[HN Gopher] The Lancet retracts study on hydroxychloroquine and ...
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The Lancet retracts study on hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine
Author : marvin
Score : 147 points
Date : 2020-06-04 21:06 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thelancet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thelancet.com)
| gotoeleven wrote:
| If it gets trump run it!
| Fellshard wrote:
| You are going to get votebombed for phrasing it like, but I do
| think a serious look needs to be made based on this on whether
| political outcomes have motivated individuals and organizations
| to discard their normal vetting process, because if nothing
| else, the appearance of corrupted credibility runs very high
| with this.
| bsaul wrote:
| yeah. the "anti-conspiracy theory" reflex is starting to
| become just stupid. We do live in a world where people
| struggle for power, influence and money. It's just as silly
| pretending everything is due to people plotting as it is to
| pretend everyone always has pure intentions.
| zests wrote:
| Yeah, that's a shame. Vote bombed in what looks like under 20
| minutes.
|
| How many upvote points do I need before I can read [flagged]
| posts?
|
| edit: Found showdead, thanks everyone. Probably makes sense
| to get votebombed because its low effort. I retract my
| comment.
| slig wrote:
| Go to your profile and change "showdead" to true.
| fourthark wrote:
| Set showdead true in your profile.
| walterbell wrote:
| Click the time stamp ("N minutes ago").
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| _The study 's three authors retracted their study on June 4th,
| "because independent peer reviewers could not access the data
| used for the analysis," reports The Hill. "The source of the data
| was Surgisphere Corporation, which told peer reviewers it would
| not transfer the full dataset used for the study because it would
| violate client agreements and confidentiality requirements."_
|
| _However, the same day the New England Journal of Medicine
| published results from a new double-blind randomized, placebo-
| controlled trial which found hydroxychloroquine didn 't help
| prevent people exposed to others with Covid-19 from developing
| the disease. One of the study's co-authors said that as a
| preventative agent, "It doesn't seem to work."_
|
| https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/05/23/0140202/study-of...
| triyambakam wrote:
| Important distinction though - preventative vs curative
| mxcrossb wrote:
| This should terrify any researcher working with a private
| company's data. I think top journals need to change their
| policy here ably data availability, especially when private
| companies get involved.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Headline is wrong. Lancet didn't retract the study, three of
| the four authors did.
| pen2l wrote:
| A lot of the controversy surrounding this Lancet paper was
| about the data being used, which was provided by a firm named
| Surgisphere [1]. One of the co-authors of the Lancet paper is
| Sapan Desai, he is incidentally also the chief executive of
| this firm.
|
| The lone one who chose not to retract the paper was him.
|
| I recommend this twitter thread that explains the thrust of
| the issue: https://twitter.com/reverendofdoubt/status/1266902
| 9690454630...
|
| Essentially, doubt began swirling around when this company
| claimed to acquire massive amounts of EHR (Electronic Health
| Record, basically large datasets showing how patients are
| doing, how they're responding to medication, etc.) in an
| incredibly short amount of time. When Sapan Desai was pressed
| on by the other three authors of this very paper[2], he
| refused to cooperate, invoking a somewhat shoddy defense of
| not being at liberty to reveal sensitive information. Since
| the scrutiny, NEJM has also chosen to retract a
| Covid-19-related paper which sourced data from this company:
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2007621
|
| [1]: The company is choosing to stand behind the data:
| https://surgisphere.com/2020/05/29/response-to-widespread-
| re...
|
| [2]: Surgisphere refuses to say which hospitals chose to give
| him the EHR. The thing is, this data is a big deal. Pharma
| companies give _big_ money to hospitals for this data. One of
| the key questions has been how this newcomer company managed
| to acquire these EHR deals with such a large number of
| hospitals.
| taurath wrote:
| It feels like a large part of the value of a journal like
| the Lancet is that they DON'T do stuff like this. That one
| of the authors is ceo of the company that owns the data
| behind the study should be a glaring red flag. What value
| does the Lancet still have?
|
| Note - I edited this post because it was much more crass
| and reactionary, and realized its not at all my domain, so
| I rephrased.
| knzhou wrote:
| The value is that even given this, they're much more
| reliable than preprints, and _much much_ more reliable
| than sensational Twitter threads or public forums. They
| manage to filter out a tremendous amount of crap, but a
| sufficiently crafty and dishonest author can still
| sometimes slip past -- as is possible in any system.
| emtel wrote:
| As I understand it, the WHO changed policy on HCQ because of this
| study. So, if you had posted a YouTube video criticizing this
| study and the WHO decision, Google may have taken that video down
| in accordance with their policy to delete videos the are counter
| to WHO policy. That didn't actually happen, to my knowledge. But
| it would have been Google policy if it did.
|
| _That_ is what is wrong with platforms like Google and Facebook
| adopting the role of fact-checkers.
| matthewmarkus wrote:
| This comment cannot be upvoted enough IMHO. This scandal is the
| medical science equivalent of Enron, and it could've easily
| been covered up in a world where a oligopoly determines the
| truth.
|
| I think the even bigger danger here is when people want to
| point out flaws in policies like Section 230 and Net
| Neutrality. The incentives are huge for these companies to
| either bury or suppress dissenting views that impact their
| bottom lines.
| adventured wrote:
| > That is what is wrong with platforms like Google and Facebook
| adopting the role of fact-checkers.
|
| Along with that little problem of Google and Facebook being
| aggressive monopolies capable of wiping you off the Internet as
| a presence to an extent that whatever you're trying to publish
| will barely exist online (G search, gone; YouTube, gone; FB,
| gone; Instagram, gone; WhatsApp, gone).
|
| Five monopoly positions on critical speech platforms between
| the two of them.
|
| Those two monopolies have more totalitarian speech restriction
| capabilities than the US Government does by a dramatic margin.
| They should be broken up and regulated accordingly, due to
| their monopoly positions de facto putting them into the role of
| censor.
| knzhou wrote:
| You do realize that the whole reason we're discussing this
| retraction is because the scientific community _did_ discuss
| its validity?
|
| So far I've seen a lot of self-correction done by the
| scientific and medical communities themselves. There hasn't
| been a single example of a nontrivial story broken by a guy
| delivering spittle-flecked rants on Youtube. The ranters,
| however, are very good at taking credit for what actual
| scientists did.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| In the best scenario, this whole story is an illustration of
| incompetence, in the worst case, this is a sign of corruption. In
| both, more scrutiny is needed.
| staycoolboy wrote:
| Here is a great example of why I keep pointing out how difficult
| it is to be a critical thinker. There isn't a single source to go
| to that gives the current status of HCQ + COVID, and there are
| dozens of links to journals in this thread that are making my
| head spin. So when people ask my opinion on HCQ, my answer is
| now: "I don't know, we don't have enough data that has been
| studied and approved by multiple peer-reviewed journals, because
| one isn't enough."
|
| This doesn't shake my attitude toward science in the slightest,
| but it does leave me feeling very uninformed. But maybe, just
| maybe, that is the correct phase-state to be in given the data?
| Or have I been zone-flooded?
| iagovar wrote:
| The reality is that although we've improved, we're still slow
| getting data reliably, analyzing and understanding it. Science
| is actually a very manual labor.
| deelowe wrote:
| My answer is "we don't know but there seems to be little harm
| in trying it." This is what's happening right now. Sure, it's a
| bit of a shotgun approach, but again, if Drs want to used an
| already fda approved drug and try various approaches to see if
| it helps, I see no issue. Honestly, I don't get all the
| politics around this.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| What you're feeling is what real scientific research feels like
| in real time.
|
| We spend so much time in science classes learning what past
| scientists have already proven correct, and people come to
| believe that that is how science is in general: correct.
|
| But working researchers spend most of their time not knowing
| what is correct, and sometimes not even knowing how to measure
| correctness. They wallow in uncertainty; that's what makes it
| research.
| ardy42 wrote:
| Influential Lancet hydroxychloroquine study retracted by 3
| authors (https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/hydroxychloroquine-covid-
| lanc...)
|
| > Three of the authors of an influential article that found
| hydroxychloroquine increased the risk of death in COVID-19
| patients retracted the study on concerns about the quality of the
| data....
|
| > Results of a [different] high-quality randomized, placebo-
| control trial also published yesterday in the New England Journal
| of Medicine from U.S. and Canadian researchers showed
| hydroxychloroquine was no better than placebo pills at preventing
| illness from the coronavirus.
| [deleted]
| thrown2020 wrote:
| Fuck Fauci and fuck all you socialists!
| hartator wrote:
| > "can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data
| sources."
|
| It's a little understatement when the accusations are they made
| up the data.
| groby_b wrote:
| You're conflating many "they" here.
|
| The retraction is by the study authors. The data is from a
| company that's entirely different, and that company claims
| their data is "proprietary" and they can't share it.
|
| There's strong suspicion that that proprietary data is in fact
| made up, but the study authors cannot prove it. And you really
| don't want to retract a study by making unproven allegations.
|
| "We can't vouch for the veracity" is all they can truthfully
| say.
|
| For the full statement: ""Our independent peer reviewers
| informed us that Surgisphere would not transfer the full
| dataset, client contracts, and the full ISO audit report to
| their servers for analysis as such transfer would violate
| client agreements and confidentiality requirements. As such,
| our reviewers were not able to conduct an independent and
| private peer review and therefore notified us of their
| withdrawal from the peer-review process."[1]
|
| The authors tried for an independent audit. Surgisphere failed
| to cooperate. Given the history of its principal, not a
| surprise.
|
| [1]
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/04/covid-19-lance...
| himinlomax wrote:
| The CEO of said company is one of the authors.
|
| In any case, even if he wasn't, the other three dunces should
| never have trusted such dubious data.
| elihu wrote:
| What did the retracted study say about hydroxychloroquine and
| chloroquine? Did it claim they were efficacious versus COVID-19,
| or that they weren't? Or was it something else?
| tjenkinsqs wrote:
| If you want real scientific studies, have a look here:
|
| https://academic.oup.com/aje/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aje...
| djannzjkzxn wrote:
| This was the original report:
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
|
| They claimed that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine both
| caused more deaths. The study claimed a huge effect size (~20%
| increase in death rate) and a giant sample (14888 treated,
| 81144 control across 671 hospitals). Despite not being a proper
| blinded trial, this still appeared to be strong evidence and
| sufficient to stop any reasonable doctor who heard of this
| study from giving these drugs to patients. If the evidence was
| fabricated, that's a big deal.
| moultano wrote:
| It claimed that they significantly increased the chances of
| death.
| w_t_payne wrote:
| Since I take it daily for my Rheumatoid Arthritis -- a source
| of more than a small amount of concern.
| Sharlin wrote:
| The study claimed to have found evidence that
| hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine use is correlated with
| _increased_ COVID-19 mortality.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I hope this will lead to more public scrutiny about the practices
| of the leading scientific journals.
| mhandley wrote:
| Well done to the three authors who launched an independent peer
| review of the dataset, and when those reviewers couldn't verify
| it, asked for the paper to be withdrawn. I'm sure they will
| always regret they didn't ask more questions earlier, but once
| discrepancies emerged, they seem to have acted with integrity.
| bsaul wrote:
| now will there be a next step ? This looks like fraud, and my
| hope now is that there is a police investigation, because it may
| very well be guided by economical interest.
|
| No conspiracy theory here, there's nothing sure, but we can't
| rule it out completely either.
| tjenkinsqs wrote:
| $20 (patent free) Hydroxychoroquine vs $100s/1000s for patented
| medicine
| csunbird wrote:
| Also, when you think about it, they put a lot of lives at risk
| by publishing, seemingly, false information in a critical time.
| ufmace wrote:
| Why assume it's economic? All of the signs point to political
| interest in my opinion. Trump said we should check it out, it
| might help. Therefore, we must destroy it, because Orange Man
| Bad.
|
| Just because a President, or any man, is bad, doesn't
| automatically mean that every word he says is wrong. And if he
| really is that bad, why is it necessary to fabricate studies
| out of thin air in order to discredit something he said,
| complete with people dying because they couldn't get a
| medication that might have helped. If he is actually bad, the
| actual facts should be plenty to demonstrate it.
|
| This doesn't even seem like a "conspiracy theory" to me. If you
| want to get into conspiracy theories, you'd have to start
| asking what else is getting this treatment.
| robocat wrote:
| Trying to jump to a political conclusion is a waste of time.
| It would make more sense that the study was fake science
| specifically designed to be discovered, to make Trump look
| better. See? It is just pointless to hypothesise without
| strong independent information, which is lacking at present.
| tunesmith wrote:
| What's the economic interest of claiming the medication _doesn
| 't_ work?
| saas_sam wrote:
| To prop up a competing medication.
| rlp wrote:
| Increased sales of a competing medication, like Remdesivir.
| pdog wrote:
| There a huge battle going on between hydroxychloroquine (the
| Republican therapy of choice when combined with a zinc
| supplement) and remdesivir (the antiviral drug by Gilead
| that's preferred by anti-Trump liberals).
|
| To answer your question, there can be an economic interest in
| claiming a competitor treatment (which is generic and
| manufactured cheaply) doesn't work.
| comicjk wrote:
| The company that provided the data, Surgisphere, might have
| been trying to raise their profile by getting a big
| publication. They're a bit shady.
|
| https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/06/02/su.
| ..
| mrosett wrote:
| The medical profession needs to have a serious discussion about
| whether or not the Lancet should still be treated as a top
| journal.
|
| In addition to this retraction, 3 of the top 10 most cited
| retracted papers of all time were published in the Lancet. [0]
| This includes the infamous Wakefield "vaccines cause autism"
| paper which is probably the most damaging scientific fraud of the
| last several decades.
|
| On the editorial side, they've become quite outspoken on
| political matters [1], publishing one piece calling for the ban
| of tobacco, a letter expressing strong opinions on the
| Israel/Palestine conflict, and a piece just a couple weeks ago
| calling for Americans to vote Trump out of office. The also
| published a rather controversial study that provided very high
| estimates of the civilian death toll of the Iraq War. I'm
| inclined to agree with their position on some issues and disagree
| with it on others, but either way they seem to court controversy.
|
| All of this has been under the same editor, Richard Horton (who
| is himself quite outspoken.) Put it all together, and the picture
| that emerges is a publication that values making a splash
| (whether by publishing shocking results or by taking a position
| on political issues) over getting things correct. That's
| irritating behavior in a tabloid. In a prestigious journal, it's
| horrifyingly irresponsible.
|
| [0] https://retractionwatch.com/the-retraction-watch-
| leaderboard...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lancet#Controversies
| walterbell wrote:
| How about thanking or crediting the many independent doctors and
| scientists (https://zenodo.org/record/3873178) who identified the
| issues in Lancet's publication? Even Apple credits/pays
| independent researchers for finding weaknesses in Apple code.
|
| Will countries now revert national health policy changes that
| were based on this questionable study? What about the families of
| patients who were denied _early_ HCQ treatment based on this
| study? Who is liable for their denial of treatment?
|
| James Todaro, May 29th,
| https://www.medicineuncensored.com/a-study-out-of-thin-air
|
| _> Misinformation is bad. Misinformation in medicine is worse.
| Misinformation from a prestigious medical journal is the worst.
| Herein is a detailed look at the controversial Lancet study that
| resulted in the World Health Organization ending worldwide
| clinical trials on hydroxychloroquine in order to focus on
| patented therapeutics._
|
| Guardian, June 3rd,
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgi...
|
| _> The very serious concerns being raised about the validity of
| the papers by Mehra et al need to be recognised and actioned
| urgently, and ought to bring about serious reflection on whether
| the quality of editorial and peer review during the pandemic has
| been adequate. Scientific publication must above all be rigorous
| and honest. In an emergency, these values are needed more than
| ever._
|
| James Todaro helped to bring this questionable study to light--
| his website (https://www.medicineuncensored.com/) and compilation
| of HCQ studies (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O6Cls-
| Oz2ZAgJuyDbnICEGjM...) may be of interest.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| its very possible the study can be wrong and HCQ still isn't an
| effective treatment, not sure you should read this news as an
| endorsement
| slickrick216 wrote:
| Interesting timing given what's going on in the world. This
| would have got more coverage 2 weeks ago.
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| Please don't fall for this. An article over at ScienceMag [1]
| states,
|
| > _...James Watson, a statistician at Mahidol who on 28 May
| published an open letter to the journal and the study's co-
| authors, signed by more than 200 clinicians and researchers,
| that calls for the release of Surgisphere's hospital-level
| data, an independent validation of the results, and publication
| of the peer review comments that led to the Lancet
| publication._
|
| This blogger's article is dated May 29.
|
| Given that the underlying theme of this blog is "everyone's
| lying to you about covid19, it's actually not that big of a
| deal", I doubt James Todaro was as instrumental in The Lancet's
| retraction as the letter from 200 other researchers the day
| before.
|
| It will be quite bad if it turns out that the WHO reacted to a
| study published in The Lancet that turns out to be fraudulent
| or grossly erroneous. We don't need to make the situation even
| worse by lending undue credit to other sources of
| disinformation.
|
| [1]: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/mysterious-
| company-s...
| walterbell wrote:
| Todaro and others have been collating HCQ studies for weeks,
| as visible on Twitter. It's not a competition for credit,
| except against misleading studies. You can review the Google
| doc above, which is more than a month old. It contains a list
| of HCQ studies which include components likely to increase
| success: early treatment in time to slow viral replication
| with a combination of HCQ and zinc.
|
| These successful HCQ studies, full of reports of lives saved,
| are worthy of attention.
| terio wrote:
| The WHO already restarted studies involving hydroxychloroquine.
|
| >> Who is liable for their denial of treatment?
|
| Doctors base their treatments on the best information they have
| at hand. In many cases, that information turns out to be
| faulty.
|
| This retraction does not mean the HCQ works against COVID-19,
| only that this particular study is no proof that it does not
| work.
| tjenkinsqs wrote:
| Hydroxychloroquine does not repair damaged cells, but it does
| stop the virus from replicating (especially when used with
| Zinc)
|
| There are five scientific studies demonstrating this for
| outpatient use.
|
| https://academic.oup.com/aje/advance-
| article/doi/10.1093/aje...
| vernie wrote:
| Come back, zinc!
| sjg007 wrote:
| The university of Minnesota has a clinical trial out showing no
| early benefit of HCQ treatment.
| adventured wrote:
| > The university of Minnesota has a clinical trial out
| showing no early benefit of HCQ treatment.
|
| They have yet to publish the results on whether it benefits
| patients during the early onset of symptoms. [1]
|
| Is hydroxychloroquine paired with zinc in the two studies?
| That has been the central claim of people supporting
| hydroxychloroquine this entire time and so far I've yet to
| see them used together in an early treatment / preventative
| study in the US (perhaps they've done so in Europe or
| China?).
|
| [1] "A separate U trial is examining whether it benefits
| patients after early onset of symptoms, but results haven't
| been published."
|
| https://www.startribune.com/anti-malaria-drug-in-u-of-m-
| tria...
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| This is just one of many studies which has not found medical
| benefits for hydroxycholoroquine.
|
| https://rheumatology.medicinematters.com/covid-19/hydroxychl...
| underdown wrote:
| No medical benefit ... in the treatment of covid-19.
| xenophonf wrote:
| We haven't gone from "BLOCK" to "ALLOW". Instead, we're back to
| "DUNNO".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_clinical_research
| bb88 wrote:
| So "dunno" is not a good enough reason to allow use of
| potentially damaging drugs. So we're still at "block".
| xenophonf wrote:
| Pretty much. Evidence-based medicine doesn't take its cues
| from Cave Johnson and just spitball stuff when people's
| lives are at stake. Plenty of promising drugs have horrible
| side effects, and it takes a lot of careful work to make
| sure they can be used safely to treat people. Thalidomide
| would be an excellent example of such a drug, which can
| cause excessive clotting and severe birth defects but also
| treats leprosy and certain cancers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide
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(page generated 2020-06-04 23:00 UTC)