Over 300 COVID-19 Papers Withdrawn for Not Meeting Standards of Scientific Soundness

Including the "Lancet" study that condemned hydroxychloroquine

Research journals have withdrawn well over 300 articles on COVID-19 due to compromised ethical standards and concerns about the publications’ scientific validity.

Retraction Watch has provided a running list of withdrawn papers on COVID-19 ranging from “Acute kidney injury associated with COVID-19” to “Can Your AI Differentiate Cats from COVID-19?”

A total of 330 research papers have currently been retracted.

During the pandemic, researchers have compromised on ethical standards and tried to either get more publications approved or to take shortcuts around ethics, senior researcher Gunnveig Grødeland at the Institute of Immunology at the University of Oslo says, after going through the list of articles that have been withdrawn, and the reasons for some of them.

While it is quite natural for some articles to be updated or changed to be published in a different form, some have been retracted because the researchers did not obtain informed consent during the research.

“It will, of course, be withdrawn when it is found that ethical guidelines have been breached,” Grødeland told Khrono, a Norwegian higher education and research newspaper.

She pointed out that other articles have been withdrawn after the editors noticed that the strategies the papers mentioned were giving the wrong impression in the media of being recommended as actual treatment or prevention of COVID-19.

She said these sorts of articles had to be withdrawn as they claimed things that neither the authors of the articles nor their institutions could vouch for.

In addition, some studies did not include a large enough sample size. When more subjects were included, the researchers could no longer maintain the same conclusions they made earlier about the effect of the drugs.

Grødeland said that part of the reason this happened during the pandemic was that relatively more people suddenly started conducting research on a topic they really knew relatively little about.

Even prestigious journals such as the Lancet were publishing those articles. One of Lancet’s studies even caused both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the national government to stop the comprehensive testing of hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness against COVID-19.

The extensive Lancet study, allegedly based on research fraud, said that the drug increased the risk of heart arrhythmia and mortality for COVID-19 patients.

However, most of the retracted papers were published in smaller journals, the vaccine researcher points out.

“When you look at the articles that have been retracted, the vast majority were published in the less interesting journals. It is they who are mainly affected by withdrawals,” Grødeland said.

But there were a number of environments that do not normally carry out research, which suddenly started producing research after receiving funding from local hospitals. “It may have caused things to get a little out of hand in some places,” she said.

Hearing Loss?

A recent case from the University of Manchester backtracked on an earlier study that said that COVID-19 was associated with hearing loss, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), and vertigo.

Published in 2021, the researchers said they had identified about 60 studies that report audio-vestibular problems in people with confirmed COVID-19.

“Our analysis of the pooled data, published in the International Journal of Audiology, reveals that seven to 15 percent of adults diagnosed with COVID-19 report audio-vestibular symptoms,” audiology professor at the University of Manchester Kevin Munro said.

“The most common symptom is tinnitus followed by hearing difficulties and vertigo.”

Two years later, after the virus has been blamed for a range of health problems, including auditory disorders, the same university published a new study concluding that hearing loss is unlikely to be caused by COVID-19.

Lead author and audiologist Anisa Visram explained their reasoning. “We know that viruses such as measles, mumps, and meningitis can damage the auditory system,” Visram said in a release.

“It is also well known that COVID-19 can affect our sense of smell and taste, so it was reasonable to assume it might also affect our sense of hearing.”

Visram assured that their current study is well designed and executed and is the most thorough assessment of hearing conducted in people with COVID-19.

Munro also acknowledged that their earlier work may have been rushed. “There was an urgent need for this carefully conducted clinical and diagnostic study to investigate the long-term effects of COVID-19 on the auditory system,” he said.

“Many previous studies were published rapidly during the pandemic but lacked good scientific rigour.”

“It hasn’t been clear if these are incidental findings or if COVID-19 is damaging the hearing system,” Professor Richard Ramsden, Trustee at the Dowager Countess Eleanor Peel Trust, added.

“While the study cannot rule out infrequent hearing loss as a result of COVID-19, we now know that for most people, there is nothing to be concerned about.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/over-300-covid-19-papers-withdrawn-for-not-meeting-standards-of-scientific-soundness_5293140.html

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FDA Detects Serious Safety Signal for COVID-19 Vaccination Among Children

Children of certain ages who received Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine face an elevated risk of heart inflammation, according to a new federally funded study.

Vaccinated children aged 12 to 17 face a heightened risk of myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, and a related condition called pericarditis, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) researchers found.

The number of myocarditis and pericarditis events in that age group met the threshold for a safety signal, the researchers reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association on May 22.

The elevated risk was present within seven days of vaccination, according to the data.

Researchers identified 89 cases among 12- to 15-year-olds and 64 cases among 16- and 17-year-olds after reviewing records from commercial databases run by CVS Health, HealthCore, and Optum.

The claims were made between Dec. 11, 2020, when Pfizer’s vaccine was cleared by the FDA, and mid-2022.

Researchers looked at data to determine whether any of the 20 health problems were experienced at higher rates by the vaccinated. The problems included myocarditis or pericarditis, Bell’s palsy, appendicitis, and stroke.

Only myocarditis or pericarditis met the criteria for a safety signal, which may be related to vaccination.

U.S. officials have already concluded that the conditions are caused by the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, although the vaccines didn’t carry a warning for months after authorization. One possible mechanism is excessive immune responses triggered by lipid nanoparticles. Novavax’s vaccine, authorized in 2022, can also cause the heart conditions, authorities say.

More on Study

Researchers looked at health plan members who received a Pfizer vaccination, excluding those who lost their insurance during a certain window of time, which was 365 days for most outcomes.

Researchers then examined the number of each outcome in a different window of time, referred to as a risk window, which varied from a single day to as long as 42 days after vaccination.

The study then took the rates of problems from each database and compared them with expected rates, which are based on pre-pandemic numbers.

Out of 3 million children who received at least one vaccine dose, 153 cases of myocarditis or pericarditis were identified in the 12- to 17-year-old age group. More cases were identified among children aged 5 to 11, but not enough to trigger a signal.

A medical record review of the 37 cases for which records were obtainable confirmed 27 cases as true myocarditis or pericarditis.

None of the other 19 outcomes examined met the signal criteria, according to researchers.

“These results provide additional evidence for the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines in the pediatric population,” the researchers said.

Dr. Peter McCullough, a cardiologist, disagreed.

“My concern is that these data represent a gross under-reporting of the frequency and severity of COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis,” McCullough, who has called for the withdrawal of the Pfizer vaccine, told The Epoch Times via email.

Since the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged in mid-2021 concerns that the vaccines might cause heart inflammation, “there have been [more than] 200 papers in the peer-reviewed literature and over 100 fatal documented cases largely among young men, peak ages 18–24 years, some with autopsy proven COVID-19 vaccine heart inflammation resulting in death,” according to McCullough.

That includes five people who suddenly died in Germany and six people who perished in the Nordic countries.

A request for comment sent to Steven Anderson, the FDA official listed as the study’s corresponding author, sparked a response by an FDA spokesperson, who declined to provide additional citations for the safety claim.

Anderson’s co-authors included researchers with Acumen, Optum, HealthCore, CVS, and IQVIA, with multiple members reporting connections with Pfizer. The time period included when the old Pfizer vaccine, which is no longer available in the United States, was used.

‘Pretty Ludicrous’

Norman Fenton, emeritus professor of risk at the Queen Mary University of London, said the researchers’ safety claim doesn’t hold up in light of the facts that the study shows a signal for myocarditis and pericarditis and that children are unlikely to benefit from the COVID-19 vaccines.

“The conclusion that ‘these results provide additional evidence that COVID-19 vaccines are safe in children’ is pretty ludicrous,” Fenton told The Epoch Times in an email.

The researchers also failed to take into account what’s known as the healthy vaccine bias; previous research has found that people who decide to get vaccinated tend to be healthier than those who don’t.

“They are comparing a highly select group of child and adolescent insured vaccine recipients to a historical baseline population consisting of everyone in the relevant age group who were insured,” Hebrew University lecturer Josh Guetzkow said.

Experts also said the risk windows appeared short, as post-vaccination conditions can sometimes crop up months afterward, and noted that the signal criteria were structured so that some outcomes would need to happen at more than double the rate among the vaccinated to meet them.

The shortest risk window was just one day, for anaphylaxis, or severe allergic shock. Some others were just one week. The rest were 28 days or 42 days.

In their protocol (pdf) for conducting the research, FDA officials said they chose risk windows based on pre-pandemic studies, including one from 2007.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/fda-detects-serious-safety-signal-for-covid-19-vaccination-among-kids_5288229.html

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http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

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