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| Science & Technology |
| Journal Retracts Terrible Study That Claimed Widespread Covid-19 Vaccine Deaths |
| 2021-07-03 |
| [Gizmodo] The study, based on misrepresented safety data, argued that vaccines would kill two people for every three lives they saved. A study looking at the impacts of covid-19 vaccination—condemned by other scientists as seriously flawed and irresponsible—has now sparked a mutiny of sorts. This past week, several well-respected researchers have resigned from their involvement in the journal that published the paper, which argued that vaccines are killing almost as many people as they’re saving from the pandemic. Today, the paper was retracted. The study, titled “The Safety of COVID-19 Vaccinations—We Should Rethink the Policy,” was published on June 24 in the journal Vaccines and was authored by Harald Walach, Rainer J. Klement, and Wouter Aukema. Citing several sources of data, the authors argued that covid-19 vaccination was more dangerous than commonly believed, and that the benefits of inoculation only barely outweighed the risks caused by covid-19. Most egregiously, they claimed that for every “three deaths prevented by vaccination, we have to accept two inflicted by vaccination.” The paper was uncritically shared by some on social media at first, including members of the anti-vaccination movement. But it was quickly criticized by many other scientists for its faulty assumptions, bad math, and outright misinformation. One of the main pieces of evidence the authors presented to support their claim that the covid-19 shots are deadly, for instance, came from the Netherlands’ adverse event reporting system for their vaccines. But as Gizmodo has discussed before, these systems are designed to record any health incident, including death, that occurs after a person receives a new drug or vaccine. They don’t demonstrate that the incident occurred due to the drug—after all, a person may die for any number of unrelated reasons after receiving a vaccine—but instead are meant to flag possible signals of undiscovered side effects that could be linked to a new drug or vaccine, signals that then have to be studied further before any judgment can be made. It wasn’t long before scientists associated with the journal Vaccines began to protest the study’s publication. Within days, prominent scientists such as Katie Ewer, a member of the Oxford University team who helped create their now widely used covid-19 vaccine, resigned from the journal’s editorial board. A day after her resignation, the journal placed an expression of concern on the paper, meant to alert readers of the many criticisms it had received, and announced it would investigate the matter. The announcement didn’t seem to stop the bleeding, though; at last count, according to the publication Science, at least six scientists in total have resigned from positions as associate or section editors with the journal. Finally, just today, Vaccines’ remaining editors came back with their verdict, announcing that the paper would be retracted. In their notice, they pointed to “several errors that fundamentally affect the interpretation of the findings,” including the misrepresentation of the Netherlands’ vaccine safety data. The editors also noted that the authors were asked to respond to the criticisms made of their paper, but “were not able to do so satisfactorily.” The paper was then retracted under their protest. “The paper was deeply, fundamentally flawed, comparing two numbers that were poorly conceived and incorrect in numerous ways. It should not have been published, but at least it is now retracted,” Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist from the University of Wollongong in Australia who earlier wrote a detailed criticism of the paper, told Gizmodo. Even with this decision, some scientists have questioned how the paper got through the peer-review process in the first place. Two of the three reviewers were anonymous, and none brought up any of the issues that resulted in the retraction. The current fiasco isn’t the only one to have involved MDPI, the publisher of Vaccines and many other open-access journals. In its past, some scientists have accused MDPI of being a predatory publisher, more eager about the quantity than the quality of the research it publishes—criticisms that were still being made this year before the latest retracted paper. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #6 While certain traditional journals, like The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, have become notorious in recent years for the laxity of their reviewers, at least for certain fashionable topics, open access journals can be orders of magnitude worse. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2021-07-03 22:16 |
| #5 Fauci is enjoying his new Pfizer funded pool where it’s now safe to pee if you wear two bathing suits. |
| Posted by: Jack Salami 2021-07-03 22:08 |
| #4 Or pulled under pressure. Take your pick. |
| Posted by: Speng Snaviting6874 2021-07-03 21:22 |
| #3 Whe(r)e's our (r)resident COVID ghoul? |
| Posted by: Jash Squank7662 2021-07-03 21:19 |
| #2 In addition... per review does *not* mean the results or conclusions were replicated. Only that some guys read the paper, looked over the math and did not see any glaring errors. Additionally in addition... humans are remarkably adept at fooling themselves. If you want something to be true, you can come up with endless logical reasons why. Evidence to the contrary? Inconvenient facts, misinformation and conspiracy. So just shut up. You don't want to lose your job, do you? |
| Posted by: SteveS 2021-07-03 16:14 |
| #1 Even with this decision, some scientists have questioned how the paper got through the peer-review process in the first place. Because they're all buddy-buddy with each other, that's why. Scratch my back, then I'll scratch yours. |
| Posted by: Raj 2021-07-03 15:59 |