The BMJ has retracted a controversial study that suggested a link between COVID-19 vaccination and excess mortality, citing misinformation and quality concerns as the debate over vaccine safety intensifies.
BMJ Public Health has retracted a widely cited paper that appeared to link COVID-19 vaccination with excess deaths in dozens of countries, saying the article contained misinformation in the way it discussed possible causes. The move came after months of criticism that the study’s framing had been seized on by anti-vaccine campaigners to suggest a causal link that the data did not support.
The paper, led by Saskia Mostert of the Princess Máxima Centre for Paediatric Oncology in the Netherlands, examined excess mortality from January 2020 through December 2022 across more than 40 countries. It reported more than 1.2 million excess deaths in 2021 and more than 800,000 in 2022, while speculating that both pandemic restrictions and vaccines might have had harmful effects. Critics said that leap went well beyond what the analysis could justify.
According to BMJ Public Health’s retraction notice, editors acted because of misinformation in the discussion of what may have driven the excess deaths, alongside wider concerns about quality, originality and messaging. Stuart McDonald, an actuary who has audited pandemic mortality claims, said the pattern ran in the opposite direction from the paper’s implication: countries with higher vaccination rates tended to have lower excess deaths. The BMJ has previously published work showing that in the United States in 2020, at least two-thirds of excess deaths were directly attributable to COVID-19, underscoring how closely excess mortality tracked the disease itself.
The controversy widened after Mostert testified before the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on 3 June 2026, in a hearing on alleged mechanisms by which COVID-19 injections could cause cancer. That testimony revived claims that had already been challenged in the medical literature. In November 2025, rapid responses published by The BMJ rejected assertions that the UK government was hiding evidence of vaccine-linked excess deaths, citing a peer-reviewed study of 33 European countries that found no such connection. Another BMJ response that month said South Korean studies being used to support the claims did not provide evidence of vaccine harm. India’s health ministry also pushed back in July 2025 against suggestions that COVID-19 vaccines were behind sudden cardiac deaths in younger adults, calling such speculation false and misleading.
Mostert has disputed the retraction and said she never claimed certainty about the causes of excess mortality. But the episode shows how quickly a mortality-tracking study can become a political weapon once it is pulled into the vaccine debate. As the CIDRAP commentary argued before the retraction, the paper’s reach had already helped fuel confusion among opponents of vaccination.
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