As of March 18, 2026, Hulscher has not authored or coauthored a single study published in a normal journal that isn’t full of major flaws. Click the names of other studies at the bottom of the page to see a critical analysis of each.
Hulscher started his MPH in 2023 with an public advocacy against science towards the “medical freedom” movement by trying to find some pattern of deaths after COVID-19 vaccination.
He claims that the paper was published, but it was only “in press.” That means that it has not been finalized for publication. It only appeared online and was just in the pipeline for publication. Further, he claims that his paper was “the number one most accessed paper according to the Observatory of International Research.” There is no evidence of this whatsoever.
- No indexing service (PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science) reports access rankings.
- ESC Heart Failure does not list it as a top‑accessed article.
- No independent verification exists.
The paper was withdrawn by the editors of the journal, citing
- Inappropriate citation of references.
- Inappropriate design of methodology.
- Errors, misrepresentation, and lack of factual support for the conclusions.
- Failure to recognise and cite disconfirming evidence.
He continues, “the journal cartel, is what I call it, retracted it for unethical reasons, probably illegal,” without any legal basis for this claim. Journals have full editorial discretion to retract or decline publication. The journal had received many complaints from the scientific community about the validity of the paper. Further, it’s crazy to think that deciding to not publish a paper in a journal is illegal. That suggests a low level of critical thinking skills on Hulscher’s part.
He proceeded to publish it in ESC Heart Failure, which uses a hybrid publishing model. Because hybrid journals allow authors to pay for open‑access publication, low‑quality papers can sometimes slip through peer review. This does not mean the journal is predatory, but it does mean readers must scrutinize methodology carefully. The current fee for publication of this type of paper is 4788 Eur, or $5,488.72.
This page is going to rebut his publications and comments since the University of Michigan School of Public Health is failing to publicly withdraw his MPH or comment on his lies. It makes me question their ethics and policies.
His professors were right in that he will never have a career, at least not a legitimate one.
Publications
Generally click on the name of the paper, but this first one is what he thinks put him on the map and deserves to be refuted right on this page.
Autopsy findings in cases of fatal COVID‐19 vaccine‐induced myocarditis
The paper couldn’t even get through two sentences without a lie. It claims to be a “systematic review,” but does not contain requirements of a legitimate systematic review.
- It did not use a preregistered protocol such as on Prosprero.
- The search strategy was not comprehensive, using only “We searched PubMed and ScienceDirect.”
- Included studies did not undergo a risk-of-bias assessment
- There was no reproduceable inclusion or exclusion criteria beyond “autopsy studies (original articles, case reports, and case series in any language) that include COVID‐19 vaccine‐induced myocarditis as a possible cause of death.”
This approach allows for selective inclusion by the authors with a great deal of bias.
They also used circular reasoning in their assumptions. They claim that “We established that all 28 deaths were most likely causally linked to COVID‐19 vaccination.” They tried to confirm this through
- only including cases where the authors suspected vaccine involvement (selection bias)
- excluding autopsies where myocarditis was ruled out or determined to be due to other causes
- using three adjudicators for review who were not independent, but coauthors of the paper, which is a major conflict of interest.
The circular reasoning is this simple. “We only included cases where myocarditis might be due to vaccine and then concluded that that they were due to vaccine.”
They reference using the Bradford Hill criteria three times. This is nine criteria developed by Sir Austin Bradford Hill and published in 1965 to assess causality through an epidemiological lens. Bradford Hill states “is there any other way of explaining the set of facts before us, is there any other answer equally, or more, likely than cause and effect?”
The authors misuse the criteria.
- Case reports cannot be used with the Bradford Hill criteria.
- The criteria requires population level data, not anecdotes.
They use very questionable sources as evidence for their argument, but they are citing papers that would best be used to line a cat litter box if printed.
- Walach H, Klement RJ, Aukema W. The safety of COVID‐19 vaccinations—Should we rethink the policy? Sci, Publ Health Pol Law 2021;3:87‐99. RETRACTED “The article was evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief with the support of several Editorial Board Members. They found that the article contained several errors that fundamentally affect the interpretation of the findings.” Use the link to see further details on the retraction.
- Skidmore M. The role of social circle COVID‐19 illness and vaccination experiences in COVID‐19 vaccination decisions: An online survey of the United States population. BMC Infect Dis 2023;23:51. doi: 10.1186/s12879-023-07998-3 Retraction in: BMC Infect Dis 2023 Apr 11;23(1):223. RETRACTED “Post-publication peer review concluded that the methodology was inappropriate as it does not prove causal inference of mortality, and limitations of the study were not adequately described. Furthermore, there was no attempt to validate reported fatalities, and there are critical issues in the representativeness of the study population and the accuracy of data collection. Lastly, contrary to the statement in the article, the documentation provided by the author confirms that the study was exempt from ethics approval and therefore was not approved by the IRB of the Michigan State University Human Research Protection Program.”
- Pantazatos S, Seligmann H. COVID vaccination and age‐stratified all‐cause mortality risk. Research Gate 2021. This was never published. Other authors have already debunked this preprint. “Beyond failing to control for COVID-19 rates and seasonal variability, they made unsupported claims about spike protein cytotoxicity and attempted to validate their findings by “herding” their results toward another flawed paper. They misused European data to extrapolate US findings and proposed Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE) as an explanation for observed mortality rather than considering simpler explanations like waning immunity. Most tellingly, they could not explain why their claimed increased mortality only appeared in European data during weeks 0–5 post-vaccination and not thereafter.”
- Seneff S, Nigh G, Kyriakopoulos AM, McCullough PA. Innate immune suppression by SARS‐CoV‐2 mRNA vaccinations: The role of G‐quadruplexes, exosomes, and microRNAs. Food Chem Toxicol 2022;164:113008. A letter to the journal editor by a number of scientists thoroughly debunks this hypothesis that provides no evidence for their conclusions.
The authors also misrepresent the pathology in some of these studies by claiming that they were caused by vaccine. Several of the patients had pre-existing heart disease, coronary artery disease, aortic dissection, human herpesvirus 6 (a known cause of myocarditis), and they didn’t rule out viral myocarditis.
In addition, they didn’t use a control group to compare baseline myocarditis deaths in unvaccinated individuals. This can occur after a number of viral infections, after influenza vaccination, spontaneously, in athletes, and in undiagnosed cardiomyopathy. Without these comparisons, there is no valid claim of excess risk or mortality related to baseline rates.
It’s also noteworthy that they use only 28 cases to make their claim, many of which could easily be due to other causes as shown above. The data simply does not support their claim that “the COVID‐19 vaccines would constitute the largest biological safety disaster in human history.” This is not science, this is politics.
Finally, there are major conflicts of interest by the authors. Hodkinson, Makis, McCullough are affiliated with The Wellness Company, who sells antivax products. Hulscher is a pawn for the McCullough foundation, so indirectly linked to The Wellness Company as well. These affiliations represent significant conflicts of interest that readers should consider when evaluating the authors’ claims.
Postscript: Someone pointed me to PubPeer, which I had not known about prior to today. There are several comments there that also show just how bad of a paper this is. Both the peer reviewers as well as the journal should be ashamed of themselves.
Hazan, Sabine, Adriana C. Vidal, Nicolas Hulscher, Amelia Goudzwaard, Peter A. McCullough, and Alon A. Steinberg. “RETRACTED ARTICLE: Cardiac Findings in a Phase II Double-Blind Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trial of Combination Therapy (HAZDPac) to Treat COVID-19 Patients.” BMC Cardiovascular Disorders 24, no. 1 (2024): 710. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12872-024-04376-y.
Hulscher, Nicolas, John S. Leake, Simon Troupe, Claire Rogers, Kirstin Cosgrove, M. Nathaniel Mead, Breanne Craven, Radetich, Andrew Wakefield, and Peter A. McCullough. 2025. McCullough Foundation Report: Determinants of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17451259
Hulscher, Nicolas, Peter A. McCullough, and Diane E. Marotta. “Strategic Deactivation of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines: New Applications for siRNA Therapy and RIBOTACs.” The Journal of Gene Medicine 26, no. 9 (2024): e3733. https://doi.org/10.1002/jgm.3733.
McCullough, Peter A., and Nicolas Hulscher. “Risk Stratification for Future Cardiac Arrest after COVID-19 Vaccination.” World Journal of Cardiology 17, no. 2 (2025). https://doi.org/10.4330/wjc.v17.i2.103909.
Rose, Jessica, Nicolas Hulscher, and Peter A. McCullough. “Determinants of COVID-19 Vaccine-Induced Myocarditis.” Therapeutic Advances in Drug Safety 15 (October 2024): 20420986241226566. https://doi.org/10.1177/20420986241226566.
Von Ranke NL, Zhang W, Anokhin P, Hulscher N, McKernan K, Mccullough P, Catanzaro J. “Synthetic Messenger RNA Vaccines and Transcriptomic Dysregulation: Evidence from New-Onset Adverse Events and Cancers Post-Vaccination.” World Journal of Experimental Medicine 15, no. 4 (2025). https://doi.org/10.5493/wjem.v15.i4.113869.
