Sokal cubed redux: Little-known academic scandal rumbles on, targeting my research questioning COVID-19 vaccines

It is my unpleasant duty to report that Current Medicine Research and Practice appears to have been taken in by what appears to be an ongoing academic scam that I had previously exposed, though it received little attention. Alongside researchers such as BMJ senior editor Peter Doshi, I contributed several articles to an unofficial series of articles in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, which argued that curious counting window issues likely led to exaggerated efficacy/effectiveness and safety estimates of COVID-19 vaccines in clinical trials and observational studies.[1-4] One response was published, with Wiwanitkit as a co-author. Noting the extremely poor quality of the response, and eventually finding that the co-authors are ‘hyperprolific’, having published hundreds of small articles in almost every field of Medicine, over just a few months, I drafted a response to JECP, who decided to simply retract the offending publication, as it ‘lacks relevant scientific discussion and the statements in this letter are not sufficiently supported by references to the literature’.[5] I described the situation on my blog, which I use to summarise and notify the public about my academic publications.[6] It did, however, appear to irk this group of hyperprolific authors. Continuing to publish poor-quality response pieces in a multitude of journals, Wiwanitkit and friends have made me the subject of several of their publications, including one published here, which makes some odd claims. Apart from endorsing ‘reasonable control measures’ regarding academics on social media, Sookaromdee and Wiwanitkit claimed that I used my ‘weblog to post-anti-COVID-19 vaccine content with a hidden agenda on his income, which was considered a significant risk during the COVID-19 outbreak’, with no explanation as to what was meant by ‘hidden agenda’.[7] A clue comes from another Wiwanitkit paper, mentioning me by name in an article published with Springer on conflicts of interest,[8] with a similarly poor quality citation that absurdly accuses me of having ‘recommended the use of a COVID-19 vaccine’ whilst simultaneously being ‘a business owner of a website blog that exposes anti-COVID-19 vaccination reactions’, and further makes the unintelligible claim that I am ‘named as a person with antichrist idea and anti-vaccine idea, which might be a harmful to public health system’.[9] Similar and more direct contradictory comments portraying me as both a COVID-19 vaccine endorser and critic by Wiwanitkit are published in yet another Wolters–Kluwer journal.[10] Note that in none of these articles is any attempt made to engage with the arguments or data contained within my articles, preferring instead to make personal comments. Sookaromdee and Wiwanitkit also make defamatory comments which could make them and this journal liable, declaring that I used ‘the anti-COVID-19 vaccine weblog to support his pseudoscience publication in a possible predatory journal’. I do not run an ‘anti-COVID-19 vaccine weblog’, I have published on the pandemic in many credible journals, and JECP is a respectable medical journal published by Wiley – further irony is introduced by the fact that Wiwanitkit published in the same journal. There is yet more irony to this unsavoury story. In another article, Wiwanitkit continues with the same defamatory comments against me and names the editors of JECP, mislabelling the journal – that he has published in – as the ‘Journal of Clinical Practice’, describing this incident as ‘The scandal of all time’, and indicating that this Wiley journal could be a predatory journal; further implying that I, the editors, the journal and the publisher are ‘unqualified’.[11] This article was published by Eureka Journals, with the journal name being Global Journal of Emerging Trend in Education and Social Science – no further comment needed. In yet another befuddling twist, Wiwanitkit appears to have targeted me for critically reviewing research on COVID-19 vaccines, yet has himself, in a journal published by Cambridge University Press, stated that ‘healthcare authorities and related agencies must take precautions to assure that the COVID-19 vaccine is effective and safe’.[12] And in yet another Wolters Kluwer journal, Wiwanitkit states that ‘We are all worried that the COVID-19 vaccination can be hazardous despite its advantages’, that ‘Vaccine effects include co-infections that may develop in vaccine recipients after getting the dose’, and wonders ‘if there were any possible effects of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine on sperm quality’.[13] If AI is not involved in this astoundingly voluminous and pointless body of work, I suspect the many contradictions indicate some level of ghostwriting. Back to the article in this journal, Sookaromdee and Wiwanitkit are riddled with typographical and grammatical errors. And in another Wolters Kluwer journal, Wiwanitkit effectively accuses me, and another researcher who noticed his near unbelievable proficiency, of ‘academic bullying’.[14] I leave it to the editors of Current Medicine Research and Practice and Wolters Kluwer to decide if they should take actions such as retracting the offending piece, publishing my response, apologising for accepting this unnecessarily libelous material and reviewing their peer review processes. Financial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest.