A researcher who co-authored a now-retracted paper claiming that two vaccinated people died of COVID-19 for every three deaths prevented has had an affiliation with a Polish university terminated.
Yesterday, Poznan University tweeted about the researcher, Harald Walach:
Today, it confirmed the move in a statement:
It was with great surprise that the Poznan University of Medical Sciences learnt of the article questioning the safety of COVID-19 vaccinations co-authored by Dr. Harald Walach, who used to collaborate with our University.
Although we highly value freedom of speech among academia, we also believe that it is of utmost importance for a scientific paper to be based on reliable research and sound methodology. In our opinion, the paper in question fails to meet this condition. That is why we wish to emphasise most strongly that the article does not express the views of our University.
The retracted manuscript „The Safety of COVID-19 Vaccinations – We Should Rethink the Policy”1 (Vaccines, Publisher MDPI) is based on the wrong assumptions. A number of experts had serious concerns about the use of Lareb data2. Moreover, data extracted by the authors from the observational study by Dagan et al.3 concern short-term mortality after the first dose, which is not at all representative of mortality prevention in the long term after the second dose. In our opinion, the study misleadingly used data to yield conclusions that are wrong and may lead to public harm.
Walach told Retraction Watch that he had “only heard of that response of Poznan’s ending my affiliation from you and from someone else who forwarded the Twitter message.” He continued:
Twitter messages are in my view a bad way of communicating. At the latest since president Trump, policy by Twitter has become an unreliable means of relaying information. I have not heard from the university myself. Should it confirm this statement in an official letter, so be it. I would not want to be affiliated with a university that does not accept a plurality of opinions and decrees a single valid route of thinking and research against data, and closes itself against discourse.
A paper by Walach and colleagues in JAMA Pediatrics that claimed masks trap concentrations of carbon dioxide higher than allowable standards in Germany has also come under serious scrutiny.
In an “editor’s response” on the paper which sounds a lot like an expression of concern but isn’t labeled as one — and lacks a DOI to make it citable or flow into indexes to alert readers — editor Dimitri Christakis writes:
We are reviewing and evaluating the many comments and concerns about this study and are asking the authors to respond and provide additional information.
Walach told Retraction Watch:
I know that Dr. Christakis has asked for our response to the comments on our paper, and I have sent him one yesterday for his review which answers the points raised in the comments. They are due to misunderstandings which are partially a consequence of the very short format of a 600-word research letter. We have asked for the permission to upload a long version on a preprint server, that would clarify most points raised by commentators. We have refrained from doing this, because the journal has a very strict policy of not publishing material twice and not pre-publishing any kind of results before publication. We are confident that the misunderstandings are clarified by our explanations.
Although Walach’s read of JAMA Pediatrics’ policy is consistent with at least one decision the journal made not to publish a critique because it was posted on PubPeer, that stance was softened slightly in 2019:
Public dissemination of manuscripts prior to, simultaneous with, or following submission to this journal, such as posting the manuscript on preprint servers or other repositories, will necessitate making a determination of whether publication of the submitted manuscript will add meaningful new information to the medical literature or will be redundant with information already disseminated with the posting of the preprint.
We asked Walach for a summary of his response to the journal, and will update with anything we hear back. [See an update here.]
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Wallach mixes up “plurality of opinions” with utter nonsense and apparently still doesn’t understand the difference.
Wow, how could JAMA Pediatrics publish something like that? Come on, editorial board. I know editors everywhere are overwhelmed by the influx of COVID19-manuscripts. But this one here really sticks out. Just look at the author affiliations and qualifications. Ob/Gyn-Practice, Psychotherapy-Practice, a self-titled consulting company. Lead author a psychologist and supporter of “alternative medicine”. And one google search of the financial support organisation would have made it clear, that this is a bunch of COVID-Quacks protesting against masks, vaccines and everything…..
Even without knowing a word of German, this publication could have and should have been prevented with 5 minutes of background check and google translate.
Now that it has happened, it does not even matter, if it will be retracted or not. It is out there and the COVID conspiracy buffs will take it as proof of how terrible masks are. And once retracted, as proof that the truth is suppressed by evil powers…..
Errors in infectious disease articles generate far more bad publicity than errors in other fields.