Flog a Dead Horse Again

Or how peer review continues to fail the scientific method, science and scientists

I truly resent spending my time peer reviewing so-called peer reviewed published science. However, some published ‘science’ is clearly destined to be used by those wishing to preserve the status quo and in the case of vaccination research to continue to poison, maim and kill infants. I wrote about such a published paper last year in my post entitled Flog a Dead Horse, see below.

Unfortunately the Pharma stooge who lead this study, Karen Weisser, has a new peer reviewed published paper where she completely exonerates aluminium adjuvants in vaccines. This paper will be used by Pharma and the aluminium industry ad nauseum to support the continued use of aluminium in vaccines and therefore the continued poisoning of children.

You first have to ask how this wholly flawed study survived any form of peer review. Then you realise that the MDPI journal publishing the paper, Vaccines, is little more than an extension of Pharma. I wrote about this very journal and its corrupt Editor-in-Chief in my book and I am copying an excerpt of what I wrote below.

As a brief background to that book excerpt, I had been invited to act as Guest Editor of a special issue of Vaccines, see below.

Excerpt from my book

Having accepted the offer to guest edit a special issue the publisher then produced a web page for the special issue with a description of the aims of the issue and all other relevant information about submission and deadlines and so forth. However, almost immediately, I smelt the rat that had previously pissed on my Elsevier Toxicology parade as editors at MDPI handling submissions to the special issue began, in their broken Chinese English, to insinuate that contributing authors were anti-vaccine. At first, I was perplexed as to where these insinuations had originated. However, as Guest Editor, I had access to the journal’s peer review system and I immediately came across the name of Hawkes as a reviewer chosen by the publisher. Here was the perpetrator of these lies. However, while I endeavoured to inform the various handling editors that Hawkes was no more than an HPV vaccine salesman and an internet troll, and therefore unsuitable as a reviewer of science, they chose to ignore my advice. Faced with this uncomfortable situation I decided to withdraw as Guest Editor and asked MDPI to remove my special issue from their advertising and website. Somewhat frustrated if not entirely surprised by this turn of events I set about finding new homes for those few manuscripts that had already been submitted to the now cancelled special issue. Not long thereafter another case of serendipity confirmed that which I had already supposed. An Achilles heel of vaccine trolls, like Hawkes, is that they cannot help but celebrate their perceived victories with other similar trolls. Freedom of Information requests concerning another matter reveal Hawkes’ celebrations with Dorit Reiss. The latter, a renowned vaccine troll, sends a reply email to Hawkes saying ‘Congratulations!’ The subject heading of the email Reiss is replying to is; Concerns about special issue ‘Aluminium Adjuvants, Vaccines and Adverse Events’ this being the subject heading of an email originally sent by Hawkes to the Editor-in-Chief, Paul Tchounwou, of the MDPI journal hosting the special issue. In this email, dated 7^th of July 2019, Hawkes helpfully points out to Tchounwou that I (Dr Exley) am being manipulated by known anti-vaccine scientists to get their discredited research published in a creditable journal. One day later the estimable Tchounwou passes on Hawkes’ concerns to a managing editor at MDPI Bonnie Wang asking her to investigate his claims. Within a week, Wang is writing to Hawkes and Tchounwou, email dated 15^th of July, to announce that she has taken action to remove the special issue from the journal. Ms Wang is lying. I never received any correspondence from anyone at MDPI concerning removal of the special issue. I wrote to the editors dealing with the special issue on the 11^th of July 2019 to ask that the special issue be withdrawn. Why Ms Wang, representing the publisher MDPI, chose to lie to Tchounwou and Hawkes about this is again open for debate but does not endear one to the publisher.

Hawkes responds to the email from Wang by sending himself an email in which he writes ‘Ka pow’ ‘First time I have managed to have a special issue removed!’ This email by Hawkes to ‘self’ is the one received by Dorit Reiss and no doubt other vaccine troll associates. I wrote to Tchounwou and Wang offering them an opportunity to defend their actions but neither replied. Hawkes and his bcc’d cronies will no doubt be disappointed to learn that all papers destined for the special issue are now published in first class journals. His victory was very short-lived but it is yet another example of how journals and publishers are being dictated to by external disruptive forces. In this case the Editor-in-Chief, Tchounwou, was more than willing to have the wool pulled over his eyes by a ‘nobody’ like Hawkes. Seemingly preferring his opinion to that of my own in this matter. I hope that my unanswered emails to him on this matter at the very least have caused him some personal embarrassment.

End of book excerpt

As an active scientist I acted as a peer reviewer of manuscripts on hundreds of occasions. I took this role on freely and with integrity. I believed that peer review was part of the job of an academic and an integral part of progress in science. Over decades of service I rejected many more manuscripts than I accepted.

I always began the review of a new manuscript in the same way. I asked the question if the design of the experiment and the associated materials and methods were sound. Only when I was convinced that the scientific method was sound would I bother to review the remainder of the manuscript. Results based upon unsound materials and methods were irrelevant and not worthy of spending any time to review.

I have approached Weisser’s new paper in the exact same way and I am appalled. In truth none of my criticisms of her previous study, reviewed in Flog a Dead Horse, have been addressed. Am I surprised.

Weisser’s new study has been carried out solely to prove that aluminium administered to an infant in a vaccine adds nothing to the infant’s body burden of aluminium compared to dietary exposure. Essentially she has produced a mathematical model to predict infant exposure to aluminium through vaccination. Clearly for such a model to be helpful, never mind predictive, the data entered into the model must be of the highest quality. Only cursory reading of the Materials and Methods section of her paper is required to immediately appreciate the paucity of her critical model data. For her data on oral exposure to aluminium in infants she relies wholly on documents provided by the EFSA (European Food Standards Agency). Not science but policy documents provided by a regulatory body wholly influenced by industry.

Perhaps even worse, for all her other input data including that relating to aluminium exposure through vaccination she relies upon Pharma (Patient Information Leaflets) and her previous flawed model criticised in my Flog a Dead Horse substack post.

Weisser has no understanding of human exposure to aluminium and she proves this over and over again in the nature of the references she cites in this flawed but highly dangerous new paper. She is wrong in so many areas of aluminium toxicity in humans that if I had been the original reviewer of her manuscript I would have simply informed the editor that submitting such nonsense for peer review is insulting to the process and is either the product of serious laziness or, and perhaps more likely, is the equivalent of a striker diving in the penalty area, i.e. cheating.

I have reviewed the Materials and Methods of this new paper in some detail and I have posted numerous comments on the pdf version of the paper. I am not going to go through these details herein, they are not the purpose of my musings. However, should this paper by Weisser ever come up under any circumstances to support the continued use of aluminium adjuvants in vaccines I will be ready and willing to destroy this paper as and when required.

Karen Weisser, where is your integrity as a scientist. The horse is dead. Aluminium adjuvants have had their day and caused immeasurable misery. The time is nigh for their removal from vaccines.