3 ms·

I knew there were issues with various kinds of research. Things like p-hacking, "touching up" data, and so on. But the lead example is pretty wild: > As he des

I knew there were issues with various kinds of research. Things like p-hacking, "touching up" data, and so on. But the lead example is pretty wild: > As he described in a webinar last week, Ian Roberts, professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, began to have doubts about the honest reporting of trials after a colleague asked if he knew that his systematic review showing the mannitol halved death from head injury was based on trials that had never happened. He didn’t, but he set about investigating the trials and confirmed that they hadn’t ever happened. They all had a lead author who purported to come from an institution that didn’t exist and who killed himself a few years later. The trials were all published in prestigious neurosurgery journals and had multiple co-authors. None of the co-authors had contributed patients to the trials, and some didn’t know that they were co-authors until after the trials were published.

wolverine876 5y ago
It's one example, chosen and presented by someone with something to prove, and which fails to provide any evidence (such as the names of the studies or lead author).
- sjwalter 5y ago
  There are plenty of other good examples. Try this one: https://www.the-scientist.com/features/the-surgisphere-scandal-what-went-wrong--67955 https://www.the-scientist.com/features/the-surgisphere-scand... "It sounds absurd that an obscure US company with a hastily constructed website could have driven international health policy and brought major clinical trials to a halt within the span of a few weeks. Yet that’s what happened earlier this year, when Illinois-based Surgisphere Corporation began a publishing spree that would trigger one of the largest scientific scandals of the COVID-19 pandemic to date. "At the heart of the deception was a paper published in The Lancet on May 22 that suggested hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug promoted by US President Donald Trump and others as a therapy for COVID-19, was associated with an increased risk of death in patients hospitalized with the disease." They completely fabricated the data. To hurt Trump.

wolverine876 5y ago

It's one example, chosen and presented by someone with something to prove, and which fails to provide any evidence (such as the names of the studies or lead author).

sjwalter 5y ago
There are plenty of other good examples. Try this one: https://www.the-scientist.com/features/the-surgisphere-scandal-what-went-wrong--67955 https://www.the-scientist.com/features/the-surgisphere-scand... "It sounds absurd that an obscure US company with a hastily constructed website could have driven international health policy and brought major clinical trials to a halt within the span of a few weeks. Yet that’s what happened earlier this year, when Illinois-based Surgisphere Corporation began a publishing spree that would trigger one of the largest scientific scandals of the COVID-19 pandemic to date. "At the heart of the deception was a paper published in The Lancet on May 22 that suggested hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug promoted by US President Donald Trump and others as a therapy for COVID-19, was associated with an increased risk of death in patients hospitalized with the disease." They completely fabricated the data. To hurt Trump.