Science publishing at its worst: Toxicology Reports is suffering from journal-level fraud. It is promoting COVID click-bait articles, authored by the editor-in-chief, without reasonable independent peer review.
My rundown:
blogs.harvard.edu/sj/2021/09/30/…
/1
Initially I thought this was an article-level problem – an anti-vax polemic by the author, Ronald Kostoff, that had somehow slipped through review by using the language and format of sincere research.
Kostoff worked at @USNavyResearch & Georgia Tech @sppgatech, w/ a long academic history. The journal is widely cited, w/ a solid editor team.

I thought perhaps, as w/ Harald Walach's COVID fraud in JAMA Ped & MDPI Vaccines, this was just an oversight.

/3
@USNavyResearch @sppgatech But even writing this thought down makes it seem laughable. Surely we let the journals off too easily, w/ brief retraction notices laying all blame on the authors.

The authors wrote deceptive papers, but their problems lay on the surface & the journals still published them. /4
In Walach's case the journals were responsible for the incompetent reviews – it is their job to know better, and MDPI had 6 editors resign – but they acknowledged mistakes & retracted [fairly] promptly.

Helen Harris summarized this well on @sciblogsnz:
sciblogs.co.nz/diplomaticimmu…
/5
Kostoff's case is different.
- This isn't the first anti-vax paper to appear in the Elsevier journal
= The EIC is a co-author, & has a dozen papers w/ Kostoff
≡ The journal regularly publishes papers by the same in-group, often w/ editors as co-authors.

That's no mistake. /6
So what does this tell us?

First, this isn't happening in a vacuum. The publishing system is vulnerable, and fraud – by authors, editors, and journals, if not publishers – is rampant. See this recent, short-lived #reddit post: web.archive.org/web/2021092721…
/7
2nd, publishers benefit from this game-playing. They profit from article volume, can wait for fraud to be detected, & pass accountability down to journals + authors.

Just as most countries underreport C19 deaths, publishers underreport editorial abuse. /8
3rd, the publication ring around these anti-vax authors includes a number of different editors, journals, and fringe theories (5G toxicity!)

I'm not sure what can be done there. Perhaps @C0PE or a past editor (or some of you) have ideas. cc @wenke_feng @IratxePuebla @hggaddy /9
This isn't limited to one journal. #CoK
A "big lie" conspiracy theory of COVID vaccine risk has taken root in a range of journals, some welcoming anti-vaxxers as lead editors.

Compromised journals include
~ MDPI _COVID_
~ MDPI _Vaccines_
~ Elsevier _Toxicology Reports_
/10
MDPI Vaccines published Walach, giving this fraud its first mainstream legitimacy

The ToxRep editor-in-chief wrote + published his own version of the fraud

MDPI COVID has asked a vocal champion of the fraud to edit a special issue on the CoV spike protein #CoK /11

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More from @metasj

25 Sep
In this edition of #scifraud: Ronald Kostoff, an octogenarian generalist w/ a 1000-meter stare, has a fraudulent article in the latest _Toxicology Reports_ claiming Covid vaccines kill 5x more people than they save.

How could @ElsevierConnect publish such deadly nonsense? /1 ImageImageImage
@ElsevierConnect Here's the article, full of scare quotes, conspiracy buzzwords, and bad data.
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

How did this pass peer review? Journal editor @aristsatsakis surely knows better. But this fraud is already the most-talked about article Toxicol.Rep. has published all year. /2 ImageImage
Encouraging volume over quality is one culprit.

Toxicol. Rep. launched as an #Elsevier journal in 2014, and has no fewer than thirty-one Associate Editors.

One of them (Daniela Calina), and editor in chief Tsatsakis, CO-AUTHORED this bizarre & deceptive article. /3 ImageImageImage
Read 11 tweets
11 Jul
Harald Walach, a German parapsychologist, has published two high-impact peer-reviewed papers exaggerating the risks of COVID vaccines & of wearing masks. Very dangerous.

Closed, one-pass #peerreview fails at modern scales of paper production & disinformation propagation. /1
The first paper, discouraging vaccinations, was published in _Vaccines_.

It was retracted, five editors resigned, and Walach's university ended his appointment for potentially 'lead[ing] to public harm', but not before the paper got 500,000 views.
bmj.com/content/374/bm…
/2
The 2d paper, discouraging masking for children, was published in @JAMAPediatrics. It had fatal flaws in theory, design, & data gathering; and (again) drew conclusions that could lead to public harm.


It has 550,000 views, + has not yet been retracted. /3
Read 5 tweets

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