Trying to track this one down has taken more work than it should.
TLDR: Everything about this guy's resume seems off. TPTB hate him. His work probably should be evaluated on its own scientific merits, and appears to be undescribed, unreproducible bullshit.
Classen JB. COVID-19 RNA Based Vaccines and the Risk of Prion Disease. Microbiol Infect Dis. 2021; 5(1): 1-3.
And the follow-up article, saying he found evidence in UK data:
Classen JB. COVID-19 Vaccine Associated Parkinson’s Disease, A Prion Disease Signal in the UK Yellow Card Adverse Event Database. J Med - Clin Res & Rev. 2021; 5(7): 1-6.
Is the journal legit?
Microbiology & Infectious Diseases is real, but it's small. It's impact factor is 0.29, meaning it is a niche journal and not widely cited outside of the Ivory Tower. Journal of Medical - Clinical Research & Reviews has an impact factor of 0.9.
Both does appear to be a legitimate journal, incorporated in Delaware (Joey Bribes' tax haven), and very committed to open-access. Most journals use old-school publisher business models where you get universities and libraries to pay for subscriptions, and that funds the system. You paywall anyone who tries to read your articles without a subscription (Nature does this and it's a real PITA). Open access means they give out the articles for free. The business gets supported by ads.
However, the journals also found their way onto Beall's List (a respected source in academia) of predatory journals. These are journals that essentially publish anything with very little scrutiny and drew the ire of a librarian at the U of Colorado (Beall). Open access journals frequently make the list because in order to get content, they have to publish controversial stuff that the academic gatekeeper journals won't. It's a big debate in academia among people who want to curate the scientific literature.
The fact that Classen is going to the same publisher, but hiding his work across different journals looks suspicious.
Who is this guy?
A simple internet search turns up a Wiki article that reads like a "deboonking" article and a Politifact "fact check" as the top results. Snopes has several articles. He's banned by LinkedIn, etc. PTB don't like him. He's an older doc. MD in 1988 from U of Maryland, but didn't get a medical license til 1997. Weird. MBA from Columbia in the meantime in 1992. Apparently, he's spent most of his time researching vaccines, but I can't for the life of me find an actual CV for the guy anywhere, also very weird for a published academic. He's got a personal website for his own private company, Classen Immunotherapies, Inc. that has at least some of his published works, but no picture, no CV, not even an "About Us" to tell the user what the company actually is or does.
He had managed to get some of his Diabetes work into respected journals, including the BMJ (3rd or 4th most read medical journal worldwide), but the vast majority of his stuff is on shady open access journals.
Ultimately though, I've got list of publications with big gaps in it (what we he doing in those years?). I've got a doc with no CV and who took 9 years to get a medical license. And I've got TPTB comparing him to Andrew Wakefield, the guy who claimed vaccines cause autism, and was ultimately shown to have been a sensationalist hack whose actual scientific research was garbage.
What's in the paper? Is it legit?
I'll give the short version. Look at the Methodology section. That should be a detailed list of instructions for how to replicate the experiment and reproduce the results. It is typically long and very detailed. This paper's was 3 sentences. Something was "evaluated." Something was "analyzed." How? Classen doesn't say.
This is not legitimate, nor should it have ever passed peer review. This is bullshit.
Trying to track this one down has taken more work than it should.
TLDR: Everything about this guy's resume seems off. TPTB hate him. His work probably should be evaluated on its own scientific merits, and appears to be undescribed, unreproducible bullshit.
And the follow-up article, saying he found evidence in UK data:
Is the journal legit?
Microbiology & Infectious Diseases is real, but it's small. It's impact factor is 0.29, meaning it is a niche journal and not widely cited outside of the Ivory Tower. Journal of Medical - Clinical Research & Reviews has an impact factor of 0.9.
Both does appear to be a legitimate journal, incorporated in Delaware (Joey Bribes' tax haven), and very committed to open-access. Most journals use old-school publisher business models where you get universities and libraries to pay for subscriptions, and that funds the system. You paywall anyone who tries to read your articles without a subscription (Nature does this and it's a real PITA). Open access means they give out the articles for free. The business gets supported by ads.
However, the journals also found their way onto Beall's List (a respected source in academia) of predatory journals. These are journals that essentially publish anything with very little scrutiny and drew the ire of a librarian at the U of Colorado (Beall). Open access journals frequently make the list because in order to get content, they have to publish controversial stuff that the academic gatekeeper journals won't. It's a big debate in academia among people who want to curate the scientific literature.
The fact that Classen is going to the same publisher, but hiding his work across different journals looks suspicious.
Who is this guy?
A simple internet search turns up a Wiki article that reads like a "deboonking" article and a Politifact "fact check" as the top results. Snopes has several articles. He's banned by LinkedIn, etc. PTB don't like him. He's an older doc. MD in 1988 from U of Maryland, but didn't get a medical license til 1997. Weird. MBA from Columbia in the meantime in 1992. Apparently, he's spent most of his time researching vaccines, but I can't for the life of me find an actual CV for the guy anywhere, also very weird for a published academic. He's got a personal website for his own private company, Classen Immunotherapies, Inc. that has at least some of his published works, but no picture, no CV, not even an "About Us" to tell the user what the company actually is or does.
https://www.vaccines.net/publications
He had managed to get some of his Diabetes work into respected journals, including the BMJ (3rd or 4th most read medical journal worldwide), but the vast majority of his stuff is on shady open access journals.
Ultimately though, I've got list of publications with big gaps in it (what we he doing in those years?). I've got a doc with no CV and who took 9 years to get a medical license. And I've got TPTB comparing him to Andrew Wakefield, the guy who claimed vaccines cause autism, and was ultimately shown to have been a sensationalist hack whose actual scientific research was garbage.
What's in the paper? Is it legit?
I'll give the short version. Look at the Methodology section. That should be a detailed list of instructions for how to replicate the experiment and reproduce the results. It is typically long and very detailed. This paper's was 3 sentences. Something was "evaluated." Something was "analyzed." How? Classen doesn't say.
This is not legitimate, nor should it have ever passed peer review. This is bullshit.
Perhaps that part is intentionally vague to thwart people who might try to weaponize the research.