Paper blaming COVID-19 on 5G technology withdrawn

A paper which argued that 5G cellphone technology could lead to infection with the novel coronavirus has been retracted, but not before scientific sleuth Elisabeth Bik declared it the " stupidest " bit of research on Covid-19 yet published.

The article, "5G Technology and induction of coronavirus in skin cells," came from a group from Italy, the United States and Russia, and appeared in the Journal of Biological Regulators and Homeostatic Agents. The journal is published by Biolife, which asserts that it's peer reviewed but has not responded to a request for comment.

The abstract is now marked " WITHDRAWN" on PubMed and the paper has disappeared from the journal's website. The abstract has been preserved here. According to the authors:

In this research, we show that 5G millimeter waves could be absorbed by dermatologic cells acting like antennas, transferred to other cells and play the main role in producing Coronaviruses in biological cells.

The authors of the paper clearly have a problem with 5G - but also with math. They write:

In another study, it was argued that 5G technologies cause great harm to human health. Cancer is only one of the many problems. 5G causes 720! (factorial) different diseases in human beings, and can kill everything that lives except some forms of microorganisms.

But as James Heathers noted on Twitter, 720 factorial is a rather large number. How large?

That makes 26 papers about COVID-19 that have been retracted.

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