A pair of authors have lost a 2020 paper claiming to link children’s vaccines to health and behavior problems after the journal concluded the data didn’t support the conclusions of the study.
The authors of the paper, “Relative Incidence of Office Visits and Cumulative Rates of Billed Diagnoses along the Axis of Vaccination,” were James Lyons-Weiler, the president and CEO of the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge, in Pittsburgh, and Paul Thomas, a pediatrician in Portland, Ore.
The pair have published at least one other paper on vaccines, in the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research, a periodical that seems dedicated to the proposition that immunizations, and not the diseases they prevent, are a scourge. (Check out the journal’s special edition on Covid-19, for example.)
Thomas’ efforts to discourage vaccinations in his patients prompted the state medical board to suspend his license last December — a move the authors have alleged was in retaliation for the publication of their study, which appeared in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, an MDPI title.
According to Lyons-Weiler, an ecologist by training, and Thomas, children who received vaccines at the latter’s medical practice — a fact not disclosed in the paper — were far more likely than unvaccinated kids to experience a host of health problems, including anemia, asthma and other allergic conditions, as well as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. They concluded that:
The data indicate that unvaccinated children in the practice are not unhealthier than the vaccinated and indeed the overall results may indicate that the unvaccinated pediatric patients in this practice are healthier overall than the vaccinated.
The article, which met with sharp criticism — was followed two months after publication by the following correction to the paper, which has been cited twice, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science:
There were two errors in the original article [1]. The ADHD rate reported in the Abstract in the vaccinated should be 5.3%, not 0.063% The error was due to counting office visits instead of incidence and failing to convert the probability to a percentage. Similarly, the correct study-wide ASD rate reported is 0.361%, not 0.84% The error was due to counting office visits instead of incidence, but the conversion of probability to percentage was correct. The US national rate of ADHD is 9.3% (CDCa), and the national rate of ASD is 1.851% (CDCb). Accordingly, the corrections have been made to the Abstract. We thank an astute reader for their input on this matter.
Now the journal has decided to retract the paper entirely. The retraction notice reads:
The journal retracts the article “Relative Incidence of Office Visits and Cumulative Rates of Billed Diagnoses along the Axis of Vaccination” cited above [1]. Following publication, concerns were brought to the attention of the editorial office regarding the validity of the conclusions of the published research.
Adhering to our complaints procedure, an investigation was conducted that raised several methodological issues and confirmed that the conclusions were not supported by strong scientific data. The article is therefore retracted.
This retraction is approved by the Editor in Chief of the journal.
The authors did not agree to this retraction.
Lyons-Weiler did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the editor of the journal. However, in a blog post last month about the retraction, as Respectful Insolence noted, Lyons-Weiler wrote that the journal editors:
allowed themselves to be duped by a ghoul. A ghoul is one who haunts journals working to retract only studies that include results they don’t want published). This imparts a ghouling bias, also known as retraction bias, into the literature, preventing unbiased meta-analyses. In our cases, it also prevents advances in the methodology of the analysis of data from vaccine safety studies from being adopted and tried out by other scientists.
We would have preferred rational discourse so the scientific community could make their own assessment of the issues at hand. Instead, we have to assess the journal’s integrity, or at least their ability to discern that they have been defrauded by the ghoul.
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I find the illustration fun, perhaps even ‘clickbaity,’ but doesn’t quite portray what Dr James Lyons-Weiler was saying.
And, for that, I am disappointed.
True. JLW’s argument was that any meta-analysis should include all studies, including ones that were retracted because they were garbage or fraudulent. Excluding junk research (not just his) skews the results in the direction of veracity.
His choice of words for this skew, “ghouling bias”, is entertaining but it doesn’t give a full picture of his mendacity.
I would be interested to know how many clinicians with formal training or specialization in dealing with infectious diseases are anti-vaxxers. It seems that so many of these anti-vax studies that are out there [& cannot be replicated – e.g. Andrew Wakefield is a ‘poster-boy’ example] come from those who actually have no formal training in the area…
From what I’ve seen, and I’m not a doctor, there are many hundreds of qualified physicians and scientists who have criticized vaccines for covid and they risk losing their license to practice, which of course has serious consequences for themselves, their families and their patients. It’s the highly qualified ones who are the target and being muzzled. I’m sure many, many more of them would speak out too, but for the risks.
“there are many hundreds of qualified physicians and scientists who have criticized vaccines for covid”
Can you point to the source of this statement?
Why would you call the headline “clickbaity”? I clicked because of my skepticism of the word “ghoul,” but sure enough, and fairly surprising, that’s the word quoted from the authors in their grumpy response to being subjected to honest, critical assessment. Nothing clickbaity whatsoever in using the word in title. Accusations of “clickbaity” should be reserved for real instances of it.
And btw, thank goodness for the critical minds behind websites like this one. Huge fan.
Hi Randy,
I seem to recall that it wasn’t the headline that I called clickbaity but the illustration.
Nevertheless, I’m glad my efforts gave you the opportunity to express yourself – better out than in – so all’s well.
I would like to know, precisely, what the “several methodological issues” confirming that “the conclusions were not supported by strong scientific data” were. What was the qualification of “strength” of data that was used, exactly?
Otherwise it could very much be purely as the blog excerption – a ghost like entity, or “ghoul.”
It is also not clear why the author of this article on the retractions finds it relevant exactly whos practice was used to gather the data since the original paper did clearly (per the quotes included here) indicate study group patients were pediatric patients “in this practice”. What practice of disclosures was breached by not specifying that the clinician was also an author, exactly?
The practice of disclosing potential conflict of interest was breached. Look into Thomas a bit more, and you’ll find a long-standing anti-vax rhetoric. This same doctor then writes a paper that supports his prior claims. This is a very, very clear CoI.
If that were a reasonable argument then the reverse would also hold true: anyone presenting pro-vaxx data would also be required to disclose conflicts of interest i.e. if they were a proponent of vaccine usage historically or (more saliently) profited off vaxx uptake (as clinicians indeed do).
What’s more is that a simple retrospective study could debunk this one, but it’s never been done. Funny, that.
People are supposed to disclose relevant conflicts of interests. Period.
Various retrospective studies on vaccination and health outcomes later in life have been done, this study was at a level of “convenience sampling” that is almost sure to give the ‘desired’ outcome.
Lyons-Weiler states and responds (ineffectively and unscientifically) to the concerns of the editors in a blog posting on his own web site: https://jameslyonsweiler.com/2021/07/25/mdpis-the-international-journal-of-environmental-research-and-public-health-does-not-publish-unbiased-research-or-advances-in-methodology/ .
Lyons-Wieler had no good answers to these concerns from the editors based on the “anonymous” letter (funny how JLW is ok with anonymous peer reviewers but not with anonymous other critics), hence the retraction
The differences between the health of the unvaxxed and vaxxed are so enormous that it would better serve public health interest to look into the matter, rather than quibble about methodology. I’ve read the study, and see no methodological shortcomings that can explain six-fold differences.
That’s the problem with what we call “science” these days. Too many axes to grind, too few unbiased eyes.
Relying on studies using biased samples, by biased researchers, producing biased reviews, will not aid science or the search for truth. Reviews covering large national samples or reliable databases, will gives more useful information. For example, here: DeStefano, F., Bodenstab, H. M., & Offit, P. A. (2019). Principal controversies in vaccine safety in the United States. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 69(4), 726-731.
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/69/4/726/5316263?login=true
Sorry “Truth Seeker”. One of the biggest flaws of this “paper” is that the average age of the unvaxxed is 2.1 years while the average age of the vaxxed is 4.3 years. QUITE BLUNTLY: all these two anti-vaxxers “proved” is that older kids have more sick visits.
I think some readers here are conflating “bias” according to research protocol with something like personal biases or unconscious bias.
Moreover, some readers may confuse professional expertise, (which a given reader may likely profoundly lack,) as some sort of “bias” that cannot be flushed out in scientific method.
Sadly such assumption seems only to reinforce the lack of information (in the reader) instead of broaden the scientific query and understanding.
More specifically, practicing as a medical doctor caring for patients does not implicitly bias the data available on said patients.
Further it is not implicitly a ‘conflict of interest’ in terms of research protocols, as suggested by a reader above – which might mean the author would be financially enriched by the findings, for example – such as hypothetically owning stock in the drug the research hypothetically cast a favorable light upon.
Indeed, one must wonder what entities could/do benefit, financially for example, when the presentation of
methodologically sound information is potentially unduly undermined? Might there be an actual COI for the critics that have forced the material to become at least psychologically tainted by retraction?
By using personally derogatory and biasing language (such as the pejorative “anti-vaxx’ or ‘rhetoric’) to describe the author presenting statistical analyses – instead of arguments directly related to the substance of the research presented, it very much can make it difficult to even consider the research – as has happened here in this very thread – pertaining to the still obscured actual reasons for a retraction.
So, what potential ‘conflicts of interest’ could exist or be served where false ad hominem arguments could create financial gain – just because not all the science is even allowed to be considered in the face of such? And worse, no clear evidence given for the suppression of said science?
I, for one, am not in a position to gain by taking any particular position. That is I have no personal nor professional nor financial COI – I am interested in the larger long-term answers and any light they shed upon shorter-term forgone conclusions.
personally derogatory and biasing language
Does this include “ghouls”, or the newly-coined concept of “ghouling bias”?
“just because not all the science is even allowed to be considered in the face of such”
Bearing in mind of course, that a very large part of the practice of science is the requirement to remove things that we know are wrong.