4 ms·

> investigators did not receive a response from Raoult, the corresponding author. To date, 32 papers published by IHU authors have been retracted, 28 of them co

by mritun 2y ago

> investigators did not receive a response from Raoult, the corresponding author. To date, 32 papers published by IHU authors have been retracted, 28 of them co-authored by Raoult, and 243 have expressions of concern. I am not a scientist but it of 32 faulty widgets, 28 widgets are made by a guy called Raoult, then even blue collar workers know Raoult is an idiot with no business making widgets. If that does not happen, ACME Widgets will eventually go out of business. This is how science gets discredited - by allowing idiots do “science”. Here Raoult does not get kicked out, but is Director of the ACME - this is how entire field of medicine research gor tainted.

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
> This is how science gets discredited - by allowing idiots do “science”. Not really - science has to be open to all as otherwise we risk having a "priesthood" of scientists. What we need are better systems to deal with rogue researchers and retracted papers. The scientific principle is fine, it's just our implementation that is lacking.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  The biggest issue, I think, is what happens after a paper is released; it gets spread, reinterpreted, diluted, popularised, editorialised, etc through three or four layers of media (university press room -> serious news/science outlets -> popular news/science outlets, going from "these numbers indicate with 89.1346% certainty that this exoplanet may contain traces of h2o" to "EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE FOUND PACK YOUR STUFF WE'RE GONNA COLONISE IT"), then onto social media. The Wakefield paper linking autism to vaccines has become so mainstream in certain communities it's impossible to undo the damage even though it was (finally) retracted in 2010 and Wakefield himself was struck off the register. At this point only through a very long, slow and arduous process can you get this idea out of people's heads, thanks to constant repetition, reinterpretation, scaremongering, and a whole community forming. It's going to be the same with this paper and the idea that dewormer is effective against the 'rona, or any quack 'rona countermeasures for that matter.
  - alexey-salmin 2y ago
    Yes, but why do you believe publications should be optimized towards a better public opinion (whatever that means) and not the progress of science? For the progress of science everyone should be able to share their results so that others can try to reproduce them. This IS the real question: whether it's reproducible or not. By adding more barriers to publishing (like stricter peer reviews) you're not actually getting closer to the answer. The opposite can be true because there's a chance of censoring reproducible results that don't fit the current consensus.
  - mistermann 2y ago
    I think it would be fun to see if it is possible to get the very popular notion that the Wakefield paper is the only source of all concerns about vaccines and autism out of the minds of "rational" Normatives. I would be surprised if anyone could do it.
  - tim333 2y ago
    Funnily enough the idea that hydroxychloroquine helps (as in Raoult's paper) was replaced in cranks heads by the dewormer (ivermectin).
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
parsimo2010 2y ago
There is probably a reasonable amount of retractions to expect in your career- if you work for 40 years doing research and publish a couple papers per year, then I will allow that a researcher might have become involved in a study that was deeply flawed, and the related papers need retracted. But to stay in good standing with the community, the researchers should admit the flaws (as some of the authors of this paper did). Didier Raoult is on a whole other level. He refuses to admit any issues with the study. He has been under criminal investigation for this. This isn't the first time this has been a big deal (scroll through here to see the issues he's had for the last few years https://retractionwatch.com/?s=Didier+Raoult https://retractionwatch.com/?s=Didier+Raoult).
throwaway290 2y ago
> by allowing idiots do “science”. Anyone can "do science". No permission is required. The question is who publishes what garbage.
bwfan123 2y ago
it has always been an "attention"-economy rather than a "science"-economy. and scientists are human too, with their biases. there are two kinds of people. the majority of us have made up our minds and find evidence for it. the rare few listen to whats out there with an open mind. once someone has put their name on something, they fight hard to protect that. entire populations have always been and still are driven by pseudo-science (astrology etc).
dessimus 2y ago
Based on my experience as an analyst of Looney Tunes, it would appear that being a Director of ACME Widgets is right up his alley.
ANewFormation 2y ago
This misses the context that Raoult alone has published more than 3000 papers and is one of the most highly cited researchers in his field. Take the combined sum of all the IHU authors and it's likely in the tens of thousands. This is also why people increasingly believe whatever they want. Nobody is honest, everything is framed in the most exaggerated ways - which then makes it easy to undermine, and there's mass corruption everywhere on top of all of this especially in covid related stuff where you have geopolitics, politics, and hundreds of billions of dollars in profiteering stewing in one giant, and quite toxic, pot.
- bwfan123 2y ago
  people have always believed whatever they want. hence, it has been a game of persuation for eons. the most persuasive person was always listened to regardless of what they said. science changed the game by insisting that it is not what we believe, but whats out there. But, it doesnt come naturally to most of us. we still love narratives, and are easily fooled.
  - ANewFormation 2y ago
    Scientists are not superhuman, even in the golden era of science it was Max Plank that remarked, 'Science advances one funeral at a time.' And things have rather worsened since his era. It's not science that really changed anything but rather humanity freeing itself from bias and opening itself to having a discourse and debate on practically any issue, without consequence - accepting all the discomfort that that entails. But such eras are brief and can fade rapidly. The Islamic world was once a global leader in the sciences. Algebra = al jabr, Arabic numerals, alongside countless contributions to astronomy and other fields. Oh but how fast that candle of learning can be snuffed out when it becomes inconvenient.
  - mistermann 2y ago
    I think it is very interesting how people talk about science as if it is (near) perfect, and that this perfection passes on to those who are believers in it. I wonder what the causality is behind so many people ending up with this same conceptualization within their minds. It has an eerie resemblance to the behavior of people in other ideological groups, like religion.
throw0101c 2y ago
> This is how science gets discredited - by allowing idiots do “science”. Here Raoult does not get kicked out, but is Director of the ACME - this is how entire field of medicine research gor tainted. It should be noted that a few months after Raoult's paper was published another one contradicting his was * https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022926 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022926 It's just the contradiction may not have been as widely known, especially by those that aren't involved in the field. Isn't this how science is (at least partly) done? Claim (which is falsifiable) and counter-claim (verification/repudiation).
itsdrewmiller 2y ago
He is under criminal investigation and has been banned from practicing medicine for two years - I think that substantially undercuts your argument.

by mritun 2y ago

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago

> This is how science gets discredited - by allowing idiots do “science”. Not really - science has to be open to all as otherwise we risk having a "priesthood" of scientists. What we need are better systems to deal with rogue researchers and retracted papers. The scientific principle is fine, it's just our implementation that is lacking.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago
The biggest issue, I think, is what happens after a paper is released; it gets spread, reinterpreted, diluted, popularised, editorialised, etc through three or four layers of media (university press room -> serious news/science outlets -> popular news/science outlets, going from "these numbers indicate with 89.1346% certainty that this exoplanet may contain traces of h2o" to "EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE FOUND PACK YOUR STUFF WE'RE GONNA COLONISE IT"), then onto social media. The Wakefield paper linking autism to vaccines has become so mainstream in certain communities it's impossible to undo the damage even though it was (finally) retracted in 2010 and Wakefield himself was struck off the register. At this point only through a very long, slow and arduous process can you get this idea out of people's heads, thanks to constant repetition, reinterpretation, scaremongering, and a whole community forming. It's going to be the same with this paper and the idea that dewormer is effective against the 'rona, or any quack 'rona countermeasures for that matter.
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  Yes, but why do you believe publications should be optimized towards a better public opinion (whatever that means) and not the progress of science? For the progress of science everyone should be able to share their results so that others can try to reproduce them. This IS the real question: whether it's reproducible or not. By adding more barriers to publishing (like stricter peer reviews) you're not actually getting closer to the answer. The opposite can be true because there's a chance of censoring reproducible results that don't fit the current consensus.
- mistermann 2y ago
  I think it would be fun to see if it is possible to get the very popular notion that the Wakefield paper is the only source of all concerns about vaccines and autism out of the minds of "rational" Normatives. I would be surprised if anyone could do it.
- tim333 2y ago
  Funnily enough the idea that hydroxychloroquine helps (as in Raoult's paper) was replaced in cranks heads by the dewormer (ivermectin).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

parsimo2010 2y ago

There is probably a reasonable amount of retractions to expect in your career- if you work for 40 years doing research and publish a couple papers per year, then I will allow that a researcher might have become involved in a study that was deeply flawed, and the related papers need retracted. But to stay in good standing with the community, the researchers should admit the flaws (as some of the authors of this paper did). Didier Raoult is on a whole other level. He refuses to admit any issues with the study. He has been under criminal investigation for this. This isn't the first time this has been a big deal (scroll through here to see the issues he's had for the last few years https://retractionwatch.com/?s=Didier+Raoult https://retractionwatch.com/?s=Didier+Raoult).

throwaway290 2y ago

> by allowing idiots do “science”. Anyone can "do science". No permission is required. The question is who publishes what garbage.

bwfan123 2y ago

it has always been an "attention"-economy rather than a "science"-economy. and scientists are human too, with their biases. there are two kinds of people. the majority of us have made up our minds and find evidence for it. the rare few listen to whats out there with an open mind. once someone has put their name on something, they fight hard to protect that. entire populations have always been and still are driven by pseudo-science (astrology etc).

dessimus 2y ago

Based on my experience as an analyst of Looney Tunes, it would appear that being a Director of ACME Widgets is right up his alley.

ANewFormation 2y ago

This misses the context that Raoult alone has published more than 3000 papers and is one of the most highly cited researchers in his field. Take the combined sum of all the IHU authors and it's likely in the tens of thousands. This is also why people increasingly believe whatever they want. Nobody is honest, everything is framed in the most exaggerated ways - which then makes it easy to undermine, and there's mass corruption everywhere on top of all of this especially in covid related stuff where you have geopolitics, politics, and hundreds of billions of dollars in profiteering stewing in one giant, and quite toxic, pot.

bwfan123 2y ago
people have always believed whatever they want. hence, it has been a game of persuation for eons. the most persuasive person was always listened to regardless of what they said. science changed the game by insisting that it is not what we believe, but whats out there. But, it doesnt come naturally to most of us. we still love narratives, and are easily fooled.
- ANewFormation 2y ago
  Scientists are not superhuman, even in the golden era of science it was Max Plank that remarked, 'Science advances one funeral at a time.' And things have rather worsened since his era. It's not science that really changed anything but rather humanity freeing itself from bias and opening itself to having a discourse and debate on practically any issue, without consequence - accepting all the discomfort that that entails. But such eras are brief and can fade rapidly. The Islamic world was once a global leader in the sciences. Algebra = al jabr, Arabic numerals, alongside countless contributions to astronomy and other fields. Oh but how fast that candle of learning can be snuffed out when it becomes inconvenient.
- mistermann 2y ago
  I think it is very interesting how people talk about science as if it is (near) perfect, and that this perfection passes on to those who are believers in it. I wonder what the causality is behind so many people ending up with this same conceptualization within their minds. It has an eerie resemblance to the behavior of people in other ideological groups, like religion.

throw0101c 2y ago

> This is how science gets discredited - by allowing idiots do “science”. Here Raoult does not get kicked out, but is Director of the ACME - this is how entire field of medicine research gor tainted. It should be noted that a few months after Raoult's paper was published another one contradicting his was * https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022926 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022926 It's just the contradiction may not have been as widely known, especially by those that aren't involved in the field. Isn't this how science is (at least partly) done? Claim (which is falsifiable) and counter-claim (verification/repudiation).

itsdrewmiller 2y ago

He is under criminal investigation and has been banned from practicing medicine for two years - I think that substantially undercuts your argument.