In February, the editor-in-chief of Food and Chemical Toxicology published an editorial calling for “Papers on potential toxic effects of COVID-19 vaccines.” Following this call, in April 2022, the journal – no stranger to Retraction Watch readers – published an article titled “Innate immune suppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccinations: The role of G-quadruplexes, exosomes, and MicroRNAs.”
At more than 16,000 words and more than 200 references, the article was submitted on February 9th and accepted on April 8th. It claims that “billions of lives are potentially at risk” with Covid-19 vaccines.
Such an important statement should be supported by facts. But this is not at all the case. And yet the paper has been shared more than 45,000 times on social media, in ways that decrease trust in science and the COVID-19 vaccine, despite the robust evidence that it is both safe and efficient.
Continue reading Guest post: What happened when we tried to get a paper claiming ‘billions of lives are potentially at risk’ from COVID-19 vaccines retracted