each week with clear-eyed, data-driven commentary. Grounded in philosophical empiricism and a fierce commitment to scientific integrity, Dr. Lyons-Weiler is known for his courage in the face of consensus pressure, and his refusal to let politics or funding bias dictate what science is allowed to find.