Thread by @metasj

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.

https://twitter.com/metasj/status/1441559190556708867

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.

https://mobile.twitter.com/metasj/status/1414098161031917568

/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

https://twitter.com/hmatejx/status/1442457789721415680

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