The Lancet, the most prestigious journal for medical research, refused to publish data disputing the effectiveness claims of the Pfizer vaccine based on its rollout in Israel.
Mathematicians and researchers Norman Fenton and Martin Neil detailed the unsettling suppression of scientific debate in their substack, Where are the Numbers?, a project they describe as a “challenge to the global COVID-19 narrative, exposing the use and abuse of statistics.”
In early 2021, Israel famously became the living laboratory of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, the first approved mRNA vaccine in the world and one of the earliest COVID-19 vaccines to hit the market. Israel was given priority access to the vaccine in exchange for making the country the real-world experiment of the vaccine that had already been tested in clinical trials.
In May 2021, a cadre of 15 researchers, eight of whom declared a conflict of interest as they had investments in Pfizer stock, authored a paper published in The Lancet that claimed the vaccine showed a 95% effectiveness rate in the general population in Israel.
But two statisticians, Norma Fenton and Martin Neil, both university professors and researchers, doubted the spectacular results based on their own evaluation of the study.
According to the two researchers, the study had several flaws in its calculations of the vaccine’s effectiveness. They highlighted that in the study, vaccinated people underwent no further tests for COVID, meaning any COVID cases in that group went undetected, except for a small sampling that made up only 19% of the total people included in the data. They also noted that the study had not adjusted for the declining infection rate during the months of the study. After the rate was adjusted, the study dropped the effectiveness to 74% in people 65 years old.
They also noted that the study did not include any information about adverse reactions due to the vaccine.
“Hence, it does not provide the necessary information to make an informed decision about the overall risk/benefit of the vaccine,” they wrote in their Substack. They also wrote to The Lancet asking the journal to publish a letter explaining their challenges to the study. The Lancet initially agreed, allowing them 250 words to state their claim. That letter was then sent to the lead author, who was offered the opportunity to respond. Twenty months later, on 8 January 2023, The Lancet finally responded, telling Neil and Fenton that since the lead author had never responded to their letter, they had decided not to publish it.
Shocked, the two tweeted about the incident, posting the journal’s response.
Two days later, The Lancet reached out to Fenton and Neil apologizing for their bad experience with the journal and offering them another opportunity to publish their concerns about the Pfizer study.
Fenton and Neil submitted another letter restating their objections to the study’s conclusions.
“These concerns expressed 20 months ago have been borne out by data confirming how exaggerated the effectiveness claim was,” the letter stated.
This letter also questioned the objectivity of the lead author of the study, Sharon Alroy-Preis, who was not one of the authors who declared a conflict of interest. She was head of public health in Israel during the study, and part of the agreement between Pfizer and the Israeli government included that neither party would publish papers from the study without the content being vetted by the other. In the agreement, Alroy-Preis was specifically charged with leading arbitration in the event Pfizer and the ministry of health couldn’t reach an accord. The letter states:
We have further concerns about the integrity of the article. SA-P [Sharon Alroy-Preis] was not among the 8 of 15 authors who declared holding share and stock options in Pfizer; she also declared no conflict of interest. Yet, she [was] Head of Public Health Services at the Israeli Ministry of Health (IMOH) during the period when Israel became the ‘laboratory for Pfizer’ [4]. The relationship between Pfizer and the IMOH (starting 6 Jan 2021, four months before the Lancet article was published) is laid out in their collaboration agreement [5] which makes clear results cannot be made public without both parties’ approval, and names SA-P as the IMOH appointee responsible for managing this relationship with Pfizer.
Finally, they reiterated their concerns about the vaccine’s adverse effects and the lack of consideration for them in the study.
“The Lancet article provided no information about the vaccine’s adverse reactions which we now know are substantial,” they stated.
The Lancet once again decided not to publish the letter, calling their assessment that the adverse effects had proven substantial “misinformation” and denying that Alroy-Preis had a conflict of interest.
The two statisticians then filed a Freedom of Information Act request to Elsevier, The Lancet’s publisher, asking for all correspondence related to their letters. They received heavily redacted copies of emails that nevertheless offer a peek into the handwringing the pair had caused at the publication and the disparaging opinion the journal’s leaders had of the researchers.
Fenton and Neil have said they will continue to fight to have more of the internal correspondence over their letters revealed.
