The BMJ has retracted a peer-reviewed Dutch study linking Covid vaccines to excess deaths, despite investigators finding no evidence of data fabrication or malicious intent. Three independent experts have written to the journal calling the retraction “disproportional” and calling the decision “political”. The Telegraph’s Science Editor Sarah Knapton has the story:
The British Medical Journal (BMJ) has been accused of damaging scientific integrity after retracting a paper which suggested that Covid vaccines may have been to blame for some excess deaths during the pandemic.
In 2024, a group in the Netherlands published a paper in BMJ Public Health, warning that some pandemic deaths may have been caused by the indirect effects of containment measures and vaccination programmes, and calling for further investigation.
The work was peer reviewed for nine months, and accepted as accurate by the BMJ, the UK’s leading medical journal. However, it was retracted this week after a slew of complaints and an investigation by the Princess Máxima Centre in Utrecht, where three of the four authors worked.
The investigation found no evidence of malicious intent, fabrication or falsification of data, but still labelled the work as misleading and selective because it “did not reflect scientific consensus”, and had disproportionately focused on the negative effects of vaccination.
Dr Saskia Mostert, the first author, has since resigned from the Princess Máxima Centre, and said she had been unprepared for the “irrational and blind fury” that met publication.
The BMJ said it was retracting the article because of “misinformation in the discussion regarding the possible causes of excess mortality and because the limited nature of the original work by the authors was not sufficiently described”.
But three experts from the Netherlands have written to the BMJ editorial board and have said they are shocked by the retraction and asked them to reconsider their decision.
“Retraction is disproportional and raises serious questions about the extent to which political considerations played a part in your decision,” they wrote.
“A retraction like this not only damages the integrity of the available published science, but it also sets a terrible precedent in these times of increasing political pressure on scientists.”
Ronald Meester, professor of probability theory at Vrije University in Amsterdam, who was one of the authors of the letter, told The Telegraph that there was “no scientific reason to retract”.
“I think that BMJ might have been pressured, but not clear by whom,” he said.
“As we wrote in our letter, retraction is bizarre in this case, there is nothing actually wrong with the paper.
“Hence the real reason must be political. Very sad, really, for science. I do not see how we can take science seriously anymore when editors are willing to make decisions for these kinds of reasons.”
Worth reading in full.
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I’m not sure if it has been mentioned in the thread, but an MRNA flu vaccine from Moderna has been approved in the US this month. It will almost certainly be coming here soon!
Not sure why anyone might be surprised, the BMJ has had a political slant for ages…
Upon the vaccine being introduced I called the local health centre to ask questions. I had suffered a neurological issue some years prior and was wary that the vaccine could trigger a revival of that. I was called by someone who simply said – if you do not take the vaccine you could die. I replied, that may or may not be the case, but I am asking if it will affect my current neurological ailment? After five minutes of being told to take it, the person said – you ask about the vaccine affecting your condition, we do not know, it is an emergency, it is early days, call your medical professional and ask them. I did just that, and my ENT consultants said – there is no evidence to say it will or will not affect your head issue, that is all I can say.
I did not for one minute like what I had heard and so declined the vaccine. I was however pestered by the NHS – three times – to take it.
I have since learnt that the vaccines can have serious side effects re. my existing condition due to…. Both the Pfizer and… Read more »
Good decision making. You refused to be rushed, you sought out any available medical evidence and came to a reasoned conclusion. (Added to the fact that a vaccine had never be successful on colds or flu before!).
Why couldn’t more people do that for themselves? It almost as if thinking was just too hard for them, and they rather be told what to do, to spare themselves the bother. Doh.
Let’s not mince words – this is pure authoritarianism from the BMJ.
Despite the evidence produced that the covid vaxxes have caused excessive deaths why on earth would the BMJ refuse to print the truth? Why is the Uk nhs continuing to administer covid vaxxes when the harms, serious severe adverse events, are well known throughout the scientific community. Speak to one oncologist, one cardiologist. If they are honest, they will tell you what they are witnessing for the past five years.
Hear, hear!
The BMJ is one of many once reputable journals that have been bought and paid for years ago.They, like the Telegraph, are trying to cover up the truth and facts around the toxic mRNA injections. Complicit in this crime against humanity. There will be retribution.
Let’s hope.
And let’s hope the retribution is very slow and very painful.
It’s effectively an admission that coercion to have the mRNA gene therapies was political, not medical, and those who did the coercing must be protected from the consequences.
The Yellow Card Data tells the story …. they were not safe and effective. They’ve killed many, caused massive harm to a great many more.
Why anyone would believe the WHO, Government $cientists or take anything which Big Pharma is pushing is beyond me.
Absolutely correct. They actually stopped publishing yellow card data as the
side effects and deaths were overwhelming and that’s not taking into account that according to a Harvard study only 10% of deaths are recorded and only 1% of side effects.
Michael Crichton
Exactly.
One million people being wrong? Makes no difference. They are still wrong.
And consider the danger of consensus even in the hard sciences. Wegener’s continental drift theory was rejected for 40 years (though many schoolboys including me noticed how neatly the Americas fit into Eurasia). The accepted truth was geosyncline theory, of which a 1960 textbook wrote:
“The hypothesis was initially met with scepticism from geologists, who viewed Wegener as an outsider and were resistant to change.” (Wikipedia). I’m old enough to remember the consensus turning on its head. Now, of course, all science is settled.
“casting doubt on the BMJ’s scientific integrity”
If there is one thing that is not in doubt it’s the scientific integrity of the BMJ.
I didn’t think that scientific integrity was a thing in that part of science dependent on grants.
I guess the same, apparently nonexistent, people that ordered states across the globe to coordinate an identical response to Covid.
Does anyone remember the news report from China featuring video of people dropping dead in the street?
And Scientists and the medical establishment wonder why people are cynical towards them. You just have to see the Fauci files. Many of us who were the so called Misfits during Covid who questioned the “I am the Science” and followed the research and court cases led by Aaron Siri in the States knew years ago that the medical community has been bought, and would frankly say a Duck was a squirrel if they were given a grant by Big Pharma or the Gates foundation to say so.
Truth is the Gene thereapy injections were known by the aforementioned that they were insufficiently tested, that they could cause multiple harms, but the chance to make billions whilst playing at Mengele was too good an offer to turn down.
They cannot afford to let the cat out of the bag as careers and Money risks being lost, and so they continue to use their club mates to lie so they can defend the indefensible.
May they reap what they have sewn
It’s a stitch-up.
Well spotted Wilson!
Sown
Remember lots of Doctors and senior hospital staff in Australia got a pass on taking the ‘vax’. All sorts of invented excuses were put forward. In short, word had got round that the downsides far outweighed the upsides. Funnily enough the Australian population didn’t get that choice.
PS. The mortality rate for the succeeding years seems to show they had a point.
‘The investigation found no evidence of malicious intent, fabrication or falsification of data, but still labelled the work as misleading and selective because it “did not reflect scientific consensus”, and had disproportionately focused on the negative effects of vaccination.’ [My italics.]
I am no scientist but I’ve long believed that the way that science advances is specifically by challenging consensus, rather than endorsing it.
exactly, but you try any of that with the climate change lot, along with the DEI lot or as above the Covidian club. Any challenge to the Orthodoxy will see you put on the proverbial stake and set fire to.
This folks is not meant to be a suggestion its purely a figure of speech, remember as Andy and COBRA sent you an alarm to warn last night, dry grass and flames can cause a fire. Clearly we are all too stupid to figure that out without the great expert knowledge of the combined brains of Rayner,Haigh and the aptly named Burnham (th H is silent)
Speaking as a retired medic, it’s sobering to consider that the paper incriminating thalidomide would have been censored because it focused on its negative effects and failed to match the consensus.
MODERATOR HERE
Would you care to expand on that sobering thought? It sounds very interesting and of great appeal to Sceptics
Hi Moderator. I’m not sure there’s much to expand. Doctors began to suspect a link between thalidomide, widely used for morning sickness in pregnancy as well as other things, was causing severe birth defects. This was first publicly raised in a BMJ letter in 1960.
After to-and-fro (and no doubt many denials by the manufacturers), more evidence was presented at a conference a year later, and the full study by Dr Lenz in 1962, resulting in the withdrawal of the drug and a protracted legal battle for compensation for the victims – a number of whom I met as teenagers in the support unit at Roehampton Hospital c.1974.
With open publishing, then, including by the BMJ, it took just two years to establish the truth and begin the remedy. We’re now five years since the COVID vaccines were introduced, and the much more damaging evidence of more serious adverse reactions can’t get published.
There seems little reason to doubt that nowadays Distllers (Eli Lilley now) would put pressure on the BMJ to retract that first letter, would prevent the conference taking place, and get Widukind Lenz sacked and cancelled. And, of course, they’d also have got themselves immunity from prosecution.
… Read more »
Exactly.
Dr Semmelweis challenged consensus when he mandated rigorous hand washing and hygiene practices in his hospital wards.
Guess what? He was right.
Unfortunately it’s been, and will continue for years to be, the poor gullible folks that fell for their lies that will do the reaping.
The truth of it all will only finally be exposed in approx 5 generations time, when everyone involved & their offspring have long departed this world.
Sorry, that was a reply to Hester
What? You mean there are things that save lives that don’t involve vaccines? What frivolity is this? Be gone satan.
Exactly.
To the best of my knowledge, Galileo’s work “did not reflect scientific consensus” ………… but he sure as hell was CORRECT. Funny, that. Do you think that means the entire staff of the BMJ are a bunch of anti-scientific wanchors, or is it just the Editor ?
They all have mortgages to pay I expect, so live in terror of being left penniless in an uncaring world.
They should live in terror of being executed with maximum pain inflicted.
Exactly so. Consensus can be wrong, and is unscientific. What the BMJ should have done is commission research that contradicts a non consensus study and publish that as a reply. If it could not find methodological flaws in a study it was absurd to retract it.
I have history with the BMJ. At the beginning of the pandemic it published my Rapid Responses, but latterly it failed to do so, I am certain on the grounds that my views were contrarian. In the end I became so frustrated with its censorship, and the pronouncements of its parent organisation the BMA that I resigned from the latter as a matter of principle. I sent a long explanatory letter to the President, but the only response came from the membership department asking whether my resignation was because I had difficulty paying for my subscription.
Words like Ostrich, head, bury and sand spring to mind.