8 ms·

French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award For Pseudoscience

55 points by mikehall314 6y ago

White_Wolf 6y ago
That guy probably based his experiments/research on a 2005 paper. https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-2-69e https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-42...
- FrancisOfAssisi 6y ago
  I get a "page not found" on that URL.
  - White_Wolf 6y ago
    Not sure why. Just google this string without the quotation marks. Should be the first result: "10.1186 1743-422X-2-69e"
tomohawk 6y ago
This is really counter productive and snarky. How does this advance science? There have been multiple studies on this, and it has been a mixed bag. This one is positive: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32418114/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32418114/ There are others that are positive, and still others that are negative.
- DanBC 6y ago
  This award isn't about those other studies, it's about his choice to over-egg his research. > Subsequent analysis of Raoult’s data found that his sample size was incredibly small, with only 6 patients given the hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin combination. The study was also found to be improperly controlled, and data was excluded for a number of patients whose condition worsened as they were either transferred to intensive care, or died. Subsequent studies have shown no clinical benefit for the use of hydroxychloroquine in patients with COVID-19. > After Raoult’s study inspired a surge of interest in the use of hydroxychloroquine, [...] His not very good research caused huge amounts of interest in hydroxychloroquine and distracted attention from other, far more beneficial, treatment.
  - tomohawk 6y ago
    You're going to fault a clinician working in a pandemic who has found an interesting result when all the experts are stumped?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - polotics 6y ago
    The Gilead stock options trading squad has been extremely good. Too bad for some livers, lives, and trust in science amongst many.
  - leftyted 6y ago
    None of this makes his research "pseudoscience".
    - fbr 6y ago
      > Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence Can we claim that we have some evidence based on a sample of 6 people?
      - polotics 6y ago
        Yes you can! At least with russian roulette!
      - finndark 6y ago
        Sometimes. It depends on what you are observing and what the question is. E.g., if I'm in a room with others and see 6 people apparently fall over dead, then I will leave the room. Afterwards, if questioned, I will submit my observations as "evidence" that I was right to leave immediately.
  - gadders 6y ago
    There was a study that was just as bad saying hydroxychloroquine was dangerous. Strange that they just chose to discredit this one...
jmnicolas 6y ago
There's a media war on Raoult in France. I don't know if Chloroquine is effective on COVID 19, but I know that it's comically cheap and people took it for years against malaria without side effects. So at worse it's a placebo. On the other hand there's Remdesivir that's astronomically expensive, destroys kidneys and hasn't any effectiveness against COVID (even the OMS says so). But it's still the recommended treatment in France since they forbid the chloroquine treatment. Color me skeptical about their motivations but all the big proponents of Remdesivir have financial links with Gilead.
- creuset 6y ago
  It can be worse than a placebo if it is not effective but physicians think it is: this would lead to patients not being given alternative (& effective) treatments - if any, or being less monitored since they are expected to get better with the drug.
- polotics 6y ago
  Wow, gray downvoted posts appear to be the quality contents on health related themes here!
- steeve 6y ago
  So many things in this post are inaccurate here and are trivially debunkable.
  - 2a0c40 6y ago
    care to elaborate?
- jariel 6y ago
  "So at worse it's a placebo." No, telling the masses that something works when it does not is much more than a placebo, it's very bad.
rq1 6y ago
Didier Raoult is one of the brightest scientists in the world. Period. There’s no “major” flaw in his studies as people keep repeating. He was studying viral load in patients and excluded those who were in ICU because they did not have enough virus left. Thus suggesting his cocktail as an early treatment. There is indeed pseudoscientists and corrupt ones who published the famous now but ridiculous study in “the lancet” and who promote remdesivir. Edit: https://c19study.com/ https://c19study.com/
- singemonkey 6y ago
  I genuinely feel sorry for you. I have no idea what it's like to be so disconnected from reality, but I hope you find your way back one day. (Downvotes = proof I am right. Period)
  - dang 6y ago
    We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. Please don't create accounts to do that with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - singemonkey 6y ago
      No worries, dang. You carry on keep enabling the mana-vaxx deniers, and tone policing. I'll make as many accounts as I want to.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  > There’s no “major” flaw in his studies as people keep repeating. ah, yes, it's all perfect. smh https://www.les-crises.fr/the-tremendous-ethical-and-methodological-flaws-in-the-raoult-clinical-trial-analysis-by-olivier-berruyer/ https://www.les-crises.fr/the-tremendous-ethical-and-methodo...
  - rq1 6y ago
    I guess other studies are perfect and survived this level of scrutiny. Especially the "recovery" one, praised by everybody where the inclusion criteria was: "having flu like symptoms", without PCR. This is true science indeed. https://www.les-crises.fr/the-tremendous-ethical-and-methodological-flaws-in-the-raoult-clinical-trial-analysis-by-olivier-berruyer/#ancre7 https://www.les-crises.fr/the-tremendous-ethical-and-methodo... 1. Why is this a major flaw? 2. As stated by the title. Remark: (Well conducted) RCTs introduce way too much variance. As a statistician I care about a good trade-off between bias and variance. OTOH, you don't need RCTs when you measure a physical property of a system. 3-6,8. Valid points. Especially as of publication date. As of today, they updated the study with 3000+ patients. 7. This is not ethical. 9. Object of the study: measure viral load. After the cytokine storm, you don't care much about the virus. 10. We should ask DR directly about it, this is grave. 11-13. Irrelevant. They did PCRs to everyone, the important measure is the CT. 14. This is not good indeed. 15. PCR tests are reliable. 16. Why is it a flaw? 17-18. They published a lot of other papers on their work, and updated the early study.
_Wintermute 6y ago
As an actual pharmacologist I find it fascinating how the general public has suddenly taken such a poorly informed interest in drug discovery. For the HN audience it would be like people taking an almost tribal approach to go-lang vs rust, debating it on national television, without any of them knowing what a loop is.
- helen___keller 6y ago
  My mother-in-law is an architect by training but she was convinced (by youtube) that she ought to have some HCQ so she had family members ship us some. She's even suggested out of the blue that she should start taking it as a preventative for no particular except that she read amazon workers have been contracting covid and we get a lot of amazon packages. When we told her that's not a good idea she felt compelled to defend HCQ against the mainstream media slander, as if that were the problem here.
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    The cries if mainstream media are so weird, because what even is mainstream any more? I wish such a thing still existed really. Yet one gets accused of being naively trusting of this extinct thing any time one is rational.
    - glitcher 6y ago
      I don't think mainstream media is anywhere near extinct, but instead it's evolving and growing. I would argue that all the people who jumped on the HCQ bandwagon without sufficient evidence were also victims of mainstream media! The real epidemic is the deficit of critical thinking among those who primarily look for media content to fit what they want to hear, and then close themselves off to any other input, evidence, or scrutiny.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    I think the MSM weighing in and taking a position was exactly the problem. The question of HCQ efficacy would have been solved much faster without it being politicized.. The actual story of HCQ is pretty boring. It was a plausible treatment with a mixed bag of weak evidence for and against efficacy. It is not particularly dangerous. Trump oversold and lied about the benefits. The MSM lied about the data against and the risks. In such an environment, it's not surprising people take sides and dig in.
hocuspocus 6y ago
> “It is hard to find an example of quackery that has spread so far, influencing the public health response to a deadly pandemic and creating widespread confusion across the entire globe.” It isn't hard: the Lancet has published a completely made-up study written by an unknown team, before they retracted the paper. If I wanted to fuel conspiracy theories, I don't think I could come up with anything better.
- polotics 6y ago
  To make sure HN'ers don't get things mixed up: Raoult has nothing to do with the Lancet's "study", and in an environment where such hogwash gets published, how is one clinician with the daily burden of the families of the many covid dead not going to try and do something?
- gadders 6y ago
  Since Trump publicised hydroxychloroquine the whole debate around it has become so poisoned by politics it's unable to find an unbiassed opinion. The Lancet study seemed to have rushed to publication purely to discredit Trump.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Yeah don't remind me. People pulling numbers out of thin air to feed fuel to the fire (and apparently no reviewer with TL suspected that "AI driven data collection").
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > “It is hard to find an example of quackery that has spread so far, influencing the public health response to a deadly pandemic and creating widespread confusion across the entire globe.” Or the WHO themselves claiming that masks do not work for months then suddenly reversing their position in the middle of the pandemic. But "Trust Science" they said.
  - hyper_reality 6y ago
    I'm fed up of people repeating this over-simplified putdown of WHO on HN. The advice about masks was on their website on March 2020 largely because they were worried about mass public buying of masks, leaving a shortage for frontline medical workers (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who/masks-should-be-prioritized-for-health-workers-any-lifting-of-lockdowns-gradual-who-idUSKBN21O2GV https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who/ma...). The guidance was updated as more evidence came in and production of masks scaled up. This should not be compared to outright quackery.
prof-dr-ir 6y ago
President Macron actually paid a visit to Raoult back in April. The visit probably inadvertently cast a gigantic spotlight on the shoddy (or at best preliminary) research. In my opinion it reflected quite poorly on the quality of Macron's scientific council. More generally, I spent way too much time comparing the pandemic responses of various European countries. For France, one thing that stood out to me was an outsize focus by media and politicians on research by French scientists.
- namdnay 6y ago
  > President Macron actually paid a visit to Raoult back in April. The visit probably inadvertently cast a gigantic spotlight on the shoddy (or at best preliminary) research. In my opinion it reflected quite poorly on the quality of Macron's scientific council. By the time Macron visited Raoult, the spotlight was already on and shining bright. He was more or less forced to visit him for domestic political reasons: Raoult tapped straight into the anti-establishment anti-elite yellow-vest zietgeist , if Macron hadn't at least shown some gesture towards him they would have seized the trope of the "intellectual snob who is too aloof to talk to the people and their hero". The populist politicians from the south of france were already riding the Raoult train by then: Estrosi, Melenchon etc So he went, he talked, he got his photo taken, and he left. Raoult got the attention he craves, Macron took some bullets out of the guns of his enemies, and nothing much happened. I agree that a more principled stand would have been nice, but that's politics :/
alesmaticic 6y ago
I think the Lanced study about hydroxychloroquine that was later retracted deserved this award much more as it was completely made up.
- steeve 6y ago
  But it was retracted shortly after. The process worked ultimately. Raoult has yet to admit anything.
  - FrancisOfAssisi 6y ago
    Perhaps b/c Raoult's work was correct? Studies that use HCQ+ZINC+AZITROMYCIN EARLY (in the first 3-4 days after Covid symptoms appear) and in the proper dosage have consistently shown tremendous improvement in outcome. But most studies apply those medicines AFTER HOSPITALIZATION (often 1-2 weeks after symptoms appear), which is far, far too late for them to be effective. Other studies gave massive overdoses of HCQ which can interfere with the heart rhythm. So the studies were "designed to fail" and did. Raoult has nothing to apologize for; he was correct and has been vindicated by other properly-executed studies.
dmix 6y ago
Technically the Chinese Wuhan Institute was first to recommended hydroxychloroquine as a possible solution (among at least one other drug) months before this guy and the politicians ever published anything about it. There was also a small town US doctor who claimed anecdotal success among his hundreds of clients who was highly influential very early on. And tons of other speculative ‘experts’ talking about it on YouTube. Then months later as COVID got really bad there was multiple bad science on both sides of the argument just muddied the water in an extreme event the entire population has a never experienced before in their lives. Causing mass desperation and flailing about. I previously published a timeline on HN earlier that showed the UK also blocked exports of the drug at least a full month before the Trump brigades and bad papers came out. And other examples of authoritative institutions giving off signals and rumours which could easily be taken advantage of by people desperate to save family members lives. It was also listed as safe in small doses as by WHO so people were willing to take the risk before the full science was out. I also remember the general consensus became that it was only useful as a prophylactic not a treatment after the fact when the infection was serious, so it was even harder to pinpoint good evidence when the doctors were giving it out to thousands and only a tiny amount got serious infections. Then the uselessness is even easier to hide with an easy exit argument. It seems strange to me to target this one individual among a large group. Maybe he was the first to give it academic credibility with an actual paper?
- raverbashing 6y ago
  There was a small suspicion and some previous studies that maybe (a big maybe) HCQ would help in some infections (parasitic and virotic - well, it does help with Malaria) But that was that, a suspicion, not to take it as the holy grail of the disease
  - dmix 6y ago
    Of course but there are always people who will be desperate to get ahead of the curve before the science fully comes out (including nation states) and were willing to take risks. It’s almost like everyone didn’t expect a basic human reality among a subset of the population to be a reality. Fear has always been one of our strongest base motivations. I’m generally cynical about all politicians and the lowest common denominator which is a hell of a lot of people. But I also don’t think the support for it during the early days was limited to just mom and pops boomers or whatever. There’s plenty of blame to go around but I also think there was plenty of signals early on where the seriousness of the guilt is less than a lot of smug Twitter idealists are willing to admit. My only question was why this one guy to target among a sea of other signals. But I also think from a purely skeptics (publication) perspective it’s fair they target the ones who aren’t ‘supposed’ to be among the stupid group and should know better (which would then exclude random family doctors, early recommendations for exploration, and the perpetually dumb politicians) and this guy was super influential as a microbiologist. So it might make more sense in that context.
jcq3 6y ago
I don't want to advocate for Didier Raoult but calling such a renown professor all over the world a pseudo scientist is a bit harsh... What is the legitimacy of these judges? Only a few people have the knowledge to debate about this subject, it's all about politics right now, not science
FrancisOfAssisi 6y ago
The article incorrectly states the nominating committees intentions: Raoult was given the "Rusty Razor Award" so that he could buy a new electric shaver to replace his old (and indeed rusty) razor, which had long since lost it's edge and been abandoned by the good doctor. Didier Raoult before Covid research: http://www.antimicrobe.org/Didier_Raoult3.JPG http://www.antimicrobe.org/Didier_Raoult3.JPG Didier Raoult after Covid research: http://www.d1softballnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/bientot-le-prix-nobel-pour-didier-raoult-cette-blague-qui-fait-rire-a-l-elysee-960x420.jpg http://www.d1softballnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/bie... France has for many years been chastised for its failure to properly fund scientific research and Raoult is yet another example of this sad neglect. Note also that "The Skeptic" is a British organization, Raoult is French, and that this is yet one more shot fired in two seemingly endless barrages across the Channel in both directions. Article re the Award: https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2020/11/french-scientist-didier-raoult-given-rusty-razor-award-for-pseudoscience/ https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2020/11/french-scientist-didier-r...
tpoacher 6y ago
It is a sad day for researchers worldwide when politics can shift your research efforts from "tried to do good research which could save the world" to "ermagehrd your science got used by orangeman bad let's name and shame you in public"

55 points by mikehall314 6y ago

That guy probably based his experiments/research on a 2005 paper. https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-422X-2-69e https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-42...

FrancisOfAssisi 6y ago
I get a "page not found" on that URL.
- White_Wolf 6y ago
  Not sure why. Just google this string without the quotation marks. Should be the first result: "10.1186 1743-422X-2-69e"

tomohawk 6y ago

This is really counter productive and snarky. How does this advance science? There have been multiple studies on this, and it has been a mixed bag. This one is positive: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32418114/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32418114/ There are others that are positive, and still others that are negative.

DanBC 6y ago
This award isn't about those other studies, it's about his choice to over-egg his research. > Subsequent analysis of Raoult’s data found that his sample size was incredibly small, with only 6 patients given the hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin combination. The study was also found to be improperly controlled, and data was excluded for a number of patients whose condition worsened as they were either transferred to intensive care, or died. Subsequent studies have shown no clinical benefit for the use of hydroxychloroquine in patients with COVID-19. > After Raoult’s study inspired a surge of interest in the use of hydroxychloroquine, [...] His not very good research caused huge amounts of interest in hydroxychloroquine and distracted attention from other, far more beneficial, treatment.
- tomohawk 6y ago
  You're going to fault a clinician working in a pandemic who has found an interesting result when all the experts are stumped?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- polotics 6y ago
  The Gilead stock options trading squad has been extremely good. Too bad for some livers, lives, and trust in science amongst many.
- leftyted 6y ago
  None of this makes his research "pseudoscience".
  - fbr 6y ago
    > Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence Can we claim that we have some evidence based on a sample of 6 people?
    - polotics 6y ago
      Yes you can! At least with russian roulette!
    - finndark 6y ago
      Sometimes. It depends on what you are observing and what the question is. E.g., if I'm in a room with others and see 6 people apparently fall over dead, then I will leave the room. Afterwards, if questioned, I will submit my observations as "evidence" that I was right to leave immediately.
- gadders 6y ago
  There was a study that was just as bad saying hydroxychloroquine was dangerous. Strange that they just chose to discredit this one...

jmnicolas 6y ago

There's a media war on Raoult in France. I don't know if Chloroquine is effective on COVID 19, but I know that it's comically cheap and people took it for years against malaria without side effects. So at worse it's a placebo. On the other hand there's Remdesivir that's astronomically expensive, destroys kidneys and hasn't any effectiveness against COVID (even the OMS says so). But it's still the recommended treatment in France since they forbid the chloroquine treatment. Color me skeptical about their motivations but all the big proponents of Remdesivir have financial links with Gilead.

creuset 6y ago
It can be worse than a placebo if it is not effective but physicians think it is: this would lead to patients not being given alternative (& effective) treatments - if any, or being less monitored since they are expected to get better with the drug.
polotics 6y ago
Wow, gray downvoted posts appear to be the quality contents on health related themes here!
steeve 6y ago
So many things in this post are inaccurate here and are trivially debunkable.
- 2a0c40 6y ago
  care to elaborate?
jariel 6y ago
"So at worse it's a placebo." No, telling the masses that something works when it does not is much more than a placebo, it's very bad.

rq1 6y ago

Didier Raoult is one of the brightest scientists in the world. Period. There’s no “major” flaw in his studies as people keep repeating. He was studying viral load in patients and excluded those who were in ICU because they did not have enough virus left. Thus suggesting his cocktail as an early treatment. There is indeed pseudoscientists and corrupt ones who published the famous now but ridiculous study in “the lancet” and who promote remdesivir. Edit: https://c19study.com/ https://c19study.com/

singemonkey 6y ago
I genuinely feel sorry for you. I have no idea what it's like to be so disconnected from reality, but I hope you find your way back one day. (Downvotes = proof I am right. Period)
- dang 6y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines. Please don't create accounts to do that with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - singemonkey 6y ago
    No worries, dang. You carry on keep enabling the mana-vaxx deniers, and tone policing. I'll make as many accounts as I want to.
jcelerier 6y ago
> There’s no “major” flaw in his studies as people keep repeating. ah, yes, it's all perfect. smh https://www.les-crises.fr/the-tremendous-ethical-and-methodological-flaws-in-the-raoult-clinical-trial-analysis-by-olivier-berruyer/ https://www.les-crises.fr/the-tremendous-ethical-and-methodo...
- rq1 6y ago
  I guess other studies are perfect and survived this level of scrutiny. Especially the "recovery" one, praised by everybody where the inclusion criteria was: "having flu like symptoms", without PCR. This is true science indeed. https://www.les-crises.fr/the-tremendous-ethical-and-methodological-flaws-in-the-raoult-clinical-trial-analysis-by-olivier-berruyer/#ancre7 https://www.les-crises.fr/the-tremendous-ethical-and-methodo... 1. Why is this a major flaw? 2. As stated by the title. Remark: (Well conducted) RCTs introduce way too much variance. As a statistician I care about a good trade-off between bias and variance. OTOH, you don't need RCTs when you measure a physical property of a system. 3-6,8. Valid points. Especially as of publication date. As of today, they updated the study with 3000+ patients. 7. This is not ethical. 9. Object of the study: measure viral load. After the cytokine storm, you don't care much about the virus. 10. We should ask DR directly about it, this is grave. 11-13. Irrelevant. They did PCRs to everyone, the important measure is the CT. 14. This is not good indeed. 15. PCR tests are reliable. 16. Why is it a flaw? 17-18. They published a lot of other papers on their work, and updated the early study.

_Wintermute 6y ago

As an actual pharmacologist I find it fascinating how the general public has suddenly taken such a poorly informed interest in drug discovery. For the HN audience it would be like people taking an almost tribal approach to go-lang vs rust, debating it on national television, without any of them knowing what a loop is.

helen___keller 6y ago
My mother-in-law is an architect by training but she was convinced (by youtube) that she ought to have some HCQ so she had family members ship us some. She's even suggested out of the blue that she should start taking it as a preventative for no particular except that she read amazon workers have been contracting covid and we get a lot of amazon packages. When we told her that's not a good idea she felt compelled to defend HCQ against the mainstream media slander, as if that were the problem here.
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  The cries if mainstream media are so weird, because what even is mainstream any more? I wish such a thing still existed really. Yet one gets accused of being naively trusting of this extinct thing any time one is rational.
  - glitcher 6y ago
    I don't think mainstream media is anywhere near extinct, but instead it's evolving and growing. I would argue that all the people who jumped on the HCQ bandwagon without sufficient evidence were also victims of mainstream media! The real epidemic is the deficit of critical thinking among those who primarily look for media content to fit what they want to hear, and then close themselves off to any other input, evidence, or scrutiny.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  I think the MSM weighing in and taking a position was exactly the problem. The question of HCQ efficacy would have been solved much faster without it being politicized.. The actual story of HCQ is pretty boring. It was a plausible treatment with a mixed bag of weak evidence for and against efficacy. It is not particularly dangerous. Trump oversold and lied about the benefits. The MSM lied about the data against and the risks. In such an environment, it's not surprising people take sides and dig in.

hocuspocus 6y ago

> “It is hard to find an example of quackery that has spread so far, influencing the public health response to a deadly pandemic and creating widespread confusion across the entire globe.” It isn't hard: the Lancet has published a completely made-up study written by an unknown team, before they retracted the paper. If I wanted to fuel conspiracy theories, I don't think I could come up with anything better.

polotics 6y ago
To make sure HN'ers don't get things mixed up: Raoult has nothing to do with the Lancet's "study", and in an environment where such hogwash gets published, how is one clinician with the daily burden of the families of the many covid dead not going to try and do something?
gadders 6y ago
Since Trump publicised hydroxychloroquine the whole debate around it has become so poisoned by politics it's unable to find an unbiassed opinion. The Lancet study seemed to have rushed to publication purely to discredit Trump.
raverbashing 6y ago
Yeah don't remind me. People pulling numbers out of thin air to feed fuel to the fire (and apparently no reviewer with TL suspected that "AI driven data collection").
ekianjo 6y ago
> “It is hard to find an example of quackery that has spread so far, influencing the public health response to a deadly pandemic and creating widespread confusion across the entire globe.” Or the WHO themselves claiming that masks do not work for months then suddenly reversing their position in the middle of the pandemic. But "Trust Science" they said.
- hyper_reality 6y ago
  I'm fed up of people repeating this over-simplified putdown of WHO on HN. The advice about masks was on their website on March 2020 largely because they were worried about mass public buying of masks, leaving a shortage for frontline medical workers (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who/masks-should-be-prioritized-for-health-workers-any-lifting-of-lockdowns-gradual-who-idUSKBN21O2GV https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who/ma...). The guidance was updated as more evidence came in and production of masks scaled up. This should not be compared to outright quackery.

prof-dr-ir 6y ago

President Macron actually paid a visit to Raoult back in April. The visit probably inadvertently cast a gigantic spotlight on the shoddy (or at best preliminary) research. In my opinion it reflected quite poorly on the quality of Macron's scientific council. More generally, I spent way too much time comparing the pandemic responses of various European countries. For France, one thing that stood out to me was an outsize focus by media and politicians on research by French scientists.

namdnay 6y ago
> President Macron actually paid a visit to Raoult back in April. The visit probably inadvertently cast a gigantic spotlight on the shoddy (or at best preliminary) research. In my opinion it reflected quite poorly on the quality of Macron's scientific council. By the time Macron visited Raoult, the spotlight was already on and shining bright. He was more or less forced to visit him for domestic political reasons: Raoult tapped straight into the anti-establishment anti-elite yellow-vest zietgeist , if Macron hadn't at least shown some gesture towards him they would have seized the trope of the "intellectual snob who is too aloof to talk to the people and their hero". The populist politicians from the south of france were already riding the Raoult train by then: Estrosi, Melenchon etc So he went, he talked, he got his photo taken, and he left. Raoult got the attention he craves, Macron took some bullets out of the guns of his enemies, and nothing much happened. I agree that a more principled stand would have been nice, but that's politics :/

alesmaticic 6y ago

I think the Lanced study about hydroxychloroquine that was later retracted deserved this award much more as it was completely made up.

steeve 6y ago
But it was retracted shortly after. The process worked ultimately. Raoult has yet to admit anything.
- FrancisOfAssisi 6y ago
  Perhaps b/c Raoult's work was correct? Studies that use HCQ+ZINC+AZITROMYCIN EARLY (in the first 3-4 days after Covid symptoms appear) and in the proper dosage have consistently shown tremendous improvement in outcome. But most studies apply those medicines AFTER HOSPITALIZATION (often 1-2 weeks after symptoms appear), which is far, far too late for them to be effective. Other studies gave massive overdoses of HCQ which can interfere with the heart rhythm. So the studies were "designed to fail" and did. Raoult has nothing to apologize for; he was correct and has been vindicated by other properly-executed studies.

dmix 6y ago

Technically the Chinese Wuhan Institute was first to recommended hydroxychloroquine as a possible solution (among at least one other drug) months before this guy and the politicians ever published anything about it. There was also a small town US doctor who claimed anecdotal success among his hundreds of clients who was highly influential very early on. And tons of other speculative ‘experts’ talking about it on YouTube. Then months later as COVID got really bad there was multiple bad science on both sides of the argument just muddied the water in an extreme event the entire population has a never experienced before in their lives. Causing mass desperation and flailing about. I previously published a timeline on HN earlier that showed the UK also blocked exports of the drug at least a full month before the Trump brigades and bad papers came out. And other examples of authoritative institutions giving off signals and rumours which could easily be taken advantage of by people desperate to save family members lives. It was also listed as safe in small doses as by WHO so people were willing to take the risk before the full science was out. I also remember the general consensus became that it was only useful as a prophylactic not a treatment after the fact when the infection was serious, so it was even harder to pinpoint good evidence when the doctors were giving it out to thousands and only a tiny amount got serious infections. Then the uselessness is even easier to hide with an easy exit argument. It seems strange to me to target this one individual among a large group. Maybe he was the first to give it academic credibility with an actual paper?

raverbashing 6y ago
There was a small suspicion and some previous studies that maybe (a big maybe) HCQ would help in some infections (parasitic and virotic - well, it does help with Malaria) But that was that, a suspicion, not to take it as the holy grail of the disease
- dmix 6y ago
  Of course but there are always people who will be desperate to get ahead of the curve before the science fully comes out (including nation states) and were willing to take risks. It’s almost like everyone didn’t expect a basic human reality among a subset of the population to be a reality. Fear has always been one of our strongest base motivations. I’m generally cynical about all politicians and the lowest common denominator which is a hell of a lot of people. But I also don’t think the support for it during the early days was limited to just mom and pops boomers or whatever. There’s plenty of blame to go around but I also think there was plenty of signals early on where the seriousness of the guilt is less than a lot of smug Twitter idealists are willing to admit. My only question was why this one guy to target among a sea of other signals. But I also think from a purely skeptics (publication) perspective it’s fair they target the ones who aren’t ‘supposed’ to be among the stupid group and should know better (which would then exclude random family doctors, early recommendations for exploration, and the perpetually dumb politicians) and this guy was super influential as a microbiologist. So it might make more sense in that context.

jcq3 6y ago

I don't want to advocate for Didier Raoult but calling such a renown professor all over the world a pseudo scientist is a bit harsh... What is the legitimacy of these judges? Only a few people have the knowledge to debate about this subject, it's all about politics right now, not science

FrancisOfAssisi 6y ago

The article incorrectly states the nominating committees intentions: Raoult was given the "Rusty Razor Award" so that he could buy a new electric shaver to replace his old (and indeed rusty) razor, which had long since lost it's edge and been abandoned by the good doctor. Didier Raoult before Covid research: http://www.antimicrobe.org/Didier_Raoult3.JPG http://www.antimicrobe.org/Didier_Raoult3.JPG Didier Raoult after Covid research: http://www.d1softballnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/bientot-le-prix-nobel-pour-didier-raoult-cette-blague-qui-fait-rire-a-l-elysee-960x420.jpg http://www.d1softballnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/bie... France has for many years been chastised for its failure to properly fund scientific research and Raoult is yet another example of this sad neglect. Note also that "The Skeptic" is a British organization, Raoult is French, and that this is yet one more shot fired in two seemingly endless barrages across the Channel in both directions. Article re the Award: https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2020/11/french-scientist-didier-raoult-given-rusty-razor-award-for-pseudoscience/ https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2020/11/french-scientist-didier-r...

tpoacher 6y ago

It is a sad day for researchers worldwide when politics can shift your research efforts from "tried to do good research which could save the world" to "ermagehrd your science got used by orangeman bad let's name and shame you in public"