Slovak science academy ‘strictly condemns’ government official’s paper on mRNA vaccines

Slovakia’s national science academy has issued a strong critique of a paper on mRNA vaccines coauthored by a member of the country’s parliament. The group called the work “insufficiently detailed” and “lacking controls,” with data that “may be misleading” and conclusions “not supported by sufficiently robust data.” 

Peter Kotlár, the paper’s second author, is an orthopedist and represents the far-right Slovak National Party. He is also the commissioner for a review of resource management during the COVID-19 pandemic for the government of populist prime minister Robert Fico, himself known for questioning the science around COVID-19.

The paper appeared May 13 in the Journal of Angiology and Vascular Surgery, published by Herald Scholarly Open Access. “The journal in which the study of Peter Kotlár was published, is not evidenced in databases Web Of Science and Scopus,” a spokesperson for the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Monika Tináková, told us. The issues with the paper reflect “the fact that the journal in which it was published is classified as a so-called predatory journal,” the statement, issued last month, reads. 

Kotlár has been criticized by the scientific community for his controversial views that SARS-CoV-2 was lab-made and the vaccines were unsafe. Members of the science academy’s virology institute, for example,  declared in October they were “deeply concerned” about Kotlár’s claims, which the group said “call into question facts that have been verified and accepted by the global expert community and responsible authorities, and are misleading to the general public.”

Kotlár’s coauthors on the new paper, “Quantitative Analysis of Nucleic Acid Content in Spikevax (Moderna) and BNT162b2 (Pfizer) COVID-19 Vaccine Lots,” include Richard M. Fleming, a U.S.-based “physicist, nuclear cardiologist, and attorney” convicted of health fraud in 2009, who has been debarred by the US Food and Drug Administration. He has since been criticized for a controversial study about health impacts of diets, as well as attempts to run a COVID-19 related clinical trial. He continues to speak out against the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, calling their deployment “criminal” and calling for them to be pulled from the market.

The other coauthor, Sona Pekova, head of Tilia Laboratories in Pchery, Czech Republic, which offers molecular genetic testing, has also questioned the natural origins of COVID-19 and the safety of mRNA vaccines, according to an analysis by the media site Balkan Insight. 

The paper says the authors analyzed 17 lots of Spikevax (Moderna) and seven of BNT162b2 (Pfizer) vaccines for nucleic acid content using multiplex quantitative real-time PCR and found “variations in nucleic acid quantity” across lots and detected “DNA sequences, including Escherichia coli genomic fragments” in some samples. 

It concludes: “Regulatory oversight should address the potential risks associated with genetic material inconsistencies to ensure vaccine safety and efficacy.”

A company spokesperson for Pfizer told Retraction Watch: 

No signs of DNA mutation or COVID-19 vaccine-induced cancer have been reported to date for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Regulatory authorities around the world have authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and expert medical committees have and continue to review the data and recommended it. With billions of doses of the vaccine administered around the world, the safety profile for the vaccine for all authorized groups continues to be favourable.

In its statement, the Slovak Academy of Sciences said the vaccines “have already been thoroughly examined multiple times” and the “methods described in the published article are insufficiently detailed, lacking controls, and do not clearly define the input quantities of materials.” 

“The claims presented are not compared with existing scientific knowledge or verified by alternative methods, which is essential given the seriousness of the presented findings,” it says. “The strong conclusions drawn are not supported by sufficiently robust data.”

The statement goes on to say the journal “fails to meet even the basic quality criteria: it is not indexed in recognized databases, has an extremely short peer-review process with unclear review procedures, and lacks defined standards for presenting results and methodologies.”

The Slovak academy “strictly condemns publishing in predatory journals and emphasizes that such publications bring no value and are irrelevant to the scientific community, medical practice, or the general public,” the statement concludes.

The academy’s spokesperson, Monika Tináková, told Retraction Watch the academy “did not comment on the personality of the politician” in its statement, focusing instead on the scientific topic.  

Kotlár, Fleming and Pekova did not respond to multiple requests for comment, nor did the journal or its publisher. The Slovak government and its health ministry also did not respond to our requests.

Fleming has been promoting the study on his X account, and on May 14 posted: “Regarding the ad hominem attacks on the journal being “predatory”. It’s predatory to make people afraid of something and take advantage of them. The journal is not predatory. It also isn’t funded by BigPharma which means it isn’t a non-predatory bought and paid for journal.”

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