A study that stoked enthusiasm for the now-disproven idea that a cheap malaria drug can treat COVID-19 has been retracted — more than four-and-a-half years after it was published.
… Its eventual withdrawal, on the grounds of concerns over ethical approval and doubts about the conduct of the research, marks the 28th retraction for co-author Didier Raoult, a French microbiologist, formerly at Marseille’s Hospital-University Institute Mediterranean Infection (IHU), who shot to global prominence in the pandemic. French investigations found that he and the IHU had violated ethics-approval protocols in numerous studies, and Raoult has now retired.
“Why it took more than four-and-a-half years after the study was initially published for the journal to come to this conclusion is not clear. It is also somewhat surprising that most of the paper’s authors still stand by study’s findings and conclusions despite its obvious inconsistencies, methodological flaws and potential ethical issues as outlined in the retraction note,” says Søgaard.
The paper (now marked as retracted): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.105949
The paper linking vaccines with autism was also retracted, and that didn’t stop them.
Unfortunately… Isn’t there a saying like “the amount of effort to refute bullshit is much large than the amount needed to produce it” or something? So sadly the HCQ thing is just going to stay there for now; the journal taking 4.5 years to retract it didn’t help either
People are not bright. If a source they trust says something is bad, it’s hard to back track.
Shit, a lot of people still think egg yokes substantially increase blood cholesterol.
More proof that hydroxychloroquine is a miracle drug and the lizard people just don’t want us to know about it.
I mean, it is an awesome drug! I use it a lot. Even in covid suffers - when COVID activates an autoimmune disease.
Let’s do ivermectin next! I’ll go first: fantastic for endo and ectoparasites, and even a subset of folks with rosacea. Does jack all for Covid infections.
Yeah ivermectin is a miracle drug …in antiparasitic medicine. Virology not so much
Agree… So many people are so far gone from logic that anything and everything either proves them right or is a conspiracy. Guess free education is important in a society that wants to remain just this… A society of people living and functioning together. We are entering the “find out” phase
Countless hours and public funds, wasted.
I assume it took that long because good science is rarely fast and fast science is rarely good
They were remarkably fast for a vaccine, they were effective and also the most unpleasant vaccine I’ve had. And they involved the industrialized world dumping huge amounts of resources into their creation. They also took significantly longer than the study proposing hydrocychloroquine. The study refuting it wasn’t on a timer so it was able to take it slow and go at the pace of normal science.
I still don’t get why the higher ups pushed this and Ivermectin so hard. Like, they clearly aren’t anti big pharma, so it must be someone getting their beak wet. But who?
If you remember the time, Trump was pushing for any narrative that could let him say COVID wasn’t a big deal and would just disappear. He was looking for easy answers.
He was looking for easy answers.
This is fucking everyone and it’s so goddamn bleak.
Yeah that’s the problem with people in leadership roles. They should know better than to think complex problems have easy solutions.
Unfortunately, a lot of the voting public gravitate towards the leaders that assure them there are easy answers. The average person doesn’t want to hear a nuanced answer to a complex issue.
You want a conspiracy theory?
It was designed to make any criticism of big pharma look crazy.
