Hydroxychloroquine-Promoting COVID Study Retracted After 4 Years (nature.com) 99
Nature magazine reports that "A study that stoked enthusiasm for the now-disproven idea that a cheap malaria drug can treat COVID-19 has been retracted — more than four-and-a-half years after it was published."
Researchers had critiqued the controversial paper many times, raising concerns about its data quality and an unclear ethics-approval process. Its eventual withdrawal, on the grounds of concerns over ethical approval and doubts about the conduct of the research, marks the 28th retraction for co-author Didier Raoult, a French microbiologist, formerly at Marseille's Hospital-University Institute Mediterranean Infection (IHU), who shot to global prominence in the pandemic. French investigations found that he and the IHU had violated ethics-approval protocols in numerous studies, and Raoult has now retired.
The paper, which has received almost 3,400 citations according to the Web of Science database, is the highest-cited paper on COVID-19 to be retracted, and the second-most-cited retracted paper of any kind....
Because it contributed so much to the HCQ hype, "the most important unintended effect of this study was to partially side-track and slow down the development of anti-COVID-19 drugs at a time when the need for effective treatments was critical", says Ole Søgaard, an infectious-disease physician at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, who was not involved with the work or its critiques. "The study was clearly hastily conducted and did not adhere to common scientific and ethical standards...."
Three of the study's co-authors had asked to have their names removed from the paper, saying they had doubts about its methods, the retraction notice said.
Nature includes this quote from a scientific-integrity consultant in San Francisco, California. "This paper should never have been published — or it should have been retracted immediately after its publication."
"The report caught the eye of the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz," the Atlantic reported in April of 2020 (also noting that co-author Raoult "has made news in recent years as a pan-disciplinary provocateur; he has questioned climate change and Darwinian evolution...")
And Nature points out that while the study claimed good results for the 20 patients treated with HCQ, six more HCQ-treated people in the study actually dropped out before it was finished. And of those six people, one died, while three more "were transferred to an intensive-care unit."
Thanks to Slashdot reader backslashdot for sharing the news.
The paper, which has received almost 3,400 citations according to the Web of Science database, is the highest-cited paper on COVID-19 to be retracted, and the second-most-cited retracted paper of any kind....
Because it contributed so much to the HCQ hype, "the most important unintended effect of this study was to partially side-track and slow down the development of anti-COVID-19 drugs at a time when the need for effective treatments was critical", says Ole Søgaard, an infectious-disease physician at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, who was not involved with the work or its critiques. "The study was clearly hastily conducted and did not adhere to common scientific and ethical standards...."
Three of the study's co-authors had asked to have their names removed from the paper, saying they had doubts about its methods, the retraction notice said.
Nature includes this quote from a scientific-integrity consultant in San Francisco, California. "This paper should never have been published — or it should have been retracted immediately after its publication."
"The report caught the eye of the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz," the Atlantic reported in April of 2020 (also noting that co-author Raoult "has made news in recent years as a pan-disciplinary provocateur; he has questioned climate change and Darwinian evolution...")
And Nature points out that while the study claimed good results for the 20 patients treated with HCQ, six more HCQ-treated people in the study actually dropped out before it was finished. And of those six people, one died, while three more "were transferred to an intensive-care unit."
Thanks to Slashdot reader backslashdot for sharing the news.
Idol of the uneducated (Score:5, Informative)
Raoult has been for 5 years the idol of the educated. I suspect he would never had been famous if not for some clickbait Facebook posts with titles that would be easily mistaken for boomer traps nowadays, à la "He cures the Covid with this one weird trick, siontists hate him". It was clear from the beginning his claims were easy to disprove, but even then "I wouldn't even qualify for a first-aid Red Cross course"-types took it to the extreme and were happy to almost litterally drink bleach because it looked a similar treatement to his fungicide miracle cure. With no effect or at best on par with the null hypothesis.
Re: (Score:1)
They want to feel right, not be correct.
Let them pass. A few more boosters should do it.
It has always been this way.
Re: Contrary position (Score:3)
Re: Contrary position (Score:3)
Finasteride *causes* erectile dysfunction. Sometimes even permanently, even after you stop taking it. I'm not in that case, but do know someone who is a victim. Please don't spread misinformation about this awful drug.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Actually Finasteride treats enlarged prostate and to a very limited degree male pattern baldness. It does that by blocking the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone. It MAY cause a transient rise in testosterone by blocking the conversion. Of course, soon after the level drops back to normal or even lower. There is nothing mysterious about the mechanism behind any of that.
Re: (Score:3)
His claims were easy to disprove, but no one bothered to actually find out!
For very good reason too. His claims weren't clinically relevant. All the studies on HCQ took his work and applied it in practice, the end result was that it had no effect. Killing something in a petrie dish is not the same as killing something in the body. Many drugs look promising in the lab (and that is all this study ever did) and turn out to not work in any practical way in the clinical trial (which is what the other studies did).
The "drinking bleach" thing was a hoax, he never said that (and what he did say was nowhere near that)
That's because you don't speak Trump. If you did, you'd realise that's ex
Re: (Score:1)
Doubt it. First, they're french. Second, blame the right regardless of the facts is their only play.
Great, but the damage is done (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Great, but the damage is done (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think peer review does what you think it does.
It won't protect entirely against wrongness or fraud. It's a first filter by peers that says "yes this looks (a) on topic for the journal, (b) interesting enough for the journal and (c) passes the smell test and doesn't appear to have any egregious mistakes".
If you want to look beyond the state of the art, it's the best system we have but it doesn't guarantee anything.
Re: (Score:2)
Peer review also returned the grievance studies papers... for not being radical enough.
Re: (Score:2)
Speaking of grievances, you seem to have a bit of a beef.
Re:Great, but the damage is done (Score:5, Insightful)
That is the idea behind propaganda. It doesn't matter if it is disproven later -the goal is to profit from the harm NOW.
Re: How many deaths did this paper cause? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
As should the libertarian fucks that intentionally went unmasked and threw pandemic parties. Some of us will never forget and never forgive.
All the publications pre covid showed masks other than N95 to be only marginally effective. I've yet to see any new publications showing otherwise since.
People thought N95 masks were the be all end all. Of course they got the ones with valves in the early days because no one likes their glasses to fog. However there are some serious caveats to wearing an N95. If you don't wear them properly, they're less effective than cheap cloth masks. N95 masks are not comfortable to wear properly. Additionally, masks
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
All the publications pre covid showed masks other than N95 to be only marginally effective.
That's true, which is why the decision in the beginning (in a lot of countries anyway), when information was very limited, was to not specifically recommend masks. Their marginal utility didn't offset the potential for a false sense of security. Once more information came in, the medical community's best recommendation became that it was worth using or maybe even mandating masks, but there was still potential for false sense of security when wearing them.
I've yet to see any new publications showing otherwise since.
Google gives me a bunch of hits from reputable medi
Re: How many deaths did this paper cause? (Score:4, Informative)
Correlation is not causation. One person's anecdote is not data. This is why we have medical studies using data from thousands of people. Those studies say the vaccine works while the disease kills the unvaccinated and leaves them with all sorts of problems even if they survive.
Re: (Score:2)
Other way around. The sum total of evidence globally shows that the shots were a net negative. They had no beneficial effect on infection, viral load, or transmission rates, and catastrophic rates of severe side effects. You're still trapped in the US filter bubble but outside of America it's become mainstream knowledge to the point Germany's Minister for Health has publicly acknowledged it as a profound problem [focus.de].
Re: (Score:3)
Other way around. The sum total of evidence globally shows that the shots were a net negative.
No. Only "studies" published on Facebook show that. Actual real studies show the opposite. You can argue how much, but there's not a single credible source that says it was a net negative.
You also clearly don't speak German since that's not what the article is talking about. It's criticising the German government stance on calling the vaccine "nebenswirkungsfrei" - translated to no side effects. We know there are side effects. They just are just a tiny rounding error compared to the positive outcome of the
Re: (Score:2)
Correlation is not causation. One person's anecdote is not data. This is why we have medical studies using data from thousands of people. Those studies say the vaccine works while the disease kills the unvaccinated and leaves them with all sorts of problems even if they survive.
The disease also kills the vaccinated. Overall estimates I've seen indicate at best an order of magnitude reduction in personal chance of death in the vaccinated. Due to plurality of those at highest risk being vaccinated there were times and places during pandemic where most of the people dying from covid also had vaccine acquired immunity.
Re: (Score:3)
The disease also kills the vaccinated. Overall estimates I've seen indicate at best an order of magnitude reduction in personal chance of death in the vaccinated.
If you reduce death by 90% (an order of magnitude) then not only do you protect the vast majority of people who would otherwise die, you also vastly reduce the load on hospitals meaning that people who are at risk of dying from other causes end up not doing so.
Re: (Score:2)
If you reduce death by 90% (an order of magnitude) then not only do you protect the vast majority of people who would otherwise die, you also vastly reduce the load on hospitals meaning that people who are at risk of dying from other causes end up not doing so.
This is obviously the case, while it has been a while since I've looked up current aggregate estimates assuming 10x reduction in deaths vs those with no previously acquired immunity vaccines were a no-brainer for most of the sars2 naive population.
My commentary is intended as a cautionary tale against "safe and effective" sorts of narratives and mindsets. What is relevant and what should be communicated is personal risk vs benefit ratio rather than one sided characterizations that fail to communicate actio
Re: (Score:2)
All the publications pre covid showed masks other than N95 to be only marginally effective. I've yet to see any new publications showing otherwise since.
So you've yet to look? So you've ignored the research commissioned by the WHO in February on the use of non N95 masks? And somehow you completely missed that the positive results of that research lead directly to the WHO recommending masks of any kind in April in their updated pandemic response guidelines?
Did you not look at anything during the pandemic on purpose because you were afraid it would influence the conclusion you already made up in your head?
Re: (Score:1)
So you've yet to look? So you've ignored the research commissioned by the WHO in February on the use of non N95 masks? And somehow you completely missed that the positive results of that research lead directly to the WHO recommending masks of any kind in April in their updated pandemic response guidelines?
Did you not look at anything during the pandemic on purpose because you were afraid it would influence the conclusion you already made up in your head?
Review of available masking data showed no difference in the spread of the virus.
"Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no diïerence to the outcome of influenza-like illness (ILI)/COVID-19 like illness compared to not wearing masks (risk ratio (RR) 0.95, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.84 to 1.09; 9 trials, 276,917 participants; moderate-certainty evidence. Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no diïerence to the outcome of laboratory-confirmed influenza/SARS-Co
Re: (Score:1)
Re: How many deaths did this paper cause? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: How many deaths did this paper cause? (Score:3)
From what I got, the masks are electrostatically charged this charge wears off after an hour. Knowing scientists, they probably were too conservative here.
Re: How many deaths did this paper cause? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Where are you where Covid is still such a big problem? Where I am Covid now has the same status as the other seasonal viruses, and yes the infection rates did follow the masking mandates. I only got Covid when working around someone who was not masked and started showing obvious symptoms.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean the rich leftists and politicians who weren't even pretending to follow their own mask mandates? And who publicly encouraged and supported massive street filling crowds of rioters?
Oh right I forgot, the virus is only transmissible by republicans.
Re:The party of science and reason fucked up (Score:5, Insightful)
"...shaming people for challenging authority is what invites distrust."
Bullshit, and that's not what happens anyway. What happens is that pathological liars "flood the zone" with shit and THAT "invites distrust". Also, it's YOUR team that does this, and they do it to gain power.
The problem with authority is not that authority is wrong, the problem is that it is RIGHT and being right threatens stupid authoritarians like you support. That's why authority must be challenged, authority challenges the lies of your. leader.
"The fact that public facing scientists still don't appear to fully understand why they lost so much trust..."
That's not a fact, it's a lie. Everyone knows why the trust was lost, it was lost because of relentless lying and smearing by your leader.
"... outside of democrat-filled echo chambers ...:
Lying and smearing just like this.
"...leaves me with little hope for their capacity to self-correct the next time they make a mistake."
You never had any such hope, you have no desire for any such "self-correction" nor is there any reason to believe that self-correction is even a problem. The purpose of damaging public trust is not to correct any deficiency among scientists, it is merely to damage public trust. That's the entire goal.
And to be clear, censorship is not to engage in "scientific debate", it is to help stop the damage that liars like you do to the public trust. You aren't interested in scientific debate.
Re: (Score:1)
"Bullshit, and that's not what happens anyway. "
But he's correct, the covid response and "changing science" damaged the reputation of hospitals, doctors and vaccines in this country. Trust in vaccines is lower, and not just among right wingers--there was a recent CNN poll about it with much hand-wringing.
It also damaged the reputation of the left in this country, as now right wingers think the left wants to deprive them of their jobs (through vaccine mandates), their kids (as judges were using vaccination s
Re:The party of science and reason fucked up (Score:5, Informative)
That is mostly because there was no "changing science", but evolving science. The _normal_ case. But scientific education in the US is utter crap and, on top of that, political assholes tried to profiteer.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, the initial wave of "experts" saying "masks don't work and are in fact harmful cus moisture bacteria blah blah blah" was not even "evolving science", it was a knowing and deliberate lie so that unwashed masses wouldn't buy up mask reserves during the initial shortages.
Nonsense, it was common dogma at the time. A fact openly and repeatedly discussed in the press early in the pandemic. Listen to Fauci's May 22 2019 interview with David Rubinstein. He laughed and derided the idea of wearing masks during a pandemic involving a respiratory virus months before anyone had even heard of covid19.
Pretty funny how the "science" changed, excuse me, "evolved", right at the moment the shortages stopped, not a iota earlier or later.
What's funny is that it would ultimately turn out after all that the dogma was right and masks didn't work according to a systematic review of available literature following the pandem
Re: (Score:2)
"He laughed and derided the idea of wearing masks during a pandemic involving a respiratory virus months before anyone had even heard of covid19."
Yes Fauci did say that, but then in 2021 he reversed course and claimed that he previously lied about it as to not create mask shortages. This was called his "noble lie" even by sympathetic media outlets. And yeah, it does seem like a BS reason, but regardless there was a visible about-face on the matter
https://www.thestreet.com/vide... [thestreet.com]
"So, why weren't we told to
Re: (Score:2)
The sad fact here is that you cannot tell panicky masses of people the truth in some cases, because that would crate a catastrophe far worse. Incidentally, no such problems in Asia or Europe. Yes, there were public political statements here in Europe as well but the press always also covered experts and they said things like "look to Asia" and "obviously masks will help, we just do not know how much". We were also told to not panic-buy masks because the medical field needed them. Funny how much more you can
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The party of science and reason fucked up (Score:5, Insightful)
The distrust comes from generations of right-wing attacks on the establishment and science.
When you choose faith over evidence, you get irrational responses to things you lack the mental tools to understand, and interesting times result.
Re: The party of science and reason fucked up (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I get your position just from your alias.
Whereas I take the position that if we'd beaten the ever-loving fuck out of the shitheads who refused to wear masks and continued to gather in groups, then refused vaccines once they were available, and basically did their absolute best to make everything worse just because they could... there'd be a lot of Americans still alive today who aren't.
The 'left' (I put that in quotes because the US doesn't have a left, it has a 'less right') made the mistake of playing nice. You can't explain things to stubborn ignorant assholes, but you can beat them into compliance.
Re: (Score:2)
We beat SARS by figuratively welding people into their rooms, not only beat it but made it extinct. Sometimes you have to override basic rights for the good of everyone and SARS was one of those cases where it (barely) worked. War is another. It's not surprising that when SARS II showed up some tried the same thing. Unluckily Covid19 was a lot more transmittable while showing no symptoms.
I'll add that the actual left wing government here in BC stepped back and put our Provincial Health Officer in charge. We
Re: The party of science and reason fucked up (Score:1)
You people still swear fealty to an king. You don't have constitutional rights, and you don't understand self-rule.
Re: (Score:1)
You people still swear fealty to an king.
Are you talking about the Republican party?
Re:The party of science and reason fucked up (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not "scientific debate". This is about pushing insane crap that endangers lives. In order for it to be a scientific debate, some minimal standards would have to be fulfilled. They clearly were not in this case.
I do get that most people have no clue how this works and that as a honest scientist you basically have to cleverly lie to people to get taken seriously. A very sad state of affairs and one promoted and amplified by murderous assholes like Trump and others.
If bird flu takes off it is going to get real scar (Score:2)
I don't know what the fuck's going to happen if we get hit with another pandemic in the next 4 years but it's one of the many things I have on my plate to keep me up at night along with out of control inflation fueled by tariffs and concentration camps full of slave labor...
Re: (Score:2)
Some H1N1 variants have a 50% fatality rate.
Yes, viruses like that are not nearly as much of a concern as viruses with a 1% fatality rate. When a virus has a fatality rate that high it naturally dampens its ability to spread.
There was at least a hypothetical way it could've. (Score:5, Informative)
The virus’s speedy entry using TMPRSS2 explains why the malaria drug chloroquine didn’t work in clinical trials as a COVID-19 treatment, despite early promising studies in the lab10. Those turned out to have used cells that rely exclusively on cathepsins for endosomal entry. “When the virus transmits and replicates in the human airway, it doesn’t use endosomes, so chloroquine, which is an endosomal disrupting drug, is not effective in real life,” says Barclay.
So, it seems that at least HCQ could make theoretical sense, but we now even know why id doesn't work. Full article: https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Because people were buying the formulations intended for horses, and then in some cases also taking horse doses.
Re: (Score:2)
formulations intended for horses
That's Ivermectin, not HCQ. Different things.
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah, but that's not important, sorry I wasn't explicit though. What's important is that some of what they were buying was "horse drugs" and once they got there, it was game on for mockery.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
referring to it as "horse de-wormer"?
You are referring to Ivermectin. That is an antiparasitic.
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you for an actual scientifically-relevant, informative post on /.
Re: (Score:2)
You have a ton of egg there on your face. Oh, well, why do I even tell you. You do not care about what is real.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
You think you can do a comparison between 26 cases and in excess of a billion cases? Even more egg on your face. Seriously. Grow up and actually look at things instead of hallucinating something you would like to be true.
I guess stupid crap gets retracted... (Score:2)
... when the original numerous idiots that cared do not care that much anymore. Still means these people were idiots and they very likely still are. Just with other dementend ideas now.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Once your political bias and pseudoscience becomes grounds for retraction I'm sure it'll be retracted. I highly recommend you hold your breath until it happens.
Re: The opposite (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Your health officer didn't encourage people to get outside? Or did a winner of a popularity contest over ride them?
Here we were encouraged to get out and about during lockdown, along with interacting with others, at a distance. The streets were full of people who were sick of being inside.
Note I'm talking about walking about.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe because telling people to suddenly cease being unhealthy during a pandemic does fuck all. Or do you think your blood sugar and tar in your lungs clear the moment you stop smoking and drinking sugar?
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe because telling people to suddenly cease being unhealthy during a pandemic does fuck all.
There was plenty of time, the pandemic lasted for years.
The right wing can never admit they're wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
It of course wasn't. Epidemiologists knew that even if COVID was only going to kill two to 3% of the population (which is still around 10 million dead) that the strain on our health care system would mean that figure would at least double maybe triple. Once that was explained to the Republican party and they realized it letting 20 or 30 million Americans die would be bad for them politically they relented and allowed restrictions and lockdowns until vaccines became generally available...
But like I said the right wing can never admit they are wrong. Fundamentally the right wing is about authoritarianism and authority requires correctness. It's a classic emperor's new clothes problem. Once you realize the emperor is naked you can't ever see the invisible clothing again. So the right wing will always always double and triple down.
So here we are 5 years or so later and there is unequivocable proof that these miracle cures were bullshit but I can tell you right now that's just like how when the link between autism and vaccines turned out to be made up by a guy who was hoping to sell separate vaccines for mumps, measles and rubella this will be ignored by the same people still pushing horse paste as a cure all.
It's frustrating that we all see snake oil salesmen in our media and we recognized that they are crooks and liars, hell there's an old western about a guy named Trump offering the build wall to protect the city from meteorites... We know it's all bullshit when it's on TV but as soon as we get into the real world suddenly we fall for carnival barkers and snake oil salesmen...
I understand why. It's been extensively studied and it's just that people want to feel like they have direct agency and control and that they are the ones making the choices and not some scientist or another telling them what to do but it's still frustrating.
Re: (Score:2)
They are good at sound bites. Most importantly though, people are more apt to believing in simplified "solutions" especially when coupled with induced fear (which abrogates concern for others, promotes categorization by "pattern", and diminished logic), without deep reasoning.
It's not that they're good at it (Score:2)
There were plenty of failures until they came up with "woke", "SJW" and "DEI". But unless you work in that field you only see the hits, not the misses.
Re: (Score:2)
it's that they have unlimited money for focus groups and total control of the media so they can try out every possible sound bite until they get the right one.
Don't be silly.
Social media provides that service far faster and more effectively, and it not only doesn't cost anything, people actually pay to use it. The same thing happened before social media, but back then the memetic evolution had to happen in chain letters or xeroxed papers passed around the office, which was much slower, less effective and harder to observe.
Re: (Score:3)
They are good at sound bites. Most importantly though, people are more apt to believing in simplified "solutions" especially when coupled with induced fear (which abrogates concern for others, promotes categorization by "pattern", and diminished logic), without deep reasoning.
Except that the allegedly simplified solutions aren't simple at all, in fact they're dramatically more complicated. Believing in hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin in spite of the consensus of the medical community requires the believer to assume a massive conspiracy. Not just any conspiracy, either, but one that is either deeply evil (if COVID is a real danger and the conspiracy is trying to suppress cheap and effective treatments, thereby causing large numbers of unnecessary deaths to no purpose) or simply
Re: (Score:2)
Except that the allegedly simplified solutions aren't simple at all, in fact they're dramatically more complicated. Believing in hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin in spite of the consensus of the medical community requires the believer to assume a massive conspiracy.
The FDA's public position on Ivermectin throughout the pandemic is they lacked evidence of efficacy. It wasn't we have sufficient evidence it doesn't work it was we don't have sufficient evidence of it working.
There was in fact a massive conspiracy in that nobody bothered to commission sufficiently controlled and powered study to settle the matter until it was far too late to matter. The things that stand to make big pharma money and earn ROI get funding necessary for a well organized sufficiently powered
Study not discredited .. (Score:2)
“The journal has not been able to establish whether all patients could have entered into the study in time for the data to have been analysed and included in the manuscript prior to its submission on the 20th March 2020, nor whether all patients were enrolled in the study upon admission as opposed to having been hospitalised for some time before star
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"co-author Jean-Marc Rolain was editor-in-chief; the journal had accepted the submitted manuscript in one day"
The guy that co-authored the paper was the editor of the journal.
Re: (Score:2)
All the conspiracy theories were correct (Score:1)
Still waiting for those remdesivir retractions (Score:1)
"This will be the standard of care"
Fauci et el get to hawk insanely expensive dangerous drugs like Remdesivir on national television with no statistically significant evidence of useful benefit. For a whole year even the WHO wouldn't bite on what Fauci et el was selling due to lack of evidence.
I am also waiting on the public apology for the FDA corruptly approving Aduhelm when the entirety of their advisory panel disapproved of the decision, three resigned in protest and their own statistician said they d
Which study? (Score:2)
The only credible study I remember showing hcq in a positive light was one showing hcq to be useful in prophylaxis.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
This was the "Argentina study" as it was called. I never heard anything about Dr. Raoult.
pollution (Score:2)
Science is now so polluted by politics that I don't trust anything about this, one way or the other.