Retraction Watch has now also taken aim at the so-called Drosten/Corman paper on PCR testing, which appeared in the journal Eurosurveillance on January 23, 2020.
On Dec. 7, 2020, the U.S.-based organization published a post addressing criticisms of the Drosten/Corman study raised by 22 renowned scientists. It gave Prof. Drosten a deadline of 48 hours to respond to the allegations of severe unscientific nature of the work. As of November 10, 23:24, no response appears to have been received from Prof. Drosten. At any rate, one has not been published.
From an informed source, 2020News has learned that an international group of policy makers has now additionally contacted Eurosurveillance with a request to immediately review the allegations and to arrive at a final assessment by December 14, 2020, and to publish it. The policymakers expressed irritation how it could have happened at all with regard to such an important study that scientifically sound seeming allegations could have been raised at all. The extremely short review period of two days in January 2020 would give food for thought. The decision-makers expressed the hope that Eurosurveillance, which they regarded as an important information medium in their work, would now proceed with the clarification process with the same speed with which the journal had carried out the original review. After all, the Journal has a reputation to lose.
Retraction Watch reports on its website a total of 39 studies on COVID-19 that were completely retracted. Five publications had to be temporarily retracted, and reservations about the study results were raised for another five. Withdrawn were e.g. the studies “Smoking Prevalence is Low in Symptomatic Patients Admitted for COVID-19” and “Lung disease severity, Coronary Artery Calcium, Coronary inflammation and Mortality in Coronavirus Disease 2019″ and “Chinese medical staff request international medical assistance in fighting against COVID-19″.
