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If you've spent much time exploring vaccine safety concerns, you've likely heard of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a database run by the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention (CDC) to which anyone can submit a report of a suspected vaccine reaction. If you got a COVID-19 vaccine, you may have received a handout, like I did, explaining how to use VAERS.

The database seems like a smart idea. It's intended to serve as a warning system, a digital canary, to detect patterns of bad side effects before many people are harmed. It's difficult to

imagine opposing such a database in theory.

But in practice, VAERS gets a bit messy. You see, not only can anyone make a report or access reams of raw data, but the entries aren't verified before publication. Indeed, as a lengthy

VAERS disclaimer explains, "[v]accine providers are encouraged to report any clinically significant health problem following vaccination to VAERS, whether or not they believe the vaccine was

the cause," and "reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable." Though obviously fake, trollish accounts are deleted (and knowing false

reporting is a crime), some fabricated reports may be published.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains,

Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at

Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.