7 ms·

The biggest scandal so far: a retraction paper for the SARS-CoV-19 PCR test was submitted in November 2020 but ignored so far. The retraction paper is here: ht

by mhkool 6y ago

The biggest scandal so far: a retraction paper for the SARS-CoV-19 PCR test was submitted in November 2020 but ignored so far. The retraction paper is here: https://cormandrostenreview.com/report/ https://cormandrostenreview.com/report/

bigcorp-slave 6y ago
This appears to be a totally unrelated set of authors attempting to force a journal to retract someone else’s paper. They literally have a dedicated website to promote this retraction and if you look up the authors, some of them headline their Twitter with it. The first author just today posted on Twitter that mRNA vaccines can alter your DNA. The intent of the retraction seems to be to suggest that the epidemic is overblown, to which I would respond by pointing to the the two million dead people, and the excellent correlation of positive test results with new dead people.
- briandear 6y ago
  Is the retracted paper correct? That’s the only question that matters. And perhaps those scientists have developed their views by actually looking at the science? Is that possible? Don’t shoot the messenger.
  - morsch 6y ago
    There is no retracted paper. Like the GP correctly points out, this is a website designed to pressure another group to retract their paper. The authors of said paper have not retracted it, although there were minor addendums (none of them in response to the website, I hasten to add). The paper in question -- Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR[1][2] --, was the first paper (as far as I know, one of the first, certainly) outlining a protocol for a PCR test protocol for Sars-CoV-2, back in January 2020. In other words, these were among the first people who documented a way to detect whether a sample represented Sars-CoV-2. The authors have previously published about other coronaviruses like Sars-CoV-1 and MERS, e.g. [3] appears at first glance to be a well received paper. Here's [4] their paper on the detection of Sars-CoV-1 (or, back then, just Sars-CoV) via PCR. [1] https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.3.2000045 https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E... [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=14452026284756058061&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1445202628475605806... [3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0065352718300010 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S006535271... [4] https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/ese.17.39.20285-en/ https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/ese.17.39.2...
eisstrom 6y ago
I just checked the twitter account of the first author (who does not seem to be currently affiliated with any scientific institution). I can only understand his German and English tweets. He likes to push his own book, retweeted a post claiming "just stop testing for the virus and people will die of influenza again", and calls other peoples work pseudoscience.
- mhkool 6y ago
  Why don't you talk about the 10 points that the scientists state to argue that the test is flawed? And what do you have to say about the other 21 scientists? What do you have to say about the former Pfizer chief scientist which is co-author?
  - morsch 6y ago
    Here's a fairly exhaustive rebuttal: https://mobile.twitter.com/BMauschen/status/1333466298072911878?s=20 https://mobile.twitter.com/BMauschen/status/1333466298072911... I'll leave the translation up to the readers. That former Pfizer guy apparently claimed in October that the coronavirus pandemic is “effectively over” in the United Kingdom. Clearly a man with special insights. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/02/blog-posting/former-pfizer-employee-wrong-coronavirus-pandemic-/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/02/blog-posti...
    - gus_massa 6y ago
      Autotranlation for the lazy: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fthreadreaderapp.com%2Fthread%2F1333466298072911878.html https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=auto&tl=en&u=h... (For the lazier, the technical discussion starts at the 12th tweet.)
FabHK 6y ago
Nonsense. So, here's what happened: Drosten, Corman et al. from the Charité (among Europe's largest and most reputable university hospitals and medical schools) published a paper [1] in January 2020 [2] in the "Eurosurveillance Journal" in which they described a diagnostic workflow to detect SARS-CoV-2 (not "SARS-CoV-19", as you say) which they had developed and tested (both sensitivity and specificity). That became known as the Drosten PCR, and was the standard procedure initially to detect the virus (at least in Germany). A group of 22 nutcases with bad English claim that the Drosten/Corman paper is severely flawed, put up a "report" "refuting" it (on a website, not published) and demand that Eurosurveillance retract it. That report (which highlights a few very minor actual issues, but is otherwise false, misleading, and blown up entirely out of proportion) is later used by covidiots to claim that PCR testing is flawed and full of false positives, the virus doesn't exist, and further nonsense. Needless to say, there are by now several different PCR testing protocols, they have been developed further, crosschecked, etc, and there is no major problem with PCR testing. Certainly no "big scandal". This is political posturing and fabrication applied to medicine. Sad. [1] https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.3.2000045 https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31992387/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31992387/ [2] It was submitted January 21st 2020 and accepted for publication on January 22nd 2020. On January 23rd 2020 the paper was online.
- tboyd47 6y ago
  This comment is a bonanza of appeals to authority, straw man arguments, and ad hominems. At HN we generally prefer to see steelmanning. Would you like to take a shot at explaining why the most charitable interpretation of the Drosten review is misguided?
  - FabHK 6y ago
    It would be ad hominem if I said that they are nutcases with bad English, and therefore their arguments were invalid. It would be an appeal to authority if I said that the Drosten has received Germany's Federal Cross of Merit (twice), is co-discoverer of SARS-CoV (the previous one), has researched MERS-CoV, and has been called "one of the world’s foremost experts on coronaviruses" by Science magazine, and therefore the Drosten PCR is good. However, I am saying that these guys are nutcases with bad English, and Drosten is an eminent expert on coronaviruses, and also the Drosten PCR has proven to be fine, and also the "report" the nutcases wrote has been largely refuted, by people that know much more about this than I do. This article outlining the "Ad hominem fallacy fallacy" might be instructive. https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html > Put briefly, ad hominem is "You are an ignorant person, therefore your arguments are wrong", and not "Your arguments are wrong, therefore you are an ignorant person." The latter statement may be fallacious, but it's not an ad hominem fallacy.

by mhkool 6y ago

bigcorp-slave 6y ago

This appears to be a totally unrelated set of authors attempting to force a journal to retract someone else’s paper. They literally have a dedicated website to promote this retraction and if you look up the authors, some of them headline their Twitter with it. The first author just today posted on Twitter that mRNA vaccines can alter your DNA. The intent of the retraction seems to be to suggest that the epidemic is overblown, to which I would respond by pointing to the the two million dead people, and the excellent correlation of positive test results with new dead people.

briandear 6y ago
Is the retracted paper correct? That’s the only question that matters. And perhaps those scientists have developed their views by actually looking at the science? Is that possible? Don’t shoot the messenger.
- morsch 6y ago
  There is no retracted paper. Like the GP correctly points out, this is a website designed to pressure another group to retract their paper. The authors of said paper have not retracted it, although there were minor addendums (none of them in response to the website, I hasten to add). The paper in question -- Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR[1][2] --, was the first paper (as far as I know, one of the first, certainly) outlining a protocol for a PCR test protocol for Sars-CoV-2, back in January 2020. In other words, these were among the first people who documented a way to detect whether a sample represented Sars-CoV-2. The authors have previously published about other coronaviruses like Sars-CoV-1 and MERS, e.g. [3] appears at first glance to be a well received paper. Here's [4] their paper on the detection of Sars-CoV-1 (or, back then, just Sars-CoV) via PCR. [1] https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.3.2000045 https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E... [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=14452026284756058061&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1445202628475605806... [3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0065352718300010 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S006535271... [4] https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/ese.17.39.20285-en/ https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/ese.17.39.2...

eisstrom 6y ago

I just checked the twitter account of the first author (who does not seem to be currently affiliated with any scientific institution). I can only understand his German and English tweets. He likes to push his own book, retweeted a post claiming "just stop testing for the virus and people will die of influenza again", and calls other peoples work pseudoscience.

mhkool 6y ago
Why don't you talk about the 10 points that the scientists state to argue that the test is flawed? And what do you have to say about the other 21 scientists? What do you have to say about the former Pfizer chief scientist which is co-author?
- morsch 6y ago
  Here's a fairly exhaustive rebuttal: https://mobile.twitter.com/BMauschen/status/1333466298072911878?s=20 https://mobile.twitter.com/BMauschen/status/1333466298072911... I'll leave the translation up to the readers. That former Pfizer guy apparently claimed in October that the coronavirus pandemic is “effectively over” in the United Kingdom. Clearly a man with special insights. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/02/blog-posting/former-pfizer-employee-wrong-coronavirus-pandemic-/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/02/blog-posti...
  - gus_massa 6y ago
    Autotranlation for the lazy: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fthreadreaderapp.com%2Fthread%2F1333466298072911878.html https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=auto&tl=en&u=h... (For the lazier, the technical discussion starts at the 12th tweet.)

FabHK 6y ago

Nonsense. So, here's what happened: Drosten, Corman et al. from the Charité (among Europe's largest and most reputable university hospitals and medical schools) published a paper [1] in January 2020 [2] in the "Eurosurveillance Journal" in which they described a diagnostic workflow to detect SARS-CoV-2 (not "SARS-CoV-19", as you say) which they had developed and tested (both sensitivity and specificity). That became known as the Drosten PCR, and was the standard procedure initially to detect the virus (at least in Germany). A group of 22 nutcases with bad English claim that the Drosten/Corman paper is severely flawed, put up a "report" "refuting" it (on a website, not published) and demand that Eurosurveillance retract it. That report (which highlights a few very minor actual issues, but is otherwise false, misleading, and blown up entirely out of proportion) is later used by covidiots to claim that PCR testing is flawed and full of false positives, the virus doesn't exist, and further nonsense. Needless to say, there are by now several different PCR testing protocols, they have been developed further, crosschecked, etc, and there is no major problem with PCR testing. Certainly no "big scandal". This is political posturing and fabrication applied to medicine. Sad. [1] https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.3.2000045 https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31992387/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31992387/ [2] It was submitted January 21st 2020 and accepted for publication on January 22nd 2020. On January 23rd 2020 the paper was online.

tboyd47 6y ago
This comment is a bonanza of appeals to authority, straw man arguments, and ad hominems. At HN we generally prefer to see steelmanning. Would you like to take a shot at explaining why the most charitable interpretation of the Drosten review is misguided?
- FabHK 6y ago
  It would be ad hominem if I said that they are nutcases with bad English, and therefore their arguments were invalid. It would be an appeal to authority if I said that the Drosten has received Germany's Federal Cross of Merit (twice), is co-discoverer of SARS-CoV (the previous one), has researched MERS-CoV, and has been called "one of the world’s foremost experts on coronaviruses" by Science magazine, and therefore the Drosten PCR is good. However, I am saying that these guys are nutcases with bad English, and Drosten is an eminent expert on coronaviruses, and also the Drosten PCR has proven to be fine, and also the "report" the nutcases wrote has been largely refuted, by people that know much more about this than I do. This article outlining the "Ad hominem fallacy fallacy" might be instructive. https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html > Put briefly, ad hominem is "You are an ignorant person, therefore your arguments are wrong", and not "Your arguments are wrong, therefore you are an ignorant person." The latter statement may be fallacious, but it's not an ad hominem fallacy.