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Thankfully, this was discovered by some tenacious independent researchers. Does anyone have the scoop on who sounded the alarm how they were able to bring the i

Thankfully, this was discovered by some tenacious independent researchers. Does anyone have the scoop on who sounded the alarm how they were able to bring the issue to light? Edit: So apparently this study was just a preprint and not even peer reviewed yet. I don't see why it carried so much weight in the media and WHO decision if that's the case. I think it's probably a good thing that it was scrutinized before it even hit peer review. Found a pretty good writeup here: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/05/25/this-controversial-hydroxychloroquine-paper-whats-lancet-gonna-do-about-it/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/05/25/this-contr...

dwaltrip 6y ago
The media does not usually know how to report on scientific research. Unfortunately, the increase of pre-prints seems to have magnified this problem. Taking a step back, scientific progress is poorly understood in general, even by many smart and inquisitive folks. In fact, I think no one really has a good concise, thorough description for how science unfolds. The reality of it is incredibly complex and messy (but nonetheless unbelievably effective). Even something as seemingly basic as the “scientific method” as it is taught in schools and seen in popular discussion is pretty misleading. It is not a great model of how science is done. Another concrete example of the confusion is the debates commonly seen about the definition of supposedly official scientific terms such as “law”, “theory” and “hypothesis ”. Sean Carroll has a great episode on his Mindscape podcast that touches on this a bit and provides a decent if not fully satisfactory answer to the question of how science actually works. As a heads up, they spend a good chunk of time talking about the concept of truth and some related philosophy :) I found it interesting and useful, but I can guess not everyone will appreciate it. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/05/04/95-liam-kofi-bright-on-knowledge-truth-and-science/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/05/04/95-l...

dwaltrip 6y ago

The media does not usually know how to report on scientific research. Unfortunately, the increase of pre-prints seems to have magnified this problem. Taking a step back, scientific progress is poorly understood in general, even by many smart and inquisitive folks. In fact, I think no one really has a good concise, thorough description for how science unfolds. The reality of it is incredibly complex and messy (but nonetheless unbelievably effective). Even something as seemingly basic as the “scientific method” as it is taught in schools and seen in popular discussion is pretty misleading. It is not a great model of how science is done. Another concrete example of the confusion is the debates commonly seen about the definition of supposedly official scientific terms such as “law”, “theory” and “hypothesis ”. Sean Carroll has a great episode on his Mindscape podcast that touches on this a bit and provides a decent if not fully satisfactory answer to the question of how science actually works. As a heads up, they spend a good chunk of time talking about the concept of truth and some related philosophy :) I found it interesting and useful, but I can guess not everyone will appreciate it. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/05/04/95-liam-kofi-bright-on-knowledge-truth-and-science/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/05/04/95-l...