Throughout the pandemic, Americans were urged to take a number of steps to "slow the spread," which began with an emphasis on frequent hand washing, not touching one's face, and overall good hygiene. All helpful tips, even outside of a pandemic. But then came the lockdowns, social distancing, masks, including on children as young as 2, double masks, and, ultimately, the COVID vaccines. Americans were told to "trust the science," even in cases where the science at the time didn't justify the forced action.
Now that the pandemic is officially over, many pushing these measures on the populace are all too happy to have you forget their role in causing social and educational harm to children, ruining livelihoods through lockdowns that favored big box stores over small businesses, pushing jab-or-job mandates, and harming many Americans with the shot that never prevented transmission in the first place. In addition to the denials and gaslighting we're seeing, there's also an alarming erasure of science literature that's taking place under the radar.
According to Retraction Watch, 330 COVID articles have been removed so far, many times over concerns about the scientific validity of the studies or lax ethical standards.
During the pandemic, researchers have compromised on ethical standards and tried to either get more publications approved or to take shortcuts around ethics, senior researcher Gunnveig Grødeland at the Institute of Immunology at the University of Oslo says, after going through the list of articles that have been withdrawn, and the reasons for some of them.
While it is quite natural for some articles to be updated or changed to be published in a different form, some have been retracted because the researchers did not obtain informed consent during the research.
“It will, of course, be withdrawn when it is found that ethical guidelines have been breached,” Grødeland told Khrono, a Norwegian higher education and research newspaper.
She pointed out that other articles have been withdrawn after the editors noticed that the strategies the papers mentioned were giving the wrong impression in the media of being recommended as actual treatment or prevention of COVID-19.
She said these sorts of articles had to be withdrawn as they claimed things that neither the authors of the articles nor their institutions could vouch for. (Epoch Times)
Additionally, some were removed because the sample sizes were too small.
And the phenomenon didn't just affect smaller journals—one of the world's leading science journals, The Lancet, had to pull a number of entries, including one that led to the end of comprehensive testing of hydroxychloroquine's effectiveness against COVID.
The Lancet's influence can't be overstated.
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) March 5, 2021
In May 2020, a study it published that claimed hydroxychloroquine caused medical issues forced WHO to pause clinical trials.
The study was retracted soon after, to the embarrassment of Horton and The Lancet.
Study authors retract influential Lancet hydroxychloroquine article https://t.co/3v9bExdbVV pic.twitter.com/pdmPopSuXd
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 4, 2020
With some of the COVID studies now disappearing, Americans ought to hold these journals accountable and continue being skeptical whenever they're told to just "trust the science."
