We’re Suing Springer Nature for $250M in Punitive Damages for the Unethical Retraction of Our COVID Harms Paper
By STEVE KIRSCH
Someone has to hold the journals accountable for unethical retractions of valid scientific papers. Otherwise, they will not change their behavior.
Executive summary
They unethically retracted our paper, “COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines: Lessons Learned from the Registrational Trials and Global Vaccination Campaign.”
Here are the bogus reasons the journal gave for retraction and Peter McCullough’s EXCELLENT article regarding the impact of the paper and our response to their reasons
It’s time for this unethical practice to stop.
I hired a private investigator and was able to get the goods on the editors of Cureus so I know for a fact the paper was unethically retracted.
It’s time for the journals to be held accountable.
I’ll be filing suit next week against Springer Nature and Cureus seeking $250M in punitive damages so that the journals think twice the next time they get a paper they don’t like.
Here’s the full story…
Email from their legal department
We acknowledge receipt of your recent correspondence to Springer Nature’s Research Integrity Group regarding the retraction of your publication, “COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines: Lessons Learned from the Registrational Trials and Global Vaccination Campaign.”
To proceed effectively in a review of your legal concerns regarding the retraction, kindly outline your specific legal objections, including any relevant facts or documents.
Our legal department assesses all suggestions of legal action seriously and carefully. We look forward to your prompt and detailed response.
Sincerely,
General Counsel’s Office
Springer Nature Group
Email I immediately sent in response
Our legal claims include:
- Defamation
- Breach of implied contract
- Fraudulent misrepresentation
Our paper, “Lessons Learned” was retracted by Cureus not because of scientific merit in accordance with the COPE guidelines, but because the editors received 6 ad hominem attack letters and decided we were “anti-vaxxers” and then the journal editors looked for excuses to retract the paper. The excuses were all without scientific merit and one of them was glaringly obvious to everyone (the ridiculous claim that the COVID vaccines were thoroughly tested). The stated reasons don’t rise to the COPE standard. This was a sham retraction that injures our reputations and breaches the implied contract that the journal follows the COPE guidelines. This was arguably the most read paper the journal has ever published, and THE JOURNAL DID NOT RECEIVE A SINGLE COMPLAINT FROM ANY QUALIFIED SCIENTIST on any SCIENTIFIC errors in the article. The peer reviewers are furious and members of the scientific community have written letters in protest of the sham retraction. And when the editors gave us their sham list of reasons and we responded, within hours, they notified us that the paper would be retracted; clearly ignoring our response to their objections. That is NOT how science works. This is again unethical. It shows they made up their minds and it didn’t matter what we said.
The editors knew or should have known what they did was unethical (and we can prove this in a court of law).
We have hard evidence of our claims, but supplying this would breach confidentiality. If you want to validate it, you can reach out to Paul Marik who is one of America’s top scientists; he’s seen the evidence we obtained and finds it both appalling and compelling.
However, when we depose all the editors in court, this will be revealed.
I’m asking you to do the right thing.
Your editors acted unethically. They all should be dismissed. Our paper should be reinstated and a public apology issued.
If Springer is ethical, you should have ZERO tolerance for these shenanigans.
You can do your own internal investigation to prove this. Ask for all the letters received, emails between the editors, find out who wrote the retraction reasons and what instructions they were given. Then look at the paper trail after we submitted our response. You’ll see for yourself the unethical behavior.
In the meantime, we will be filing a suit in Texas against Springer and Journal for punitive damages of $250M so this sort of unethical behavior never happens again. The deposition of the Cureus editors will make it clear to the entire world how unethical the journal is. WE HAVE THE EVIDENCE. Doing the right thing in the meantime will make Springer look less bad. We may reconsider our lawsuit if you promptly do the right thing outlined in red.
I’m giving the keynote speech at the COVID litigation conference, and the unethical behavior of the medical journals will be front and center of my speech. Unethically suppressing papers such as our costs lives. I don’t think the jury will be sympathetic to your behavior.
-steve
Other info
My Substack outlining the bogus reasons the journal gave for retraction.
Peter McCullough’s EXCELLENT article regarding the impact of the paper and our response to their reasons
I wrote Retraction Watch and asked for a copy of the letter they referenced in their article. They refused to supply the letter or tell me where they got the letter from.
I wrote to Professor John Moore directly who also refused to provide the letter that the Retraction Watch published. Instead, he wrote this
So a New Zealand lawyer asked for clarification Professor Moore’s email:
It’s all about ad hominem attacks not science. This is precisely what drove the editors of Cureus to unethically retract our paper.
The paper convinced Dr. Boz to finally talk about the elephant in the room
Watch this video entitled “The biggest crime in the history of medicine” where Dr. Boz finally confronts the elephant in the room after avoiding it for years. What caused her to do that? Our paper!!! That’s the kind of impact it had. That’s why the journal sought to retract it; because it had an impact.
Now, watch this video of Dr. Boz after she learned the paper was retracted. She is livid that the journal retracted the paper. The title of the video was “Paper retracted. Was I duped?”
Short story, she’s livid that the paper was unethically retracted.
She had exactly the same reaction we did… it’s complete bullshit and she even zeroed in on the same “sticks out like a sore thumb” reason that they gave, e.g., “the trials were adequate.” Editors cannot retract a paper based on their OPINION the FDA did a thorough safety test of the vaccine. This reason being bogus is obvious to everyone that the paper was not withdrawn consistent with COPE Guidelines. You cannot withdraw a paper based on opinion. It must be a significant error of FACT.
Other articles:
- A Peer-Reviewed Paper That Finally Tells The Truth??
- “Stunning Act of Scientific Censorship”
- Scientific Censorship – lessons NOT learned (Jessica Rose)
- Review from Denmark agreeing that the retraction rationale was ludicrous
We also received letters from the academic community and some of the reviewers on how appalled that they were that the paper was retracted.
We were the #1 paper in popularity on Cureus with an SIQ rating of 9.3 which is EXTREMELY high. They revoke the SIQ rating when they revoke the paper.
Email from a Springer author to the editor of the journal
Dear Dr. Adler,
I am writing to you to express grave concern regarding the retraction of the above paper and to request information about the procedure and the reasons, or about the proper addressee to express concern.
I have published with your journal twice and also been a referee, and whether I will further use your journal as an outlet or make myself available for volunteer refereeing will depend on your answer. I am also an editor of a book-series with Springer Nature, which is the second reason for my concern, as your journal has become part of this group as of December 2022.
I have looked carefully at the paper by Mead and colleagues. I could detect nothing that would justify a retraction from a scientific point of view. The paper’s arguments are well supported by data and references. I can see no violation of good scientific practice. The paper is a narrative review and it couches its conclusions in that framework, even though they might be unwelcome. If harsh or unscientific language is the problem, or conclusions too rigorous, given the material presented, then a corrigendum would be the editorially correct way to deal with such problems.
The COPE guidelines know three major reasons for retractions: a) plagiarism, b) manipulation or faking of data, c) wrong analytical or statistical procedures. Which ones of these reasons do apply here?
I am not aware that this paper is plagiarized. There are no data here except those that are already published and properly referenced by the authors, and there is no analytical or statistical procedure that could be possibly wrong.
Hence, there might have been some conclusions that some people did not like. This is actually the way of science, and I feel that the weaponization of retraction as a means of silencing scientific and/or political dissens does great harm to the integrity of science and how the public views it.
I would be therefore very much obliged if you would give me the precise reasons for that retraction and by whom the allegations were made. I know that you might be saying that you cannot give me this information due to reasons of data protection. I would argue: authors are obliged to make transparent their conflicts of interest, while the retraction business blooms in the nebulous climate of anonymous allegations, where powerful people with conflicts of interest are in a position to pressurize editors into actions.
I can confirm that I will not share any piece of such information or make it public, should you share it with me, but it would be important for me to know. And thus I am looking forward to your answering my questions.
Collegial greetings
<redacted>
Summary
Most academic authors just rollover when this happens because it’s an unfair system with the journals holding all the cards.
But I’m not most academic authors. I have zero tolerance for these kinds of games, especially when my name is on the paper.
I hired a private investigator and dug up what really happened. It was unethical behavior and I have the evidence and will nail them to the wall in court. I can promise you that.
They’ve gotten away with this unethical behavior for decades.
It’s time for this to stop so that the medical community will finally learn the truth about the COVID vaccines.
Original source: https://kirschsubstack.com/p/were-suing-springer-nature-for-250m