4 ms·

What a surprise.... a crackpot theory by a less than reputable MD, tested on less than 100 people overall with no control and no double blind... I really wonder

What a surprise.... a crackpot theory by a less than reputable MD, tested on less than 100 people overall with no control and no double blind... I really wonder how other hospitals could have fallen for it. It’s the epitome of bad science. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22727359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22727359 for all the drama around Dr Raoult.

threatofrain 7y ago
Medicine has so much trouble with “good science” due to ethics. Random selection and assignment with controls are obvious techniques of science but it means not giving people medicine we suspect is interesting, or randomly assigning potentially bad effects to people. Double blind means the doctors and nurses who administer protocol won’t even know or care about your medical history or context, let alone whether or not they’re even giving you any medicine at all. So even clinical, experimental studies which start strong tend to compromise themselves after an initial impression of results.
capableweb 7y ago
It's hard when the situation reaches panic-mode because people are dying around you. As a hospital worker, you feel very helpless when the only thing you can do is to help people die painlessly. As we're humans, we're easily affected by things around us, especially around death and life, and particularly at a pandemic. So when there is a slight possibility of helping people survive, even though you would normally never do something because you put emphasis on correct scientific procedure, you might give it a try, instead of doing nothing. I'm not arguing for it or against it, just trying to explain the situation and provide a different viewpoint for people who may never been there and hopefully never be.
mardifoufs 7y ago
Yes, Dr Raoult is discredited at this point but it doesn't mean we know the treatment itself doesn't work. Here's a study with a control group, randomized selection, etc showing significant improvements not, in viral load as Raoult claimed, but in treating pneumonia caused by COVID. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.20040758v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.20040758v...

threatofrain 7y ago

Medicine has so much trouble with “good science” due to ethics. Random selection and assignment with controls are obvious techniques of science but it means not giving people medicine we suspect is interesting, or randomly assigning potentially bad effects to people. Double blind means the doctors and nurses who administer protocol won’t even know or care about your medical history or context, let alone whether or not they’re even giving you any medicine at all. So even clinical, experimental studies which start strong tend to compromise themselves after an initial impression of results.

capableweb 7y ago

It's hard when the situation reaches panic-mode because people are dying around you. As a hospital worker, you feel very helpless when the only thing you can do is to help people die painlessly. As we're humans, we're easily affected by things around us, especially around death and life, and particularly at a pandemic. So when there is a slight possibility of helping people survive, even though you would normally never do something because you put emphasis on correct scientific procedure, you might give it a try, instead of doing nothing. I'm not arguing for it or against it, just trying to explain the situation and provide a different viewpoint for people who may never been there and hopefully never be.

mardifoufs 7y ago

Yes, Dr Raoult is discredited at this point but it doesn't mean we know the treatment itself doesn't work. Here's a study with a control group, randomized selection, etc showing significant improvements not, in viral load as Raoult claimed, but in treating pneumonia caused by COVID. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.20040758v2 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.20040758v...