Two elite medical journals retract coronavirus papers over data integrity questions
BY Herschel Smith
4 years, 5 months ago
In the first big research scandal of the COVID-19 era, The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) today retracted two high-profile papers after a company declined to make the underlying data for both available for an independent audit, following questions being raised about the research. The Lancet paper, which claimed an antimalarial drug touted by President Donald Trump for treatment of COVID-19 could cause serious harm without helping patients, had had a global impact, halting trials of one of the drugs by the World Health Organization (WHO) and others.
Three authors on the Lancet paper requested the retraction, after initiating an independent review of the raw hospital patient data summarized and provided by Surgisphere, a small Chicago-based company operated by Sapan Desai, the fourth author of the study. Desai had previously said he and his co-authors—cardiac surgeon Mandeep Mehra of Harvard University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Frank Ruschitzka of University Hospital Zürich, and Amit Patel, an adjunct faculty member at the University of Utah—were getting such an audit of the data, but the agreement apparently fell apart.
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NEJM published only a short statement from the paper’s authors, which included Mehra, Patel, and Desai, as well as SreyRam Kuy of Baylor College of Medicine and Timothy Henry of Christ Hospital in Cincinnati. “Because all the authors were not granted access to the raw data and the raw data could not be made available to a third-party auditor, we are unable to validate the primary data sources underlying our article,” they wrote, with apology. By including Desai, the note perplexingly suggests he has no access to the raw data generated by his own company.
The link title is tongue-in-cheek. There is nothing scientific about what’s going on, and this is certainly not the “first big research scandal of the Covid-19 era.” The entire thing has been a research scandal, and the retracted study is no more scientific than the claim that masks are effective. What kind of a “researcher” doesn’t validate the models and conclusions from the raw data?
No one to date has even approached what I said I need to conclude that wearing a mask is a good and necessary protective against a virus. No one has even proposed such a study.
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On June 5, 2020 at 12:36 pm, penses said:
One of the best “scientific” boondoggles was plate tectonics. In the 1840s evidence of continental drift was mounting up. By 1900 it was overwhelming evident that prehistoric animals were found on different continents due to continental drift. The “Scientific Community” denied the evidence and came up with a plethora of false facts to refute the hard data. In 1960 “Science” accepted plate tectonics 100yrs after the fact.
Most science is fake because “scientists” are working for the government or a corporate entity giving their benefactors what they want.
The recent “protests” are an insurrection. Anything less is “scientific.”
Engineers solve problems.
On June 6, 2020 at 11:25 am, scott s. said:
I don’t think “most science is fake”. But there is a treadmill. Colleges churn out many more PhDs than needed. This results in “post-docs” having to scramble to get jobs in labs run by the PIs who can get the grants. The post-docs hope that one day they will get that assistant prof gig that is on a tenure track. Meanwhile they are pretty much slaves to the system.
When you get senior, your employability is determined by your ability to bring in extramural funding, as about 50% of grants go to university overhead.
On June 6, 2020 at 5:01 pm, penses said:
“I don’t think “most science is fake””. Once upon a time there were numerous journals of scientific review, fact checking constantly to ensure the authenticity of research, truthers determining the varacity of scientic experiments. A constant process weeding out false facts. Objective and reliable.
No more. Science has been converged by the left and is the established state religion. For years, we’ve been inundated by smug orders to “believe science” without question only to find out that “science” is entirely negotiable based on political ideology. “Fact checking” is now the elimination of the truth and in its place statist ideology. Universities are digitalizing textbooks to make it easier to eliminate any “uncomfortable” facts that contradict the new intersectionality.
The planneddemic is the perfect storm of false facts verified by the deep state and big pharma and endorsed by the President and the entire ruling class. Question nothing. Obey or else. Kung flew, gobal warming,…name your poison, drink the cool-aid.
The American Meterological Society recently decided to ignore the Sun in all of its weather forecasting “data” collecting. “Science” is now officially ignoring the engine that drives the Earth’s climate along with the rest of the Solar System. Explains why most weather forecasts aren’t accurate past 24 hours.
When I think of “modern science” I imagine a yogi and his diciples navel gazing.
On June 6, 2020 at 6:06 pm, John said:
When fools decide science is subject to the political winds, the garbage they then spew out
as “unchallangable facts” becomes surreal “Goebblesdegook”.
I hope history remembers and documents each of these “Piltdown perps” in every shameful detail as a lesson to be taught on “the things every good scientist must never, ever do”.