January 21, 2020: submission. January 22, 2020: acceptance. January 23, 2020: publication in Euro Surveillance, the journal of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). The PCR test described in this paper became the global standard within weeks.
The paper stands. Five independent external experts confirmed its scientific adequacy in 2021. That is one part of the record.
The other: three transparency problems were subsequently documented — not by critics of the test, but by the journal itself. That is the only finding this article makes.
Finding 1: Peer Review in 24 Hours#
The journal’s own documentation states that the average Euro Surveillance peer review takes 179 days. Even for Rapid Communications — the journal’s accelerated track — its own figures show that 30 percent of submissions appear within two weeks. Not within 24 hours.
The Corman et al. paper was submitted on a Tuesday and accepted the following day. The journal confirmed to Retraction Watch that two external experts had reviewed the manuscript. The timeframe in which that review occurred remained unspecified.
The journal’s position: the accelerated publication was appropriate given the urgency of the situation — the WHO declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern shortly after submission. That is a legitimate argument. It does not answer the question of what a peer review process can accomplish when completed within a single working day.
Finding 2: TIB-Molbiol — Subsequently Corrected#
Olfert Landt, a co-author of the paper, is CEO of TIB-Molbiol, a Berlin-based biotechnology company. Marco Kaiser, also a co-author, serves as a consultant for the company. TIB-Molbiol had produced and begun selling PCR kits based on the protocol described in the paper — before the paper was submitted.
The paper’s original conflict of interest declaration did not disclose these commercial ties.
On July 29, 2020 — six months after publication — Euro Surveillance retroactively updated the conflict of interest entry. Retraction Watch documented the change. In doing so, the journal acknowledged that the original declaration had been incomplete.
Finding 3: Editorial Board — Excluded from the Journal’s Own Investigation#
Christian Drosten and Chantal Reusken were, at the time of submission (January 21, 2020), simultaneously co-authors of the paper and Associate Editors of Euro Surveillance. This dual role was not disclosed in the paper.
When the journal launched an investigation into a retraction request, it excluded both from the process — explicitly to avoid potential conflicts of interest. The formal investigation decision (DOI: 10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2021.26.5.2102041) confirms this exclusion.
That is a de facto acknowledgment: had the dual role not been considered problematic, the exclusion would not have been necessary.
What the Journal Decided#
In February 2021, Euro Surveillance published its final statement: the criteria for retraction of the paper had not been met. Five external laboratory experts who reviewed the retraction request confirmed that the paper had been “scientifically adequate for its purpose and for the limited data available” at that early stage of the pandemic. International scientific practice had since refined the methodology through normal scientific development.
That is the current record.
Counterposition#
The journal did not contest any of the three issues — it addressed all three in its own way:
- The TIB-Molbiol conflict: corrected retroactively in the COI entry
- The editorial board conflict: addressed by excluding the affected authors from the investigation
- The peer review timeline: defended as appropriate to the emergency
The retraction was rejected on scientific, not procedural, grounds. That is an important distinction: the five external experts evaluated the science — not the question of whether the peer review process had been procedurally sound. The retraction petition, signed by roughly twenty researchers, focused on scientific and methodological points that the external experts did not consider grounds for retraction.
Retroactive corrections to COI declarations are not unusual in the scientific literature. They are nonetheless corrections — acknowledgments that the original declaration was incomplete.
What Remains#
Three transparency gaps. All three confirmed or addressed by the journal itself. None of them establish that the PCR test was scientifically wrong — that question was reviewed by external experts and answered in the negative.
What they do establish: a paper accepted within a single working day, whose conflict of interest declaration required correction six months later, and which was submitted by two authors who simultaneously served as Associate Editors of the same journal — this paper became the global diagnostic standard within weeks of its publication.
The scientific finding and the transparency finding do not contradict each other. They address different questions. Both deserve a precise answer.
Further reading on elizaonsteroids.org:
- An Inquiry That Predetermined Its Findings — on the Enquete Commission and its structural design
- Unwanted Safety — HHS withdraws COVID vaccine safety studies
