I would have to disagree about the stain. What they did was a demonstration of good medical ethics. The two analyses that were withdrawn were based on data sets that appeared to be valid (and the statistical methods *were* valid) but the data, it seems, cannot be validated. The articles never said that chloroquine was effective against covid-19. One of the articles said that the drug greatly increased heart problems, but the compilers of the data set have refused so far to release the dataset for outside auditing, so three of the four authors asked that it be withdrawn. The other paper looked at the effect of two other drugs on covid-19 patients, and as was the case with the first paper, the data sets could not be confirmed. There's a larger article about this oknt he front page of the Ars Technica website. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/lancet-hydroxychloroquine-study-retracted-shady-data-still-shady/
Hi John,
I am sorry if I am misunderstanding your comments, but I'll have to strongly disagree with you on this. I highlight some fragments in bold since my answer is a bit long.
This study should be considered as devoid of any value for the following reasons:
- It's an a posteriori study without any clarity about the data (no information about the doses administrated, no information about the protocols,...), this is a huge problem because it doesn't allow peers to confirm how the drug was administrated
- It's full of errors (some hospitals were wrongly categorized, the patient health profiles are identical across continents,...)
- The groups of patients to whom the Chloroquine was administrated (6,000 patients) differs significantly from the group of patients to whom it was not administrated (90,000 patients). They display significantly different conditions (among other respiratory condition) when the Chloriquine was given, which means that it's impossible to compare the results since the baseline was different
- Many of these patients appear to be patients that were suffering from heart disease in the first place, patients to whom one typically would not recommend chloroquine, meaning that there is a huge sample selection bias
- the timing of chloroquine administration appears to have been done too late (patient with already severe respiratory symptoms) compared to the timing when it is valuable (earlier in the life cycle of the infection)
- And, last but not least, it was not reviewed by any peer before publication, which by itself is enough to discredit it completely as a scientific publication
With data so poor, the conclusions have absolutely no value. So no, the publication of such crap is
absolutely not ethical. It simply says nothing for or against the value or efficiency of the Chloriquine nor anything about its dangers. You can give aspirine to 1,000 people about to die and conclude that aspirine is a terrible killer. That's the same level we are talking about with the Lancet article.
Anyway you look at it
it's a shame for science and for the Lancet and I maintain that it's a terrible hit for their credibility. Their editor should be fired on the spot for having authorized the publication of this article. The sensitivity of the topic was perfectly understood, the weakness of the article and it's creaming methodological holes cannot not have been 100% clear for the Lancet, the political impact was clear too. T
his isn't science, it's politics.The withdrawal of the article is an obvious confirmation of the issue. It appears that on average only 4 out 10,000 scientific articles are withdrawn every year in leading publications.
It's a very rare thing and incredibly rare for high visibility articles making the headlines outside the scientific community.
Note that I don't make any mention of the links between the authors and the pharma industry, but they are closely related to Gilead. The one company with a vested interest in killing the Chloriquine since it is competing with their 4 BUS$ ineffective drug, the Remdesvir.
Cheers,
Bernard
