Reuters be like;
Lemme just pour some cesium-132 impregnated napalm directly on the anti-vax cluster fuck.
This is exactly the kind of article a responsible media organization does not publish. They know that this will be picked up by every anti-vax freak on the planet as evidence that the vaccine killed their family, their friends, their dog, them, and jesus. No one is going to read “one database flagged a small but significant suspicious correlation that merits further investigation” and actually treat that with any nuance or understanding.
Even if accept the idea that it has to be written on at this stage, which I don’t, the story can wait until the information is looked over better, we still have the problem of how much better media needs to be about making it clear in their headlines that it shouldn’t be a concern right now and even if the problem is real it’s going to be very rare.
He was talking about Reuters not the medical researchers or journal. Routers chooses not to publish things all the time and not publishing something because it might not be fully substantiated yet and may cause public panic is perfectly in line with journalism ethics.