A week ago Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave the keynote speech at the second annual meeting of his antivax organization, Children’s Health Defense. Once again, he demonstrated that not only is he still antivax as hell, but that his proposals are even more bizarre than before. Truly, it was a homecoming for him.
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.”
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.
Last month, a study showed that papers about COVID-19 that are retracted tend to be cited far more than average and continue to be heavily cited after retraction. Clearly, scientific publishing and the scientific community need to do better.
