“He asked people whether they knew someone who was injured or died from Covid or someone who was injured or died from the vaccine.”
His entire case is based on an opinion poll of people who think that someone they know was killed by the vaccine.
Exactly. If he would have stuck with his original hypothesis--that people's opinions about Covid and vaccines affect their decisions on whether to get vaccinated--it would have been an informative paper. But he went way beyond that into pure speculation. And that is why the paper was retracted.