Post 22: What the "Defenders of Science" Miss About the Purpose of Scientific Peer-Review and the Open Dialogue: When You Censor or Support the Censorship of Dissident Voices, You Are In the Wrong
Post 22: What the "Defenders of Science" Miss About the Purpose of Scientific Peer-Review and the Open Dialogue: When You Censor or Support the Censorship of Dissident Voices, You Are In the Wrong
It is best to debate the merits and deficiencies of published investigations in the open, without resorting to editorial backdoors to “clean the record”. Editorial retractions are unaccountable.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
I have to start by apologizing to Dr. Mark Skidmore (including Dr. Peter McCollough and Dr. Jessica Rose) for not highlighting and addressing the retractions and withdrawals of peer-reviewed and accepted papers. Due to the recent retraction of their paper by Dr. James Lyons-Weiler and Dr. Paul Thomas, I started a Change.org petition to present to the editors - it looks like I will need to expand the petition to include all these authors.
Retraction or withdrawal is perceived as a serious deficiency or fraudulent act in scientific publications. Neither is applicable for the papers in question, as all the authors have stated that they did not request and are in opposition to the actions taken by the editors and/or publishers.
The papers in question that have raised an uproar are the following:
Jessica Rose PhD, MSc, BSc , Peter A. McCullough MD, MPH , WITHDRAWN: A Report on Myocarditis Adverse Events in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in Association with COVID-19 Injectable Biological Products, Current Problems in Cardiology (2021), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpcardiol.2021.101011
Retraction: Lyons-Weiler, J.; Thomas, P. Relative Incidence of Office Visits and Cumulative Rates of Billed Diagnoses along the Axis of Vaccination. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8674
RETRACTED ARTICLE: The role of social circle COVID-19 illness and vaccination experiences in COVID-19 vaccination decisions: an online survey of the United States population, Mark Skidmore, BMC Infectious Diseases volume 23, Article number: 51 (2023)
The more I dig into the editorials and responses to the retractions of the papers (a small sampling below with mostly: “Hurray! We stopped the anti-vaxxers!!” and focusing on Dr. Skidmore), the more I see the common threads in their articles.
https://www.biznews.com/health/2023/04/19/covid-vaccine-deaths Editor BizNews: Nadya Swart Republished from Daily Friend (Igo Vegter)
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-04-11/anti-vaxxers-loved-to-cite-this-study-of-covid-vaccine-deaths-now-its-retracted Michael Hiltzik
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/retracted-papers-about-covid-19-are-more-highly-cited-than-they-should-be/ David Gorski, MD, PhD
The writings from the above commenters that supported the unilateral retraction and withdrawals, were not based on available facts to them. In some cases, as stated by Dr. Gorski, he wrote to the editors of BMC ID to object about the methodological flaws he identified (Respectful Insolence).
As far as I can determine from the cited objections by Dr. Gorski, Mr. Hiltzik and Mr. Vegter (to Dr. Skidmore’s survey), the objection to the paper was that it allowed “misinformation” about the safety of the mRNA gene therapy injections to be taken up by “anti-vaxxers”. No analysis of the statistical methods or the methodology of the survey was applied to an analysis of the paper. Indeed, not a single editor has published an explanation or a description of the methods they used to identify the “methodological flaws”.
As the writers of the editorials and blog posts (who applaud the retractions and withdrawals) comment, in regards to Dr. Skidmore’s survey (and on occasion to the paper by McCollough and Rose & Dr. Andrew Wakefield [what does Wakefield have to do with COVID-19 mRNA gene therapy injections?])), several recurrent themes are brought up in their writing.
First, the bloggers and editorialists purport to know the true intent of the publications. The idea that the stated purpose of the paper is actually a “bait-and-switch” for the real purpose of “proving” that the “vaccines” killed hundreds of thousands of people. Glad to know that they can read minds and infer intent perfectly. Not a scientifically valid position.
Second, allowing these publications to raise concerns and highlight measurable discrepancies in outcomes creates a space and provides grounds for “anti-vaxxers” to grow and spread “misinformation”. Good thing that no vaccines have never been proven to have adverse side effects.
Third, scientific research and publication does not rely on education, diplomas or licenses from one particular realm of practice. It relies on the application of the scientific method and the use of logic and reasoning. Where advances in the fields of biology and medicine have occurred (X-ray mutation, DNA structure, MRI, just to name a few), the researchers and inventors came outside or adjacent the field they entered. The only requirement for publishing a scientific paper, in any form, is the ability to pass peer-review from reviewers familiar with the field, methods and practices. Good peer-review and editorial oversight will require several passes of writing and feed-back, with reviewers seeking answers to questions that the paper does not address sufficiently. Questioning and second-guessing peer-reviewers is arrogant. Writing a public letter to the editor to address the short-comings of a publication is more appropriate method to correct the record. It also allows the author(s) of the paper to respond.
Fourth, methodological and statistical analysis of the purported flaws are not discussed by the authors of the blogs. It is taken as an article of faith that the mRNA gene therapies are Safe & EffectiveTM or a naïve assumption that our FDA regulators and the manufacturers did everything by the book (never mind that this is the most rushed development of a novel gene therapy technology ever done and please skip the BS regarding the ~15 years spent by Moderna to try and bring this technology to market – they kept on failing). Also, let’s ignore the well-established and published legal fines that have accrued by Pfizer for lying and withholding safety information to the FDA.
Did I also mention that FDA had to be sued to release records from the Pfizer and Moderna pre-clinical and clinical trials that, by law, were required to be public? Aaron Siri has a few things to say about that little fact – along with a great deal of legal and scientific evidence that raises fundamental questions about safety and efficacy of the mRNA gene therapies.
The authors of the retracted and/or withdrawn papers covered on this post (again, all passed peer-review) are assigned intentions by the detractors. Indeed, the claims that the detractor make about the papers (Vaccines are proven to cause X bad thing!) are not stated by the authors but assumed by the detractors. The detractors are projecting their concerns about the assumed intentions of the authors. That is not a scientifically defensible position, but an assertion of opinions and biases of the detractors.
Indeed, if the authors were required to defend their intentions, versus presenting the facts and methods, scientific journals would be little more than religious/social/political litmus tests that authors need to pass before they can publish. But it is far easier to assert that you know the authors true and malignant intentions:
“As Scooby-Doo would, say, “Ruh-roh!” I sense…an antivax assumption behind the survey, the same antivax assumption behind deceptive dumpster-diving into VAERS, namely that every report of a death or adverse event that occurs after vaccination must have been caused by vaccination.”
I sense something too. Willful blindness to analyze the totality of available information and an adherence to a belief instead of an adherence to a defensible idea. But that would be unkind, unscientific and unproductive.
All the papers that were retracted never claimed or tried to prove a link between vaccines and injuries, deaths or health outcomes. ALL THE PAPERS were pointing out the fact that there is a potential link. Indeed, a very cursory and simple data display of VAERS suggests that there is need for concern about the mRNA injections from Moderna, Pfizer and the J&J adenovirus. The number of deaths (a category that requires the CDC to validate the death certificate associated with the report is real – you can’t make up a report with death in VAERS) leaves little room for debate that we need to look at the POTENTIAL risk associated with the mRNA injections.
But, if the detractors and supporters of censorship want to ignore data, that is on them.
Nothing to see here folks, move along…
United States Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Public Health Service (PHS), Centers for Disease Control (CDC) / Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) 1990 - 08/18/2023, CDC WONDER On-line Database. Accessed at http://wonder.cdc.gov/vaers.html on Aug 26, 2023 8:05:05 PM; Event Category: Death; State / Territory: The United States/Territories/Unknown; Group By: Month Reported; Show Totals: TRUE; Show Zero Values: FALSE
If a Patient Dies From a “Vaccine”-Induced Injury and the CDC Doesn’t Recognize It, Did the Patient Really Die From the Vaccine? H.R.5546 - National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986
So, what is the point of VAERS? Prior to the establishment of VAERS via the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, the mass immunization of the population required distribution of vaccines without an individualized medical examination. The lawsuits against the manufacturers for vaccine injuries was becoming an unstainable economic hit for the manufacturers. It was recognized by the current legal ruling1 prior to the NCVIA that:
“[I]t [is] what the Restatement calls an “unavoidably unsafe product,” one which cannot be made “safe” no matter how carefully it is manufactured. Such products are not necessarily “unreasonably dangerous,” for as this Court has long recognized in wrestling with product liability questions, many goods possess both utility and danger.” - Restatement (Second) of Torts §402A, comment k (1965)*
Even further than that, some courts argued a distinct bias by the government:
“Given the CDC’s admitted biases against discouraging the use of vaccines, a jury could conclude that [defendant] knew or had reason to know that the CDC was not going to provide the truth about [defendant’s] product and did not, in fact, give proper warning” - Allison, 878 P.2d at, 958 n.17 (quotation marks omitted)*
The NCVIA shielded the manufacturers from liability by establishing an administrative board (National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program) and was further expanded by the PREP ACT in 2005.
The Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) is part of a national pharmacovigilance system. It is not intended to be used to prove causation of death or injury from a vaccine, but to warn regulators about potential problems with the manufactured medical products.
The current data derived from VAERS is several fold higher than can be expected from the volume of injections that have been applied. The real question is why FDA has not moved to block the distribution of the mRNA injections and to carry forth detailed autopsies that can differentiate between COVID-19 infection deaths and mRNA CV19 injection deaths. There are some theories associated with why that might be the case (look no further than Bailiwick News and Due Diligence and Art) but the rate of injuries associated with life insurance actuarial data and an increase in disability rates demonstrate that the deaths and injuries we are seeing are more widespread than CDC and FDA want to acknowledge.
The non-governmental groups that attempt to do the work of agencies like the FDA and the CDC run into problems in acceptance for peer-review, such as the work of lead author Nicholas Hulscher at University of Michigan at Ann Arbor - School of Public Health (A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF AUTOPSY FINDINGS IN DEATHS AFTER COVID-19 VACCINATION). The original pre-print was housed in the Lancet pre-print server, but as reported by the Daily Sceptic, the Lancet Preprint group felt it necessary to censor…I mean remove the paper after a surge of downloads had begun. It is telling that the listed reason for removing a paper that had NOT BEEN PEER-REVIEWED are similar to the reasons why the peer-reviewed papers discussed here had been removed. Per Preprints with The Lancet:
“This preprint has been removed by Preprints with The Lancet because the study's conclusions are not supported by the study methodology. Preprints with The Lancet reserves the right to remove a paper that has been posted if we determine that it has violated our screening criteria.”
How can you make a claim about study methodology without undergoing peer-review? That is the entire purpose of peer-review! If The Lancet does not want to publish the paper, then state it clearly - We Decline To Review the Publication.
The results in the pre-print article are in line with the work done in Germany by Schwab et al (Institute of Pathology, Heidelberg University Hospital, Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg, Pathologisches Institut), providing strong evidence that the SARS-Cov-2 gene therapies induce myocarditis and are underreported as causes of death…for the very simple reason that the criteria had to be developed to detect gene therapy induced myocarditis and organ damage by this group!
It is amazing to think that the Defenders of Science still feel comfortable detracting and claiming the safety of a new technology without having the ability to defend their position with facts. If you don’t know how to detect the cause of death, how do you feel justified in claiming safety?
Let the goal-post moving begin.
Until next time.
https://www.druganddevicelawblog.com/2020/11/reviewing-pre-prep-act-mass-vaccination-cases.html?utm_source=mondaq&utm_medium=syndication&utm_term=Food-Drugs-Healthcare-Life-Sciences&utm_content=articleoriginal&utm_campaign=article