Antivaxxers don’t like it when one of their crappy studies that they somehow managed to sneak into a decent peer-reviewed journal is deservedly retracted, as happened to Mark Skidmore’s paper that estimated that 278K people might have died from COVID-19 vaccines. Fortunately for Skidmore and others, there exist fake journals that will launder their study by republishing it so that antivaxxers can continue to claim the work has been published in a “peer-reviewed journal.”
The latest antivax line is that trace amounts of residual plasmid DNA fragments constitutes “adulteration.” It’s just the “toxins gambit” twisted into a bad legal argument.
Tech bro turned antivax influencer Steve Kirsch is claiming that Michigan State University economist Mark Skidmore has been “exonerated” after having had a paper retracted claiming 278K deaths from COVID-19 vaccines in 2021 alone. In reality, Skidmore’s paper is zombie pseudoscience that’s back from the grave.
I thought that Prof. Skidmore’s survey, from which he extrapolated an estimate of 278K killed by COVID-19 vaccines was the worst survey ever. I was wrong. Steve Kirsch has Skidmore beat by a country mile.
A recent study reaffirms the high degree of correlation among physicians between antivax views and an embrace of quackery. This is an old finding that needs to be documented periodically and shows why the acceptance of non-science-based treatments by physicians endangers vaccination efforts.
