A study that stoked enthusiasm for the now-disproven idea that a cheap malaria drug can treat COVID-19 has been retracted — more than four-and-a-half years after it was published.

… 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.

“Why it took more than four-and-a-half years after the study was initially published for the journal to come to this conclusion is not clear. It is also somewhat surprising that most of the paper’s authors still stand by study’s findings and conclusions despite its obvious inconsistencies, methodological flaws and potential ethical issues as outlined in the retraction note,” says Søgaard.

The paper (now marked as retracted): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.105949

  • takeda@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The paper linking vaccines with autism was also retracted, and that didn’t stop them.

  • Null User Object@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    More proof that hydroxychloroquine is a miracle drug and the lizard people just don’t want us to know about it.

    • BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Agree… So many people are so far gone from logic that anything and everything either proves them right or is a conspiracy. Guess free education is important in a society that wants to remain just this… A society of people living and functioning together. We are entering the “find out” phase

  • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The damage is done. The conspiracy nuts will just believe that the all mysterious “they” are trying to hide research.

  • IzzyScissor@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    It did what it needed to.

    Now that the damage is done, they can pretend to have integrity again to convince people to believe them when they publish the next “miracle study”.

  • BilboBargains@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Why is it that people sneer at non-medical doctors? Far more fraud is committed by the bois with stethoscopes around their shoulders. People be falling for that bedside rizz and getting played like a fiddle.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I’ve never seen people sneer at doctors of physics talking about physics or doctors of medieval literature discussing the influences on chaucer (though they do get routinely mocked for thinking themselves employable).

      What people do sneer at is doctors of electrical engineering claiming that they’ve disproven speciation by evolution and doctors of law declaring medical establishment wrong about medicine.

      A doctorate just means you’re an expert at something not everything

      • BilboBargains@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        A medical doctor is a well regarded and well numerated profession. They are pillars of society. They are trusted and revered in a way that teachers rarely are. The status of a doctor in the field of computer science or engineering is not much more than someone with a common or garden degree. Nobody knows what a research question is or how science is advanced. Everyone knows House and Grays Anatomy. Fuck those fake doctors with their models and predictive power. We don’t revere truth tellers, we revere celebrity. We want dat bedside rizz. That’s how Dr Shipman killed us. That’s why Professor Nutt was fired from his post.