3 ms·
There's a balance to be found: we want enough "quacky" people to try crazy things to find what might work, especially when dealing with newly emergent diseases.
by ravel-bar-foo 5y ago
There's a balance to be found: we want enough "quacky" people to try crazy things to find what might work, especially when dealing with newly emergent diseases. On the other hand, we do not want those people to falsify data, and we want to minimize the incentive to do so. But the fame that comes with finding an off-label treatment that works is its own incentive to fraud/being sloppy.
- mikeyouse 5y agoYep - especially during a novel pandemic of the scale of Covid19 - I'm really glad they looked at all of the available treatment options. Unfortunately it was extremely damaging for them to hold onto them as long as they did while crying "censorship". There were tons of people who refused to get vaccinated since they had access to IVM - the /r/hermancainaward subreddit was filled with people saying as much before they ended up in the ICU. "Strong convictions loosely held" is an admirable way forward on testing everything we have to save lives. Unfortunately when it became so politicized and the unethical doctors and scientists realized they could print money by claiming they had a secret cure being suppressed, the "loosely held" bit was left behind.