BREAKING--Springer Nature Cureus Journal of Medical Science Violates Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Guidelines
Publisher Retracts Valid, High Quality, and Widely Read Cureus Paper Calling for Halt in COVID-19 Vaccination
In a stunning act of scientific censorship, a little known publication integrity staffer Tim Kersjes has retracted a manuscript authored by epidemiologist M. Nathaniel Mead, MSc, after the paper drew global attention to the Springer Nature Cureus platform with record views/reads/downloads. The paper called for a halt in COVID-19 mass vaccination based on a valid evaluation of the evidence. It topped >330,000 views/reads/downloads in a month as compared to an average Cureus-promoted paper which has only ~2700 in a year.
A rating of >9.2 is considered “excellent” and “groundbreaking” appropriately characterizing this extensively cited paper with 293 references (average paper has 30).
Kersjes raised eight points previously handled in an exhaustive peer-review process. The journal and its editors had the right to reject the paper any time during the review process. Once published, it is a violation of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Guidelines to retract paper without adequate justification.
The authors’ rebuttal to this bold and unethical action taken by the publisher is posted below so you can see the points raised and responses. Please see the publication link and download your PDF version before it is censored off the platform. Here is the online notice of retraction:
The authors will proceed with publication in an alternate journal.
We are writing in response to the threatened retraction and eight false claims made by Tim Kersjes and Springer Nature regarding our highly rated, heavily viewed and downloaded comprehensive review paper, “COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines: Lessons Learned from the Registrational Trials and Global Vaccination Campaign,” published on 24 January 2024 in the journal Cureus. Mr. Kersjes currently serves as Head of Research Integrity, Resolutions for Springer Nature Research Integrity Group.
The statements made by Kersjes are false, misleading, and unsupported by evidence. Several claims were also arbitrary and capricious. Most of the statements appear to be adapted, either directly or indirectly, from the numerous comments made by the well-known vaccine industry social media trolls, Jonathan Laxton and Matthew Dopler, comments that were inserted almost daily in the Cureus portal following our paper’s publication. Their sole purpose was to deliberately denigrate coauthors of the “Lessons Learned” paper while misleading, confusing, mocking and otherwise upsetting others participating in the Cureus post-publication forum online. As an example, one of Laxton’s statements in the Cureus portal reads as follows:
"This is anti-vaccine gish-gallop that adds nothing useful to the literature. The majority of the authors have no expertise in this subject (Seneff, Rose, Kirsch). They wildly speculate on "anomalies" in the Pfizer trial even though data from the Moderna trial is similar with similar efficacy outcomes and the Clalit real-world study (Pfizer-funded) found a similar efficacy rate. They misrepresent all-cause mortality as COVID-19 would have to make up a very large amount of deaths to detect a difference in all-cause mortality between groups in a study of this size. They misrepresent VAERs data ignoring the number of doses given at once for COVID-19 and that the COVID vaccine is 2-3 doses and influenza 1. They present the Table 2 fallacy from the Cleveland Clinic study. This study never should have been published." - Jonathan Laxton, MD
This statement from Laxton is nonsense from a scientific standpoint. Following the libelous, defamatory comments about several of our paper’s coauthors, Laxton resorts to incoherent rambling and gibberish about the Pfizer and Moderna trials, followed by his citing a non-existent “Table 2 fallacy”; both comments may suggest an intellectual disability or some form of cognitive impairment. We have placed in bold the phrases that Kersjes clearly appropriated from Laxton in order to help devise the first two of eight statements in the retraction letter. Kersjes evidently borrowed these phrases without realizing that (a) his actions would be uncovered and exposed, and (b) neither Laxton nor Dopler have any training in epidemiology and biostatistics, hence the outright speciousness of their comments. Unfortunately for Kersjes, the groundless, misleading comments of both Laxton and Dopler contribute nothing of substance and instead only engender confusion and cognitive dissonance for the Cureus readership. Given that Kersjes has no training in the health sciences, it is not surprising that he fails to see through the inaccurate and fallacious nature of the numerous Laxton/Dopler comments.
In sum, the false claims made by Kersjes reflect a breathtaking dearth of scientific understanding. All of Kersjes’s comments were accounted for and subsumed by the review process; more sophisticated and meaningful variations of these comments were raised by the original reviewers of the manuscript and were handled with edits in the paper during the review process. The Cureus editors found the responses satisfactory and fully accepted the paper. The manuscript has been contracted and copyrighted, and has had a record number of views, reads, and downloads over a one month period for Cureus. Nevertheless, we will now respond to each of Kersjes’s statements in turn.
1) Kersjes claim: We find that the article is misrepresenting all-cause mortality data
Response: In borrowing this comment from Laxton, Kersjes is offering an unfounded criticism. Three sources of ACM data were considered in our paper, and we accurately synopsized all three: the Benn et al. (2022), Aarstad and Kvitastein (2022), and Rancourt et al. (2023) analyses. The paper’s eight reviewers’ agreed with the way we presented these ACM data. All agreed that the Benn et al. analysis showed the mRNA vaccinations did not lead to a reduction in overall mortality. All agreed that the Aarstad and Kvitastein analysis of 31 European countries showed “(a) increases in ACM during the initial nine-month period of 2022 were positively correlated with increases in 2021 vaccination distribution; and (b) each percentage point increase in 2021 vaccination coverage was associated with a 0.105% increase (95%CI 0.075-0.134) in monthly mortality during 2022.” Reviewer Alpha (evidently chosen by Cureus) asked us to emphasize the Rancourt et al. 180-page analysis extensively showed booster rollouts synchronously followed by peaks in all-cause mortality, so we inserted that important statement as well.
Citations
#52. Benn CS, Schaltz-Buchholzer F, Nielsen S, et al.: Randomised clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines: do adenovirus-vector vaccines have beneficial non-specific effects?. Lancet preprint. April. 5:2022. 10.2139/ssrn.4072489
#254. Aarstad J, Kvitastein OA: Is there a link between the 2021 COVID-19 vaccination uptake in Europe and 2022 excess all-cause mortality?. Asian Pac J Health Sci. 2022, 2023:25-31. 10.21276/apjhs.2023.10.1.6
#255. Rancourt DG, Baudin M, Hickey J, Mercier J: COVID-19 Vaccine-Associated Mortality in the Southern Hemisphere. Correlation Research in the Public Interest, Ontario, Canada; 2023.
Our reanalysis of the postmarketing data provided to the FDA for the Pfizer trial data yielded a 31% higher ACM risk in the BNT162b2 group compared to the placebo group. The detailed explanation for this calculation can be found in the second to last paragraph in the section, “Revisiting the registrational trials”. This was thoroughly analyzed by all eight reviewers, with no objections. We clearly noted that the 31% increase was not a statistically significant finding, but still a trend in the wrong direction. The 31% increase and theoretical estimate of the timeframe that would be required to reach statistical significance (2.8 years) was independently confirmed by Masterjohn (citation #64).
2) Kersjes claim: We find that the article appears to be misrepresenting VAERs data
Response: Kersjes is making an oblique, unsubstantiated comment, again borrowing directly from Laxton’s comment above. Our two charts were based on documented queries to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS). There is no misrepresentation because the charts were generated directly from data supplied by these VAERS queries. In the last paragraph in the section “Quality control issues and process-related impurities”, our paper states the following: “Based on a query of the MedDRA code ‘Autoimmune disorder’ in the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), there was an 803% increase in autoimmune disorders per million doses administered when comparing the administration of Influenza vaccines from 2018 to 2020 with COVID-19 vaccinations from 2021 to 2023 (Figure 5) [173]. This represents an immense safety signal.” All eight reviewers agreed with this wording and interpretation.
In the second paragraph of the Discussion, we offer this clear caveat about the use of VAERS: “Although invaluable as tools for detecting safety signals, national health surveillance databases such as VAERS and Yellow Card do not meet the rigorous standards set by controlled trials, further underscoring the necessity of this approach for the assessment of medical and public health interventions.” This is why we only cite VAERS as indicative of safety signals and concerning trends.
Referring to Figure 7 in the Discussion, we offered the following interpretation and substantiation: “Figure 7 shows a graph based on myocarditis reports in VAERS Domestic Data as of September 29, 2023, which offers an indication of the gravity of this situation. All myocarditis reports are plotted according to age and dose (dose 1 (pink), dose 2 (green), and dose 3 (blue)). After dose two, there was a five-fold increase in myocarditis cases among 15-year-old males. Regardless of age, myocarditis cases were more frequent following dose two, which is suggestive of a causal link between myocarditis and the COVID-19 mRNA inoculations. The data depicted in the chart are further reinforced by a recent disproportionality analysis of VAERS data showing a statistically significant association between cardiovascular events and COVID-19 vaccinations [263].”
All eight reviewers agreed with this concise, cogent presentation of the VAERS data. Note that we use the phrase “suggestive of a causal link”. We are not declaring a cause-and-effect relationship, only suggesting the possibility on a precautionary basis. The most compelling study of VAERS is the large disproportionality analysis by Yan et al.(2022), which is citation #48 in our paper. This study found very strong signals for myocardial infarction, pulmonary embolism, cardio-respiratory arrest, cerebral infarction, ischemic stroke, and cerebral hemorrhage associated with both mRNA vaccines.
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