4 ms·

I guess it's not so hard to believe you're getting downvoted by shedding light on a situation about censorship. The first question in everybody's head when rea

I guess it's not so hard to believe you're getting downvoted by shedding light on a situation about censorship. The first question in everybody's head when reading this article is, "Were the vaccine trials legitimate or not?" BMJ does not even come close to truthfully answering this question. With their authority as a medical journal and a very limited amount of evidence, they give a clear and incorrect impression that the vaccine trials were not legitimate. Do they report on the limitations of their evidence? No. Do they report on the perspective of employees at other trial sites? No. Do they get quotes from Pfizer, other health orgs, Ventavia executives? No. Do they report about other speculative factors at play from Ventavia ex-employees? No. Are they purposefully hiding new relevant information? Yes. They leaked in their own article that the FDA is aware and reviewed the Ventavia trial. > An FDA review memorandum released in August this year states that across the full trial swabs were not taken from 477 people with suspected cases of symptomatic covid-19. After insinuating earlier that there is a complete lack of oversight. > “There’s just a complete lack of oversight of contract research organisations and independent clinical research facilities,” says Jill Fisher, professor of social medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and author of Medical Research for Hire: The Political Economy of Pharmaceutical Clinical Trials. Honestly, BMJ seems to be working very hard to lie using true facts. I have no objections to their articles being marked as false.

NoPie 5y ago
>> The first question in everybody's head when reading this article is, "Were the vaccine trials legitimate or not?" You are writing complete rubbish. BMJ does not question the legitimacy of the vaccine trials. With this sentence you are making very serious accusations to healthcare professionals. Most likely you don't even understand how clinical trials work or terminology used in the original article. If BMJ were not a serious journal, nothing in medicine would be serious including those trials. BMJ is questioning some irregularities brought to the light by a whistle-blower. It shows some evidence confirming issues about one particular clinical research organization and lack of reaction from the FDA. These issues should be addressed and resolved to remove doubts that the data from vaccine trials can be sufficiently trusted. Also FDA memorandum does not confirm that the FDA has investigated the sites. You probably don't even understand what the quoted professor meant by “oversight”. It definitely is not just checking and fully trusting the submitted paperwork.
- srcreigh 5y ago
  The title BMJ chose is "Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial"
  - NoPie 5y ago
    And? It's very precise and describes exactly what happened.
    - quadrangle 5y ago
      Wouldn't it be a lot clearer if it were something like "issues at three sites doing Pfizer vaccine trials" instead of "issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial"? The singular "trial" in the headline implies that the flaws are in the trial as a whole rather than in a particular distinct subset of the trials.
      - hcrean 5y ago
        Well, there are: The provable lack of regulatory oversight and demonstration of the existence of poor practices at the company. The argument that just because one of a company's trials are unsound doesn't mean that the rest aren't is not a good one, when the whole objective is to provide assurance in proving the safety of a product.
        quadrangle 5y ago
        I get that it's hard to find the best balance in a headline let alone in a summary article. Yes, evidence of a problem in a portion of a trial is indeed evidence of problems in the trial. I can see room for misunderstanding no matter what. Emphasize the portion of sites where the problem was observed and it wrongly can be inferred that the other sites are fine even if they have no evidence either way. Emphasize the problem as a generic feature of the trials overall and it can be wrongly inferred that the whistle is being blown on some aspect of the trial that doesn't have any site-specific aspect. The story that I'm hearing in all this is that the whistleblower brought out issues that were specific to certain sites in a way that has no direct bearing on other sites besides being a reason to scrutinize the rest of the sites as well. Maybe an analogy would be helpful. If a whistleblower observed a disregard for safety protocols at a food processing facility, that's not a randomized sampling that indicates a high likelihood of the problem being throughout all similar facilities, but it doesn't indicate otherwise either. It opens the question whether this is a typical problem in such facilities or if that facility is an exception. If the facility was supplying brand X, there's at least some sense to criticizing a headline like "whisteblower reveals brand X unsafe food handling" instead of "whistleblower reveals unsafe food handling at facility run by brand X". The former implies wider issues, the latter errs toward not making that presumption.

NoPie 5y ago

>> The first question in everybody's head when reading this article is, "Were the vaccine trials legitimate or not?" You are writing complete rubbish. BMJ does not question the legitimacy of the vaccine trials. With this sentence you are making very serious accusations to healthcare professionals. Most likely you don't even understand how clinical trials work or terminology used in the original article. If BMJ were not a serious journal, nothing in medicine would be serious including those trials. BMJ is questioning some irregularities brought to the light by a whistle-blower. It shows some evidence confirming issues about one particular clinical research organization and lack of reaction from the FDA. These issues should be addressed and resolved to remove doubts that the data from vaccine trials can be sufficiently trusted. Also FDA memorandum does not confirm that the FDA has investigated the sites. You probably don't even understand what the quoted professor meant by “oversight”. It definitely is not just checking and fully trusting the submitted paperwork.

srcreigh 5y ago
The title BMJ chose is "Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial"
- NoPie 5y ago
  And? It's very precise and describes exactly what happened.
  - quadrangle 5y ago
    Wouldn't it be a lot clearer if it were something like "issues at three sites doing Pfizer vaccine trials" instead of "issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial"? The singular "trial" in the headline implies that the flaws are in the trial as a whole rather than in a particular distinct subset of the trials.
    - hcrean 5y ago
      Well, there are: The provable lack of regulatory oversight and demonstration of the existence of poor practices at the company. The argument that just because one of a company's trials are unsound doesn't mean that the rest aren't is not a good one, when the whole objective is to provide assurance in proving the safety of a product.
      - quadrangle 5y ago
        I get that it's hard to find the best balance in a headline let alone in a summary article. Yes, evidence of a problem in a portion of a trial is indeed evidence of problems in the trial. I can see room for misunderstanding no matter what. Emphasize the portion of sites where the problem was observed and it wrongly can be inferred that the other sites are fine even if they have no evidence either way. Emphasize the problem as a generic feature of the trials overall and it can be wrongly inferred that the whistle is being blown on some aspect of the trial that doesn't have any site-specific aspect. The story that I'm hearing in all this is that the whistleblower brought out issues that were specific to certain sites in a way that has no direct bearing on other sites besides being a reason to scrutinize the rest of the sites as well. Maybe an analogy would be helpful. If a whistleblower observed a disregard for safety protocols at a food processing facility, that's not a randomized sampling that indicates a high likelihood of the problem being throughout all similar facilities, but it doesn't indicate otherwise either. It opens the question whether this is a typical problem in such facilities or if that facility is an exception. If the facility was supplying brand X, there's at least some sense to criticizing a headline like "whisteblower reveals brand X unsafe food handling" instead of "whistleblower reveals unsafe food handling at facility run by brand X". The former implies wider issues, the latter errs toward not making that presumption.