by Greg Piper at Just the News
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cited an unpublished study from India to justify its recommendation Tuesday that fully vaccinated people “wear a mask in public indoor settings in areas of substantial or high transmission” of COVID-19.
That study, which claimed the Delta variant produced an unusually large viral load in more than 100 vaccinated healthcare workers with “breakthrough infections,” was listed as having failed peer review in the journal Nature when the CDC cited it.
Archives of the study’s page on Research Square, a preprint server for unpublished research, show that it was marked “reject” on July 9 and remained so at least through the evening of July 26, Eastern Daylight Time.
That version was still live early Wednesday morning, the day after the CDC cited the study in its July 27 updated science brief, according to a Twitter user who posted a screenshot.
The “reject” status and review notes were removed by mid-morning and replaced with “posted,” suggesting Nature had approved the paper without revisions, which drew controversy on Twitter. The notes were quickly restored and status changed to “revise,” bearing the same date — July 9 — as the original “reject” status.
Research Square addressed the confusion twice around noon Wednesday, blaming “a bug” and “a user interface error on our end.” It said the paper was still under review “and the current editorial decision is ‘Revise.'”
The review notes disappeared again from the “peer review timeline” later in the afternoon, leaving only a “current status” classification of the paper as “under review.” Research Square also posted a revised header clarifying that the paper was being considered by “a Nature Portfolio Journal,” not necessarily the flagship journal, and that it partners with the publisher on “a journal-integrated preprint deposition service.”
The representations of Research Square would mean the CDC cited deficient research to back its finding that “emerging data suggest [COVID vaccines have] lower effectiveness against confirmed infection and symptomatic disease” caused by the Delta variant, which is “now predominant in the United States.”
CDC Director Rachelle Walensky said fully vaccinated people “have just as much viral load as the unvaccinated, making it possible for them to spread the virus to others,” which is why all children should wear masks in schools, NBC News reported. The White House announced it would start requiring masks in its buildings Wednesday.
Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw was among those calling out the CDC for the quality of research informing its policy decisions. “The ‘game changer’ data the CDC used for the mask mandate is from a single study from India,” he tweeted. “The study was rejected in peer review. But CDC used it anyway.”
Just the News contacted the CDC, Nature, Research Square and the study’s authors to gain clarity on the chronology of the changes, the accuracy of the review notes, and the timing of any conversations among the U.S. agency, London-based publisher and researchers in the U.K. and India. None responded.
The research team submitted the paper to Nature June 18, and it was assigned an editor and distributed for peer review the same day, according to the original “peer review timeline” on Research Square.
The four reviewers turned in their assessments between…
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