Carl Sagan said extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. He was right.
Are influencer-led conspiracy theories and pay-for-publishing journals the enemy of good medical science and informed health advice?
I know; a rhetorical question.
The misinformation that results from poorly understood medical science and the flaws in some apparently peer-reviewed studies can, in the hands of online influencers, spread rapidly through social media and various news outlets.
This can play a significant role in promoting community-based vaccine hesitancy and unreasonable doubts about well-founded medical advice.
Good medical research is society’s best bulwark against medical ignorance. But get it wrong and the potential for harm is amplified, as I believe has occurred in response to a recently published peer-reviewed retrospective cohort study, designed to test the hypothesis that RNA-based covid vaccines possess unusual oncogenic potential.
Irrespective of the authors’ intent, the study’s findings have been promoted online as proof an epidemic of fast-growing, aggressive cancers has been caused by RNA vaccines, colloquially labelled “turbo cancer”.
The study in question obtained data about 8,407,849 individuals between 2021 and 2023 from the Korean National Health Insurance database, from which the study’s samples were drawn. Study participants were categorised into groups based on their recent covid vaccination status. Comparative risks of cancer one year after vaccination were calculated, with results expressed as hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals.
The results? The study reported HRs of thyroid, gastric, colorectal, lung, breast, and prostate cancers were statistically and clinically significantly increased at one year post-vaccination.
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Yet the pathophysiological mechanisms by which such significant differences in the prevalence of multiple cancer types could emerge in so short a period in humans was not elucidated. Nor has it been validated in any published peer-reviewed scientific study.
This suggests a critical flaw or flaws in the conduct of the study that survived the journal’s editorial and peer reviews. If so, where might the flaw(s) lie?
The cancer rate reported for the total matched cohorts in Kim et al was 40.78 per 10,000. This was 22% lower than the South Korean population’s cancer rate average of 52.46 per 10,000.
It is not clear from the paper whether matching on known risk factors for cancers (eg: age, gender, smoking status, family history etc) of the study samples with each other, or the population from which they were drawn, was performed adequately to minimise the risk of confounding.
This indicates the source of the study’s extraordinary findings likely lay in selecting study cohorts not representative of the general South Korean population. It seems more likely errors in sampling and/or cohort allocation and group matching produced the results reported, rather than reflecting true biological effects.
Already leapt upon by influencers “doing their own research”, a paper in a peer-reviewed journal validating the concept of turbo cancer may prove a golden pass to the fame and fortune a large number of followers can bring, and who can resist that?
But at what cost to public health?
So fundamental a potential error, with such potentially devastating consequences for the course of the covid pandemic, should not have escaped detection during referee and editorial scrutiny. Biomarker Research is a pay (if paper is accepted) for publication journal – “authors whose articles are accepted for open access publication in Biomarker Research pay an article processing charge (APC) to have it so published. The current APC, subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable, is £2790.00/U$3890.00/€3090.00”.
The potential for a conflict of interest is obvious and likewise, so too must be such journals’ guard against it.
To its credit, after having been notified of these concerns by Roccetti, Biomarker Research issued an “Expression of Concern” regarding the article.
The notice states: “Readers are alerted that concerns with this article have been raised with the Editors. Editorial action will be taken as appropriate once the concerns have been fully investigated.”
The results of that investigation are awaited with great interest.
Dr Michael Gliksman is a physician in private practice in Sydney and a past vice-president and chair of Council of the AMA (NSW), and a past federal AMA councillor. He has never been the subject of a patient complaint to any regulatory body.
