One word: Theranos
Tech bros…
1 Like
“Of particular note, control patients 6 and 8-16 appear to have been analyzed differently. Their Day 0 PCR values are not given as CT values (the number of cycles after which a PCR becomes positive, the lower the number, the more virus is present) but as POS/NEG, suggesting a different test was used. […] Several patients in the control group did not even have a PCR result on Day 6, so it is not clear how they were counted in the Day 6 result.”
Holy crap this is egregiously bad.
2 Likes
This is getting to the realm of potentially illegal misconduct. It is really bad. There should be an investigation into it. People could die because of this study.
3 Likes
It’s malpractice. Flat out unconscionable made all the worse given the severity of the current situation. They’re straight up faking results as also revealed from those older studies. Nothing he says or does can be trusted.
Indeed, problems in a paper about a mouse model for typhus got his lab in hot water in 2006. A reviewer for Infection and Immunity , a journal published by the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), discovered that four figures in a revised manuscript were identical to figures in the original manuscript, even though they were supposed to describe a different experiment.
This is blatant fabrication. How can the man still have a career as a scientist after something like this?
2 Likes
Then people actually look at his study, and it’s like this.
@Giltil this is the man you were touting as “the best expert in the world” in this field, saying “There is probably no other doctor in the world that has such a deep knowledge of this drug”. You were actively encouraging trust in him. Do you have any comments on the actual contents of his study?
2 Likes
When bad information meets insanely bad judgement…
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/23/health/arizona-coronavirus-chloroquine-death/index.html
4 Likes
That’s somewhat hypocritical, given that you hold John Sanford up as someone who understands influenza better than the experts do, wouldn’t you agree?
1 Like
Why everybody here seems to be engaged in Raoult bashing? Group think and conformism is the best recipe for stagnation and sclerosis of thought.
Did you read any of the links provided?
2 Likes
A paper from the French group studying the effects HCQ and Z on 80 CV patients.
Here’s what happened.
- Some people expressed caution about his claims.
- You responded by touting Raoult as an unparalleled expert whose claims should be taken seriously on the basis of his expertise (rather than actual evidence).
- Other people looked at his actual study and were shocked to find how flawed it was. They pointed out specific flaws demonstrating it is objectively untrustworthy.
- You now claim they are “bashing”, and accusing people of “Group think and conformism”. This is a complete non-sequitur.
I note that you have not responded in any way whatsoever to any of the fact based criticisms of the study.
5 Likes
Looks to be an improvement on the initial study but the glaring lack of any control group whatsoever, never mind randomised groups, still means the conclusions lack any firm basis.
5 Likes
I agree this study alone does not have conclusive results. Hopefully as more data is collected (especially without HQC plus V) there will be something to compare these results against. Thanks for reading and critiquing.
He’s being bashed because the study is crap. What we can’t stomach is bad science and potentially questionable ethics. His study is weak sauce. Many other studies have been and continue to be performed with methods from which one can actually determine applicability.
We all wish chloroquine or some other agent can be found to be effective. We all hope that Raoult’s or someone else’s hunch is correct. Can you see that it’s not about group think, that it’s about separating the wheat from the chaff, and how to run experiments in order to discern signal from noise?
4 Likes
Raoult is a doctor. As a doctor, his only goal is to heal his patients. Being convinced that his treatment is beneficial to his patients, to the point of being able to save their lives, he rightly considers that it would be completely unethical not to benefit all his patients. In other words, true to the Hippocratic oath, between the method and his patients, he chooses his patients. What real doctor could blame him?
@Giltil am a real doctor and if these reports are correct, I do blame him. Physicians are supposed to treat patients based on good data, not hunches and poorly run studies.
3 Likes
Medecine, which is an art, should not be confused with science. And in front of his patients, Raoult puts on his doctor’s coat, not that of the scientist.
When he does a clinical study, that is as a medical scientist. This is different than a doctor prescribing a drug off label.
5 Likes
Would you also have blamed Louis Pasteur? Do you realize that Pasteur vaccinated his first patient with much less « good data » than Raoult, who has already treated more than 3000 patients with hydrochloroquine these last 30 years.
He doesn’t even care about being a medical scientist. He just wants to cure his patients, that’s all.