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Update (November 5): The study is now marked as temporarily removed from Elsevier’s site.
A peer-reviewed paper suggesting that COVID-19 is caused not by SARS-CoV-2 but by magnetic anomalies will be retracted, the study’s first author and an editor from the journal that published it tell The Scientist. The study, “Can Traditional Chinese Medicine provide insights into controlling the COVID-19 pandemic: Serpentinization-induced lithospheric long-wavelength magnetic anomalies in Proterozoic bedrocks in a weakened geomagnetic field mediate the aberrant transformation of biogenic molecules in COVID-19 via magnetic catalysis,” was posted on the website of the Elsevier publication Science of the Total Environment on October 8, but attracted widespread criticism beginning on October 29, leading the University of Pittsburgh–based authors to request the retraction.
“A paper like this gets out there, it’s published in some supposedly peer-reviewed journal—it makes the rest of the field look stupid,” says Joe Kirschvink, ...
