5 ms·

I don't think that Ioannnidis needs to resign or something, but he should retract the paper and recuse himself from the ongoing debate about this issue. It was

I don't think that Ioannnidis needs to resign or something, but he should retract the paper and recuse himself from the ongoing debate about this issue. It was their group's decision to a) Run op-eds in the WSJ and get on Fox News with their theories b) Create a faulty study with biased data analysis (of all people, Ioannnidis should be very sensitive to this -- he's famous for his paper "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False." c) Publish the flawed paper as a preprint without peer review. d) Publish the results of the L.A. serological survey without even a preprint so that the methods could be looked over. If you publish a study that has huge societal implications before peer review, then Twitter is going to be your peer review. Deal with it.

blueblimp 7y ago
I don't blame them for posting a dodgy preprint (that's what preprints are for) but I do blame them for going on a press blitz for their dodgy preprint. It's not a responsible way to use their platform.
- ravitation 7y ago
  Well, some may find posting said preprint particularly questionable simply because it had Ioannidis' name on it, and he's primarily known for his emphasis on standards of evidence.
  - epistasis 7y ago
    As somebody who was always annoyed by the weird amounts of odd attention that Ioannidis' "standards of evidence" papers got, I hope that this makes people reevaluate them. The "standard" he set up was a straw man, and not how any practicing scientist I know actually looks at papers. And when he allows his name to be used to push highly politci contrarian takes, all the weird attention his other papers received starts to make sense. It's not about the science, it's about being contrarian, at best, and at worst ways to subvert the public's view of science by deriving them on what it really means to publish a peer-reviewed paper.
cma 7y ago
In a video promoting his study, he said the WHO said 3.4% of people who get infected would die. Which seems like a blatant lie with a strong agenda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwPqmLoZA4s&t=12m54s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwPqmLoZA4s&t=12m54s What they actually said was: > Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died He also says it doesn't seem to have a higher chance of killing you than seasonal flu for each person infected: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwPqmLoZA4s&t=1h9m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwPqmLoZA4s&t=1h9m50s And says in there that Imperial college was dangerously wrong to use a 1% IFR estimate in their modeling. I believe this interview was near or after New York City's city fatality rate was already over 0.1%, yet he was still saying Imperial's estimate was an order of magnitude off. Throughout the whole thing he cherry picked countries with recent extreme case growth and thorough testing to take advantage of the death lag and claim they point to a tiny CFR (and IFR). In each case it steadily rose after case growth slowed and lagged deaths continued, as expected. In the Ioannidis serology study, one of the researchers's wives recruited people who wanted a test, saying it would let them know if they could get back to work (potentially biasing things for people who suspected they had had it).
- thu2111 7y ago
  In each case it steadily rose after case growth slowed and lagged deaths continued, as expected. Where do you see that? The data I see says the fatality rate of all forms has been dropping over time, as expected from prior epidemics where this also occurred. It's the Imperial papers that have been discredited by now, as their projections were way off in all respects - if they were right Sweden would be a bloodbath at the moment. I agree the serology survey was not a perfect study - more for statistical/confidence interval reasons than the researcher's wife. But it may not matter. The general conclusions of the serology survey are matching many other pieces of data and evidence from around the world. For example: "The latest figures from Italy show (pp. 12/13) that 60 of almost 17,000 doctors and nurses who tested positive died. This results in a Covid19 lethality rate of less than 0.1% for those under 50, 0.27% for those aged 50 to 60, 1.4% for those aged 60 to 70, and 12.6% for those aged 70 to 80. Even these figures are likely too high, as these are deaths with and not necessarily from corona viruses, and as up to 80% of people remain asymptomatic and some may not have been tested. Overall, however, the values are in line with those from e.g. South Korea and give a lethality rate for the general population in the range of influenza." From https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ - the source document is in Italian but the data table is quite clear even to someone who doesn't speak it. In other words for Imperial's paper to have been reasonable they'd have to assume the entire population had the mortality profile of 60+ year olds, which is just wrong.
addicted 7y ago
It’s not just that it was a faulty study. It was a study that was about an ongoing crisis that has led to hundreds of thousands of dead people in a couple of months that had a contrarian result, had not been through peer review, had not been double or triple checked and was still promoted heavily through news media. That it happened to also be faulty made it a tragedy. It’s farcical nature had been established earlier.
- giardini 7y ago
  It was an opinion piece, not a study, and was labeled at the very top as such: https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-a... Opinions don't need checking, peer review or double-blind controlled studies to be heard. That's why they're called "opinions". "Opinions are like assholes: everybody's got one and they all stink!" - Unknown (NOT DeadPool; much older than that!)

blueblimp 7y ago

I don't blame them for posting a dodgy preprint (that's what preprints are for) but I do blame them for going on a press blitz for their dodgy preprint. It's not a responsible way to use their platform.

ravitation 7y ago
Well, some may find posting said preprint particularly questionable simply because it had Ioannidis' name on it, and he's primarily known for his emphasis on standards of evidence.
- epistasis 7y ago
  As somebody who was always annoyed by the weird amounts of odd attention that Ioannidis' "standards of evidence" papers got, I hope that this makes people reevaluate them. The "standard" he set up was a straw man, and not how any practicing scientist I know actually looks at papers. And when he allows his name to be used to push highly politci contrarian takes, all the weird attention his other papers received starts to make sense. It's not about the science, it's about being contrarian, at best, and at worst ways to subvert the public's view of science by deriving them on what it really means to publish a peer-reviewed paper.

cma 7y ago

In a video promoting his study, he said the WHO said 3.4% of people who get infected would die. Which seems like a blatant lie with a strong agenda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwPqmLoZA4s&t=12m54s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwPqmLoZA4s&t=12m54s What they actually said was: > Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died He also says it doesn't seem to have a higher chance of killing you than seasonal flu for each person infected: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwPqmLoZA4s&t=1h9m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwPqmLoZA4s&t=1h9m50s And says in there that Imperial college was dangerously wrong to use a 1% IFR estimate in their modeling. I believe this interview was near or after New York City's city fatality rate was already over 0.1%, yet he was still saying Imperial's estimate was an order of magnitude off. Throughout the whole thing he cherry picked countries with recent extreme case growth and thorough testing to take advantage of the death lag and claim they point to a tiny CFR (and IFR). In each case it steadily rose after case growth slowed and lagged deaths continued, as expected. In the Ioannidis serology study, one of the researchers's wives recruited people who wanted a test, saying it would let them know if they could get back to work (potentially biasing things for people who suspected they had had it).

thu2111 7y ago
In each case it steadily rose after case growth slowed and lagged deaths continued, as expected. Where do you see that? The data I see says the fatality rate of all forms has been dropping over time, as expected from prior epidemics where this also occurred. It's the Imperial papers that have been discredited by now, as their projections were way off in all respects - if they were right Sweden would be a bloodbath at the moment. I agree the serology survey was not a perfect study - more for statistical/confidence interval reasons than the researcher's wife. But it may not matter. The general conclusions of the serology survey are matching many other pieces of data and evidence from around the world. For example: "The latest figures from Italy show (pp. 12/13) that 60 of almost 17,000 doctors and nurses who tested positive died. This results in a Covid19 lethality rate of less than 0.1% for those under 50, 0.27% for those aged 50 to 60, 1.4% for those aged 60 to 70, and 12.6% for those aged 70 to 80. Even these figures are likely too high, as these are deaths with and not necessarily from corona viruses, and as up to 80% of people remain asymptomatic and some may not have been tested. Overall, however, the values are in line with those from e.g. South Korea and give a lethality rate for the general population in the range of influenza." From https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ - the source document is in Italian but the data table is quite clear even to someone who doesn't speak it. In other words for Imperial's paper to have been reasonable they'd have to assume the entire population had the mortality profile of 60+ year olds, which is just wrong.

addicted 7y ago

It’s not just that it was a faulty study. It was a study that was about an ongoing crisis that has led to hundreds of thousands of dead people in a couple of months that had a contrarian result, had not been through peer review, had not been double or triple checked and was still promoted heavily through news media. That it happened to also be faulty made it a tragedy. It’s farcical nature had been established earlier.

giardini 7y ago
It was an opinion piece, not a study, and was labeled at the very top as such: https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-a... Opinions don't need checking, peer review or double-blind controlled studies to be heard. That's why they're called "opinions". "Opinions are like assholes: everybody's got one and they all stink!" - Unknown (NOT DeadPool; much older than that!)