Days after a Banaras Hindu University (BHU) study reported long-term adverse events of “special interest” in a group of over 900 people a year after they were vaccinated with Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has called it a “poorly designed study” with critical flaws. The director-general of the apex medical research body has also written to the authors of the paper and the editor of the journal in which it was published, stating that it “incorrectly and misleadingly” acknowledges ICMR though the body did not offer any financial or technical support for the paper. “ICMR cannot be associated with this poorly designed study,” say the letters. Why did ICMR denounce the paper? According to ICMR, the study has four critical flaws. One, it does not have a control group of unvaccinated individuals to prove that the side-effects are indeed associated with vaccination. Two, it does not mention how frequently these adverse events were reported by the sample population to establish that they were associated with vaccination. Three, the study tool …