Is It Now MAHARxiv?

Is medRxiv going to put Andrew Wakefield to shame?

Has it already become a plaything for the anti-vax MAHA gang?

Wakefield famously instigated the vaccine-autism fraud in 1998 with his paper in the Lancet. As a reporter at the BMJ would write, “In one fell swoop [Wakefield] had undermined the MMR vaccination programme in the United Kingdom, and subsequently around the world.” Thus began the era of vaccine skepticism.

Shortly thereafter began the era of “disruption,” “open science,” and OA, and it has become clear that what I wrote two years ago is now fully in swing with MAHA and their ilk:

There is a direct line between undermining scientific authority for the sake of disruption and open science, and a sense of opportunity brewing among those seeking to sideline science, viewing open science as open season on scientific authority.

MAHA acolytes are now explicitly using “open science” rhetoric to undermine science via the new “gold standard science” claptrap being rolled out to thwart effective and proven scientific processes. Instead of testing efficacy of vaccine updates after safety has been established, “gold standard” calls for complete RCTs for any vaccine update, an obvious way to effectively sideline vaccination efforts because RCTs are impossible to conduct in the time needed to match the pace of viral mutations. This led Brian Nosek of the Center for Open Science and affiliated authors to write:

The [“gold standard science”] order mimics the language of . . . the open science movement . . . Instead of being about open science, it grants administration-aligned political appointees the power to designate any research as scientific misconduct based on their own “judgment” and includes the power to punish the scientists involved accordingly; this would weaponize government counter to the public interest.

“Open science” has been a major justification for preprints in general and biomedical preprints in particular. CZI LLC’s latest play in this space is called openRxiv, after all. Yet, biomedical preprints have probably done more harm than good — and preprint servers continue to platform bad actors without consequence.

medRxiv has been behaving especially badly lately when it comes to vaccines. Its head, Harlan Krumholz, has been a co-author on two preprints with disclosure issues and ties to vaccine-denialists with commercial interests and ties to MAHA leaders and business entities, while also leading a study that appears to be trying to create a “vaccine injury” class action group for litigation purposes.

In late-April, another preprint on the topic appeared on medRxiv — this one from another group of well-known anti-vaccine frauds, including Florida’s Surgeon General, who has been a wellspring of Covid-19 misinformation. I decided not to cover this preprint when it came out because it wasn’t getting much attention, but then Joe Rogan promoted it on May 21st to his millions of followers.

So, here we are, asking:

Is medRxiv now just a MAHA tool? How clueless are they?

For this latest transgression, the social media posts from the channels waiting to strike when garbage like this gets a DOI have been breathless: