Did anyone hear back from Springer Nature on the Mark Skidmore paper retraction?

I sure didn't. I'm interpreting that is a tacit admission that they are not interested in ethics. It is time to hold them accountable for their actions.

Executive summary

We live in an age where medical journals can retract papers with impunity.

And the other journals won’t say a word about such improper retractions.

They aren’t going to hold their peers accountable for scientific integrity.

So it’s up to us to take action.

Introduction

I wrote an article recently on the unethical retraction of Mark Skidmore’s paper.

On April 10, I wrote an article: It's time to hold the medical journals accountable which detailed the COPE guidelines and the email address for where to send an ethics complaint. At the same time, I emailed my ethics complaint to the publisher.

Guess what?

I heard NOTHING back. Crickets.

I know many of you did the same. Did you hear anything back justifying the Editor’s decision to retract?

It appears that nearly everyone who read my article agrees that the COPE guidelines were not satisfied so at a minimum the publisher needs to clarify how the COPE guidelines were satisfied. Here are the polls from my article:

But instead they chose to ignore the ethics complaints. They essentially are telling the world that they cannot and will not be held accountable for adhering to the COPE Guidelines.

And not a single medical journal in the world is going to call them out on it either.

What does that tell you?

It tells me that the level of corruption is very high and the level of self-policing is non-existent.

Did you know that BMC Infectious Diseases is published under BMC (BioMed Central), which is controlled by Springer Nature, which in turn is controlled by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group which in turn is a partner of…. drum roll please…the WEF?

Gosh, I never would have guessed!

Skidmore’s response

See The Retraction of the Skidmore (2023) Article on Covid Vaccine Uptake and Injuries. This was authored by Mark Skidmore himself and contains all the correspondence.

Next steps

First, I want to know if ANYONE heard back from ethics.reporting@springernature.com?

Next, today I appointed someone to kick start this effort off. More about that later.

Related Sidenote:

I also recently talked to a person who worked as an editor at the CDC for many years and was appalled about all the reports she edited saying there was “no causality” when it was crystal clear that there was. She was not allowed to ask questions as to how the authors could not see the obvious causality. She had to do what she was told to do or she would lose her job. Are you surprised? Critical thinking skills are apparently not an asset if you work at the CDC.

Summary

If you complained to ethics.reporting@springernature.com, please fill out this survey:

If you heard back, please let me know in the comments below. I don’t want to take action if they are actually investigating our complaint.

I know lots of people wrote to complain, but I’m not aware of anyone who got an explanation in return.