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Please don't fall for this. An article over at ScienceMag [1] states, > ...James Watson, a statistician at Mahidol who on 28 May published an open letter to th

Please don't fall for this. An article over at ScienceMag [1] states, > ...James Watson, a statistician at Mahidol who on 28 May published an open letter to the journal and the study’s co-authors, signed by more than 200 clinicians and researchers, that calls for the release of Surgisphere’s hospital-level data, an independent validation of the results, and publication of the peer review comments that led to the Lancet publication. This blogger's article is dated May 29. Given that the underlying theme of this blog is "everyone's lying to you about covid19, it's actually not that big of a deal", I doubt James Todaro was as instrumental in The Lancet's retraction as the letter from 200 other researchers the day before. It will be quite bad if it turns out that the WHO reacted to a study published in The Lancet that turns out to be fraudulent or grossly erroneous. We don't need to make the situation even worse by lending undue credit to other sources of disinformation. [1]: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/mysterious-company-s-coronavirus-papers-top-medical-journals-may-be-unraveling https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/mysterious-company-s...

walterbell 6y ago
Todaro and others have been collating HCQ studies for weeks, as visible on Twitter. It's not a competition for credit, except against misleading studies. You can review the Google doc above, which is more than a month old. It contains a list of HCQ studies which include components likely to increase success: early treatment in time to slow viral replication with a combination of HCQ and zinc. These successful HCQ studies, full of reports of lives saved, are worthy of attention.
- thaumaturgy 6y ago
  Man, I'd love to argue with you on this. I'd love to do a decent job of pointing out that you're moving the discussion away from this potentially fraudulent paper published by The Lancet and towards the broader argument over HCQ. I'd love to spend the time to comprehensively review some dude's Google Doc that, at a random sampling, appears to contain non-peer-reviewed preprints and observational studies from discredited authors and not a single one of the much better studies that are critical of HCQ. I'd like to ask you why you're so readily willing to trust this particular treatment of this subject given the complete lack of contraindicating evidence. But, I'm completely exhausted. Between arguing against racists and arguing against bad politics during a global health epidemic and trying to catch and counter some of the relentless stream of disinformation on this and so many other subjects -- and all without any intervention at all from any of the social media platforms that enable all of this, including HN -- I'm tired, and discouraged, and dispirited. I need to go away for a while. I hope someone else has the time and energy to curb stomp random dude's 25 page Google Doc minutes before someone else cites 25 pages of different BS.
  - h2odragon 6y ago
    No matter how hard you pout about it some people just won't share your enlightenment. so frustrating, isn't it? Almost as if others have as much right to their own worldview as you do yours. Even if you really think they're wrong.
  - claytongulick 6y ago
    Perhaps your exhaustion stems from defending a position, rather than seeking knowledge?
  - walterbell 6y ago
    There are well-intentioned and capable people who have done their due diligence and ended up on different sides of this topic. What's interesting about this particular "social media" discussion are the real world consequences and incompatibility of some positions. If the list of possible scenarios includes death, and people have invested the time to reach informed conclusions in consultation with their doctors, perhaps their choices can be respected.
  - marvin 6y ago
    I haven't heard the phrase "curb stomp" used in science before. That type of emotional language would seem to me to indicate a wish to defend a certain position, rather than evaluate evidence independently and accept an answer of "we don't know with certainty yet" if things seem inconclusive.

walterbell 6y ago

Todaro and others have been collating HCQ studies for weeks, as visible on Twitter. It's not a competition for credit, except against misleading studies. You can review the Google doc above, which is more than a month old. It contains a list of HCQ studies which include components likely to increase success: early treatment in time to slow viral replication with a combination of HCQ and zinc. These successful HCQ studies, full of reports of lives saved, are worthy of attention.

thaumaturgy 6y ago
Man, I'd love to argue with you on this. I'd love to do a decent job of pointing out that you're moving the discussion away from this potentially fraudulent paper published by The Lancet and towards the broader argument over HCQ. I'd love to spend the time to comprehensively review some dude's Google Doc that, at a random sampling, appears to contain non-peer-reviewed preprints and observational studies from discredited authors and not a single one of the much better studies that are critical of HCQ. I'd like to ask you why you're so readily willing to trust this particular treatment of this subject given the complete lack of contraindicating evidence. But, I'm completely exhausted. Between arguing against racists and arguing against bad politics during a global health epidemic and trying to catch and counter some of the relentless stream of disinformation on this and so many other subjects -- and all without any intervention at all from any of the social media platforms that enable all of this, including HN -- I'm tired, and discouraged, and dispirited. I need to go away for a while. I hope someone else has the time and energy to curb stomp random dude's 25 page Google Doc minutes before someone else cites 25 pages of different BS.
- h2odragon 6y ago
  No matter how hard you pout about it some people just won't share your enlightenment. so frustrating, isn't it? Almost as if others have as much right to their own worldview as you do yours. Even if you really think they're wrong.
- claytongulick 6y ago
  Perhaps your exhaustion stems from defending a position, rather than seeking knowledge?
- walterbell 6y ago
  There are well-intentioned and capable people who have done their due diligence and ended up on different sides of this topic. What's interesting about this particular "social media" discussion are the real world consequences and incompatibility of some positions. If the list of possible scenarios includes death, and people have invested the time to reach informed conclusions in consultation with their doctors, perhaps their choices can be respected.
- marvin 6y ago
  I haven't heard the phrase "curb stomp" used in science before. That type of emotional language would seem to me to indicate a wish to defend a certain position, rather than evaluate evidence independently and accept an answer of "we don't know with certainty yet" if things seem inconclusive.