None of that was enough apparently. Just as antivaccinationists like Yehuda Shoenfeld make up fake “syndromes” like Autoimmune/Inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants (ASIA) for other vaccines and blame other vaccines for behavioral problems based on shoddy mouse experiments retracted and republished, so too, apparently, antivaccinationists need to make up a new syndrome of its very own for HPV vaccines, this time calling it “HPV vaccination associated neuro-immunopathetic syndrome” (HANS), but, as you will see, in reality it’s just ASIA with another name and just as convincing—as in not very.
I first learned of HANS in a journal article circulating among the antivaccine underground. It was published in Scientific Reports, which is apparently Nature’s answer to PLoS One, but in reality is increasingly striking me as Nature’s answer to Medical Hypotheses, the journal long famous for publishing “speculative” papers on how vaccines cause autism and a number of other scientifically dubious topics. Am I being harsh? Maybe. It could be confirmation bias. But I’m increasingly getting the impression that Scientific Reports is the new go-to journal for pseudoscience. Be that as it may, Scientific Reports shares the same criteria as PLoS One for publication, namely that a paper doesn’t have to have high impact or importance. It just has to be scientifically valid. Indeed, Scientific Reports is on track to surpass PLoS One as the largest scientific journal in the world.