Dr. Hahn sheds light on CDC contract and autism research

Last week, the Student Senate held a council discussion, debating issues ranging from the role of government funding in academic research to the impact on scientific independence. The premise of the discussion was based on the petition by RPI Standup For Science against the school accepting the no-bid contract from the CDC to study the relationship between vaccine administration and autism diagnoses. Many senators were unaware that the principal investigator of the project, Dr. Juergen Hahn, who is also the director of CBIS, was present in the room at the time. This fact only became clear when he spoke up to address misconceptions and clarify the study’s goals. Dr. Hahn’s comments reframed the entire discussion and offered insight into a project that has sparked intense debate amongst the past and present student body.

This petition has raised concerns about ethics, political influence, and the precedent set by RPI of accepting government contracts with specific terms. With the recent federal funding cuts across campuses and citing the extensive global research that has been conducted on this specific kind of study, the petition urges the administration at RPI to “stand up for science and walk away from this contract.”

The Polytechnic reached out to the authors of the petition for a statement via email who responded saying, “[b]y taking this contract RPI fails to consider the full breadth and depth of prior research. But more importantly, regardless of RPI's intent, the existence of the study and RPI’s credibility will be leveraged by anti-vaxxers to allege that vaccines are dangerous and that RPI agrees. Vaccination rates are already dropping in the U.S., in no small part due to mis-, dis-, and malinformation. RPI should not risk its ethos and resources to tie itself to an ideology with such harmful consequences.”

On September 29, President Martin A. Schmidt ’81 sent an email to the RPI community in response to the petition saying, “[t]he current scientific consensus is clear: to date, the vast majority of studies have not found an association. But science never stops. Even when prior studies have suggested certain conclusions, additional research, especially involving new sources of data, carries the potential to provide new insights to deepen scientific understanding.” He reiterated this point during his Fall Town Meeting on October 1. 

During the Senate discussion, Graduate Senator Peter Oyefolu ’28 noted that, besides Dr. Hahn and his graduate students, no one has actually read the contract, yet so many assumptions have been made. Dr. Hahn’s mid-discussion intervention emphasized transparency and the standard of scientific integrity in his work, with RPI being associated: “we have to be able to publish the findings as we see fit.”

In an interview with The Poly, Dr. Hahn explained that this project will build on prior studies examining connections between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and co-occurring physiological conditions such as gastrointestinal issues. The research leverages computational multivariable techniques to identify patterns that traditional epidemiology might overlook. For another research paper conducted out of Arizona State University, Dr. Hahn’s lab performed data analysis looking at replacing microbiomes in autistic individuals. 

The project also draws on verification studies from past research. Dr. Hahn’s group revisited datasets previously analyzed by other groups, including Princeton and a Chinese research team, confirming prior findings and testing reproducibility. He emphasized the computational techniques his team uses for epidemiological research, which is designed to analyze multiple variables simultaneously, are well-established in other research fields, even if they are relatively new to autism studies.

The study itself relies on two extensive cohorts. The first includes 275,000 children with complete medical records from birth to age five, identifying approximately 3,200 diagnosed with ASD. The second cohort links 120,000 children to 100,000 mothers, tracking health data from 12 months prior to birth through age five. Dr. Hahn highlighted challenges with updated diagnostic criteria, where autism diagnosis changed with the DSM-V in 2012, and ICD-10 code data changed in 2015. He argued that using DSM-V-based diagnoses is essential and the most difficult part of this research. The project, as a secondary goal, aims to explore how maternal vaccination patterns relate to childhood autism rates, using these large, longitudinal datasets. Dr. Hahn noted that while other studies exist in Scandinavian populations, the U.S. context, with its diversity and healthcare differences, makes this approach distinct.

A central concern raised during the Senate discussion was the CDC contract’s influence on the research. Dr. Hahn clarified that while the contract outlines reporting milestones and deadlines, it does not dictate methodology, analysis, or a specific conclusion. Responding to a similar question in the interview, he clarified that prior research provides a foundation to jumpstart the project, and results from this project may be published as “non peer-reviewed” reports to fit within the tight 12-month schedule, followed by peer-reviewed publications at a later time. He elaborated that the CDC’s interest in RPI stems from Dr. Hahn’s group’s access to proprietary datasets through Optum Labs, a subsidiary of healthcare giant UnitedHealth Group. Access to complete childhood medical records, linked to maternal data, provides a level of detail that was previously unavailable in US-based studies. The no-bid, contractual nature of the proposal by the CDC, he emphasized, was to retain the university’s independence in reporting results on this project. 

According to Dr. Hahn, the project is an exercise in both rigorous science and public responsibility. Conducting high-profile research in a politically sensitive context requires careful communication; for better or worse, contemporary research thrives on a careful balance between scientific independence, optics, and public engagement.

Editor's Note: This article was updated on October 12 at 5:30 pm to clarify that "non peer-reviewed" reports would be followed by a peer-reviewed publication at a later date.