I spent several hours looking into Syed’s article and especially the link he gives to the peer-reviewed journal he gives. The short answer is that this is false and misleading. All that he claims about covid is likely wrong. It is possible that he is right, but he has not proved it.
I give more detailed discussion points below, but these may not make much sense to someone who is not versed in academic research and publications.
In the substack.com self-published BLAST article, Syed gave a link to the article he suggested he himself had co-authored. However, the article has seven coauthors, but he is not one of them.
Journal: frontiers (sic) in Virology. This seems to be an electronic journal, which is fine and does not constitute a legitimate concern about integrity of the scientific review process nor of the backgrounds of the reviewers. However, the journal does not have any printed publications in a traditional sense, and all the listed members of the editorial board are unconventional. By unconventional, I mean that: they are young, many do not come from traditional institutions, and most do not come from reputable research institutions. The journal does not give any curricula vita for them, and there are no links to any vitae. WTF.
Again, not an automatic disqualifier, but a cause for concern. In some academic institutions in the US, publishing in this type of low-level journal would not count towards publication history submitted in a bid to obtain tenure. It is not respectable.
How long has this journal been around? The earliest publication I could find was June 4, 2021. In other words, less than one year. This is a newborn journal. It may be I am misinterpreting this, but the journal has the unconventional sequencing system of date of publication, and not the more common – and useful – system of volume, number, and date. Only 13 articles published to date.
Is the journal organized with recognized, respectable editors and reviewers, especially as it is a new journal? Short answer: no.
A single “specialty chief editor,” David Schwartz, with no current institutional affiliations. It seems as if he is a retired professor from “Department of Pathology, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta University, Augusta, GA, United States.” This by itself is fine, but unconventional.
A single editor for the article, Xin Yin, with the listed institutional affiliation of “Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.” This listing of a single editor, by itself, is unconventional but not a cause for concern. However, coupled with a single reviewer, see below, this is a warning sign of poor quality.
For the article itself: a single reviewer, Jitao Chang, from a veterinary research institute. No other reviewer is listed. Normally, a group of reviewers is listed. A single reviewer is not qualified to evaluate any article submitted for publication, because he or she cannot possibly be expert in all areas covered by the article and there is no mechanism to guard against an individual’s bias. This is a definite and irrecoverable flaw.
The history of the review process, with reviewers, dates, issues, and resolutions, is not given. Perhaps there wasn’t one. This is a definite and irrecoverable flaw. Normally, with a respected journal, a history is included so the readers can see the history of problems flagged by the reviewers, and the authors’ responses, leading to both a better article and a better understanding of the conceptual organization of the authors and the article.
In the bottom of the article, in the comments section, are some very pertinent comments by specialists which indicate that the article is not robust on several fronts: 1. unclear citation, 2. misuse of the basic BLAST algorithm, 3. misuse of probability set-up, 4. mistakes in independent and dependent variables categorizations, 5. lack of alternative explanations, etc.