I strongly believe there were people at the Lancet who wanted to believe the HCQ study, regardless of how well it was run.
See, if you can skewer HCQ, that means you get to take a shot at a certain politician too.
There were a number of researchers who criticized the study's structure and numbers from day 1. Over 100 researchers wrote an open letter about how skeptical they were.
I understand journals make mistakes, but this was egregious and smells like agenda to me.
It's probably more obvious how much he's been using this pandemic as a political thing from this side of the Atlantic, since that's where his energy has mostly been focused.
There are probably a few tweets - like that one - which are justifiable as not being partisan or political. The rest of them... not so much, and this goes back pretty much to the day Trump was elected.
"It says something about the state of global political leadership that Gordon Brown must remind Presidents and Prime Ministers of their duties. The world needs international action now."
"Tony Fauci and Debbie Birx—You have to resign. You can’t lend your credibility to a President who is doing frightening violence to a system of international cooperation you have spent your lives working to protect and strengthen. Please resign now. Don’t support this President."
The editor of The Lancet is allowed to have political opinions, and to express them.
Most of the opinions (with the exception of the tweet from two days ago) are about health policy. It makes sense that the editor of The Lancet is upset about Trump's attempt to wreck the WHO, for example. If the editor of The Lancet can't speak up about that, what can they speak up about?
If you think being in favor of international health cooperation and being against censorship of scientific terms from CDC publications makes a journal editor "highly biased," that's your prerogative.
> See, if you can skewer HCQ, that means you get to take a shot at a certain politician too.
For clarity, and I'm sure you agree: Trump's boosting of this drug as a "miracle" and "greatest breakthrough" was absolutely irresponsible even if the drug actually works, for the simple reason that we didn't know if it did (frankly we still don't), and that it is known to have significant risks (it still does, even usingly only baseline data and ignoring this study).
This was a bad study. It's possible that the editors at the Lancet hate Trump. But... you're simply reading too much here. Bad science gets published all the time. In particular, bad science gets published in circumstances like we have now where there is desperate need for "fast science".
Not everything has to be an "agenda" by global elites to damage your favorite politician.
But even granting your framing: why are you so concerned about the Lancet boosting bad data as an "agenda" but not with Trump doing exactly the same thing, with even less evidence? Why is it an "agenda" only when your enemies do it?
Where did he call it the "greatest breakthrough"? I mean, it's of the greatest convenience if there's a chance that a cheap ubiquitous drug can damage COVID's operation in a host, and I think I can forgive him for talking it up in that context (and btw, always with disclaimers), but I don't recall him calling it the greatest breakthrough. Could be wrong but would expect a source.
Also would take issue with "significant risks". HCQ, especially in the temporary loading dose being used in COVID cases, is largely, largely, largely benign except for edge case patients. I do remember Trump saying multiple times in the briefings that people shouldn't take the drug without their doctor's prescription. Presumably prescriptions being given out to people in the edge case risk category would have their doctors to blame, not Trump.
I'm all for calling out shaky medical advice, but the dangers of HCQ being published in the media were overblown, especially considering the context of a pandemic. To pretend otherwise is just rhetoric. Like with autoimmune diseases, the doctors say that while there's risk from long term use of HCQ over a certain daily dosage, considering it may prevent you from dying via organ failure, the narrow and reducible risk is worth the payoff. If you're dying of COVID and a doctor decides it's your best chance, you're not going to give a shit about long-term usage risks, and let's presume your doctor will weigh short term risks accordingly.
Trump is not a scientist. He was presenting in terms of an exagerator. Irresponsible, but we already knew he was an exagerator so there was little harm. When scientists present something in terms of science we expect a greater standard.
We should hold science to a higher standard. Politicians lie all the time, and exaggerate all the time.
Where did I defend Trump's tweets? Where did I say it was OK for him to give false and misleading medical advice? Obviously he should NOT. HAVE. DONE. THOSE. THINGS. I think you're wearing your bias on your sleeve a bit too much. I get it, you hate him too. That's fine. But it's blinding you just like it did whoever let this garbage pass muster.
Just because Trump does a thing that is despicable doesn't mean we give everyone else a pass too.
Where did I defend the Lancet? Where did I say it was OK for them to publish that paper? Obviously they should NOT. HAVE. DONE. THAT.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea -- literally everything you wrote can be flipped right around, which is why you need to consider whether or not your own sleeve is maybe a little decorated.
Seriously: I agree with you. I'm pointing out, however, that you're jumping in to claim "bias" by the "media" in a context where the "other side" very clearly already had blood on its hands over the same issue. And treating one side and not the other is helping no one.
"It's possible that the editors at the Lancet hate Trump. But... you're simply reading too much here. Bad science gets published all the time. In particular, bad science gets published in circumstances like we have now where there is desperate need for 'fast science'"
> Not everything has to be an "agenda" by global elites to damage your favorite politician.
Not everyone who objects to frauds being used to bring down Trump likes Trump. Some people are very, very upset about how things like this hand him easy, unambiguous wins, and make it seem as if he can be trusted to the same degree as nominally legitimate sources of information. Also, whatever extent that those institutions compromised their own processes in the name of these attacks, for what other interests are their processes compromised?
Should we just trust these institutions because they've been labeled "trustworthy" or instead turn our trust to institutions whose processes are more transparent, responsive, and formally isolated from outside interests?
edit: It's important to note that this means that a majority of Americans will never believe that this drug is not a legitimate treatment for the virus, no matter what further studies say. That's an abject failure for the scientific establishment, and a victory for the anti-vaxxers of the world.
> a majority of Americans will never believe that this drug is not a legitimate treatment
I don't think that's true at all, and I'll be the first to say it:
I don't think there's any good evidence for HCQ at all, I think it's junk science, I don't believe a word about it that comes from this administration or anywhere in the right wing media. It's all pure spin to cover for some outrageously irresponsible rhetoric.
But show me a real, controlled study with significant results, and I'll recommend this drug to everyone who needs it.
But you have to show the data. And that means, yes, sometimes you discover you've published bad data and have to correct it. THAT is what science is about, not proving the absence of political bias.
You don't need to take a "shot" at a politician when that politician himself has done everything he can to create a public health catastrophe, including this politicization of HCQ. Pushing simplistic baseless claims undermines slower rational decision making. It's similar to "don't think of the elephant" - rather than giving every possibility a similar prior, it creates an undeserved focus on one particular approach which ends up hampering the decision making process with noisy overshoots in both directions, swamping the legitimate signal.
Anybody who was already paying attention doesn't need a study to condemn his actions, and the Trump cult doesn't give credence to scientific studies.
As far as his chances of winning - I personally did see had a fair shot in 2016, because the issues he was talking about mattered to a lot of people that had been disempowered over the past 8 years. I personally believe in LGBT rights, but it was obvious that there was going to be a horrid backlash from the gloating of projecting a rainbow on the White House. But since being elected Trump has addressed very little of what he campaigned on - the swamp has been further packed, and he's basically golfing and shitposting instead of leading. At this point he's coasting on favorable propaganda from Faux news, and the middle of the country will have that illusion shattered as we blow past 200k deaths.
I agree with you. In my opinion, it seemed he was extremely likely to win reelection, before covid19 struck. Now, I think those odds have been diminished; the degree to which, though, I am not sure.
In the US, three times as many people have already died of CoVID-19 as die from influenza in a normal year.
The number of deaths from CoVID-19 continues to rise, and nobody knows what number it will eventually reach. With a 0.5% mortality rate and an R0 of 2.5, the expected death toll (before herd immunity is reached) would be ~1 million people in the US, or the equivalent of 30 years of influenza deaths.
Are those confirmed influenza deaths? They're several times lower than the CDC's estimates for total US influenza deaths, which are usually around 35,000/year.
This is the reason why professionals don't engage in politics. In the short term it lends cover to the political actors of the day, and in the long term it destroys the credibility foundation of their own profession.
> There should be prison time if an investigation determines that this was done to increase certain drug sales.
What if it was "just" done to dunk on Trump after he touted the drug? The media sure did love the narrative that his favorite drug might be killing people.
“Here we are in the middle of a pandemic with hundreds of thousands of deaths, and the two most prestigious medical journals have failed us.”
There should be prison time if an investigation determines that this was done to increase certain drug sales.