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It’s always really credible when an #antivaxxer points to a paper as conclusive data (“breaking #science news) using a screenshot of the abstract that cuts off the name of the journal and doesn’t link to the study itself. Here’s why this is disingenuous: https://twitter.com/jennifermarguli/status/1266046908721532931
If this paper is such a conclusive slam dunk, why wouldn’t you want your audience to go see the data in all its vaccine-damning glory? Well, @gorskon did so you don’t have to. There are...a LOT of problems with study design, analysis, and sampling. https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/05/29/hooker-and-miller-publish-terrible-vaxxed-unvaxxed-study/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hooker-and-miller-publish-terrible-vaxxed-unvaxxed-study
Then there’s the journal it’s published in...SAGE Open Medicine. This open access journal does put papers through peer review but it’s not...very stringent. This publishing model relies on authors paying for their papers to be published. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2050312120925344
Some open access publishers are very good and some are not. Though SAGE is not an outright predatory publisher, SAGE OM also has a VERY low impact factor <1, suggesting that a lot of the papers published aren’t cited much and aren’t earth-shattering scientific revelations.
The open access model requires authors paying so their work can be freely shared. This is good in principle & there are many rigorous open access journals (PLoS, eLife, etc). There are also some that care more abt the publication fee than peer review. SAGE OM is on the border.
The authors of this study also have credibility problems. Neither have backgrounds in epidemiology, biology, or medicine besides their own clout-chasing in #antivaxx circles.
Brian Hooker has cast himself as a “CDC whistleblower” based on some flawed reanalysis he did on data about the MMR vaccine. He’s a chemical engineer who currently has a faculty position at a fundamentalist Christian university with no medical school. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/four-vaccine-myths-and-where-they-came
Neil Z. Miller is a journalist who writes bad anti-vaccine propaganda and directs an anti-vaccine institute. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/another-anti-vaccine-book/
So in short, be very suspicious of posts touting studies, even with a high number of study subjects, when they are presented in such a misleading way. #vaccineswork
