No, a study has not shown that the covid jab causes cancer
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 17 January 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
In Autumn 2025 a paper in South Korea was published that excited many a vaccine sceptic online. The paper claimed that receiving a vaccination against Covid19 was linked to a 27% increase in cancer risk.
However, when you dig into the data there is no evidence that the vaccine caused the cancer. We spoke to Professor Justin Fendos to explain why we cannot take this type of statistical analysis at face value.
Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Lizzy McNeill Series Producer: Tom Colls Editor: Richard Vadon Production Coordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Mix: James Beard
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.6 | Hello and thanks for downloading the more or less podcast. We're the programme that injects a shot of clarity into the sluggish arteries of statistical uncertainty, and I'm Tim Harford. |
| 0:18.5 | Loyal listener Lynne wrote into more or less at BBC.co.uk to ask us to look into a claim made by |
| 0:26.2 | Kayla Betts. He's a right-leaning content creator who focuses on mental health and well-being. |
| 0:32.7 | Lynn was sent his claim by her son and wanted us to throw some light on it, as I think Kayla did too. |
| 0:39.4 | Nobody is talking about this study, and it absolutely blows my mind. There was a study that was |
| 0:43.4 | published on September 26, 2025 in biomarker research. It's a peer-reviewed scientific journal |
| 0:48.8 | with a strong reputation that analyzed 8.4 million people. Go on? The study found a 27% overall increase in cancer risk in the vaccinated group in just the first year. |
| 1:00.5 | How is this not the major headline story of every mainstream media outlet across the world right now? |
| 1:05.7 | Like, why aren't we talking about this? |
| 1:08.0 | Fair, let's talk about it. |
| 1:09.6 | The report was indeed published in a journal that |
| 1:13.0 | uses peer review. However, the paper was published as a correspondence rather than a full-blown report. |
| 1:20.1 | Correspondence is reviewed at the editor's discretion. So, although the journal that the paper was |
| 1:25.3 | published in does use peer review for full reports, |
| 1:28.5 | correspondence articles might not, but it's to the data that we must really turn our attention. |
| 1:34.7 | We spoke to Justin Fendos to help us sort through the stats. |
| 1:39.2 | I am a professor at Xi'an Jiao Tong, Liverpool University, in the city of Suu Zhou in China. |
| 1:45.1 | Before coming to China, Justin spent 11 years as a professor at Dongxia University in Busan, South Korea, |
| 1:52.3 | specializing in cancer and biophysics. And these days, his work focuses on big data health informatics. |
| 2:00.2 | So using statistical methods to try to understand predictors for different kinds of health |
| 2:05.8 | outcomes in large data sets. |
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