Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

Study laundering: Retracted antivax studies resurrected in fake journals

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.”

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

“Adulteration”: The latest iteration of the antivax “toxins gambit” applied to COVID-19 vaccines

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.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

Just in time for Halloween, Mark Skidmore’s zombie antivax pseudoscience rises again

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.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

Deluded tech bro Steve Kirsch claims COVID vaccines have killed 3.5X more people than COVID-19

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.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

VAERS and plasmid DNA “contamination” of COVID-19 vaccines: The nonsense continues

This week, a new preprint made the social media rounds falsely claiming a correlation between “contamination” of COVID-19 vaccines with plasmid DNA and VAERS reports of adverse events. How does its methodology stink? Let me count the ways.