Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson)

NEW! Update on the Amish Approach to Covid As a result of my challenges, journal makes multiple corrections to scientific article My effort to obtain corrections to a badly-flawed government-funded scientific study about the Amish approach to Covid has, at last, reaped results. I’ve been notified by the Associate Publisher of Behavior and Health Sciences Journals that based on my challenges, the journal has issued multiple corrections to the original study. Unfortunately, the review process took about a year. And we all know that those who read and reported on the original article are unlikely to go back and look for corrections. The initial misimpressions will likely linger on indefinitely. ...the study, which improperly blended the largely-compliant Mennonite population with the Amish, and fatally excluded the largest Amish population in the US (Lancaster, Penn.), still does not explicitly state its most important finding: that the Amish approach to Covid proved superior. The study was entitled “Closed but Not Protected: Excess Deaths Among the Amish and Mennonites During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” It appeared in the Journal of Religion and Health on June 11, 2021. In reading the study, I found the authors and backers clearly seemed to intend to publicly debunk the Amish approach to Covid—but in reality, looking at the data, I saw that the study did quite the opposite. By way of background, the Amish population largely rejected public health recommendations during Covid, but fared no worse in terms of health impact than the rest of the country that masked, isolated, and vaccinated. That’s according to available data, and even the federally-funded study in question. Those findings imply the US could have avoided experimental vaccines that have serious side effects; and circumvented costly shutdowns that devastated the economy, travel, businesses, mental health, and education at the expense of trillions of US tax dollars. But the study was titled and written in a way that seemed to imply something false: that the Amish died in greater numbers for having rejected the CDC guidelines! Below is the letter I received from Associate Publisher Kimberly Poss announcing multiple corrections to the study. Stein, R.E., Corcoran, K.E., Colyer, C.J. et al. Closed but Not Protected: Excess Deaths Among the Amish and Mennonites During the COVID-19 Pandemic. J Relig Health 60, 3230–3244 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-021-01307-5 Dear Ms. Attkisson, We are contacting you as you expressed concerns regarding the article detailed above. Thank you again for providing a detailed overview of your specific concerns about this paper. All of your claims have been thoroughly assessed by multiple members of the editorial team. Your case has also been considered in detail by our in-house Research Integrity Group. All processes were carried out in line with Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. Thank you for your patience as we completed this process. Following this detailed investigation, we found that the publication could have been more clear about what data was being shown in some of the included tables, and that one sentence in the abstract could potentially cause some confusion about the conclusions being presented. In view of this, we have corrected the publication. The published correction details the specific changes made to the original article in order to provide some additional clarity to readers. We thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. With best wishes, Kimberly Poss (she/her/hers) Associate Publisher | Behavior and Health Sciences Journals ----- While I’m pleased the journal’s Research Integrity Group took its review seriously and forced the multiple corrections, I find that the corrections do little to fix the misimpressions I flagged. First, the misleading title remains the same. Second, the study, which improperly blended the largely-compliant Menonite population with the Amish, and fatally excluded the largest Amish population in the US (Lancaster, Penn.), still does not explicitly state its most important finding: that the Amish approach to Covid proved superior. As a group, the Amish suffered no greater “excess deaths” during Covid, and arguably had fewer deaths, all without shutting down their schools, social life, and economy; without testing an experimental vaccine; and without spending untold amounts of money on testing, treatments, and hospitalizations. Another shortfall in this process of scientific integrity lies in the fact that the government and study authors refuse to turn over the communications and materials I requested that could shed light on what specific people were backing the taxpayer funded study and why; and could tell us how the study shortfalls slipped past all the peer reviewers. I’m still waiting to hear results of a separate challenge of another seriously flawed taxpayer funded study during the same time period and appeared to be a work of government and Big Pharma propaganda. Read more in my new bestseller,#FollowTheScience and at my free Substack: https://sharylattkisson.substack.com/p/update-on-the-amish-approach-to-covid