The Covid Inquiry has come under criticism for relying on modelling that critics say exaggerates the effectiveness of the so called vaccines.
Two Oxford professors have called on the UK’s statistics watchdog to examine what they describe as “highly uncertain modelling.”
According to the academics, the inquiry’s latest report presents modelling with a level of certainty and authority that is not supported by the underlying evidence, raising concerns about the robustness of its conclusions.
The Telegraph reports: Prof Carl Heneghan, director of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and Dr Tom Jefferson, a senior associate tutor at the university, have urged the UK’s statistics watchdog to open an inquiry.
In a letter to the Office for Statistical Regulation (OSR), they say: “The inquiry repeatedly states that Covid-19 vaccination ‘saved millions of lives globally’ and cites estimates that 449,241 lives were saved in England and 25,386 in Scotland by March 2023.
“Yet the report itself acknowledges that these estimates are derived from mathematical models that rely on assumptions about vaccine efficacy, waning immunity, prior infection, behavioural responses, and hypothetical counterfactual scenarios that were never observed.”
The professors go on to say that the inquiry relies on “counterfactual modelling” and it gives the public “an impression of evidential certainty that does not exist”.
Prof Heneghan told The Telegraph he believed it was “incredibly important” that the Covid Inquiry “sticks to the facts” as its work will have an impact on how the Government responds to pandemics.
He said the reports “will exist in the public record and in future pandemics, it will be relied on to create policy. Using modelling to create statements of fact which the evidence does not support – the mistakes are so bad in my view that they should issue a correction