re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) ***W.H.O. DECLARES A GLOBAL PANDEMIC***

It's about 3 weeks away, but Dr. Ioannidis is doing a Zoom webinar on the 22nd of June: LINK

An opportunity to hear from one of the greatest scientists in the world. That is not hyperbole, BTW. His h-index is 197 (a 50 is considered an "exceptional scientist"). He wrote one of the most influential papers of all time: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

A quote from that paper rings especially true today:

quote:

---

The hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true

---

quote:

---

And people think he forgot how false positives work

---

He may not have, but he put his name on a study where one of the author’s performed a validation analysis on the antibody positive samples and found ALMOST HALF were false positives (and somehow there were 3 fewer positives to validate) and requested that his name (along with another author from a completely different lab) was not only removed from the paper altogether but his entire association with the project as well.

Worse yet, instead of using the validated results from their OWN STUDY to most accurately adjust for the true and false positives, they used external specificity data that is showed cross-sample heterogeneity (e.g., likely due to cross-reactivity of other coronaviruses due to the time of sampling when antibodies are present) that indicated it was far more accurate than the validation results found. It’s borderline scientific malfeasance to ignore the actual data from your own study and instead choose more convenient external data, but it’s beyond borderline they didn’t even mention validation testing at all, that was discovered from a whistleblower complaint.

So I think it’s likely that Ioannidis‘s involvement was more due to his name and more passive. And while he was the one who was singled out for not disclosing a $5,000 contribution from the Jet Blue founder, I doubt that this corrupted his reasoning.

And I’m also sure he was unaware that the Jet Blue founder was given the contact information of the other author who requested her name be removed by one of the lead author (which is pretty sketchy) and was trying to bribe (unlimited funding for more studies).

And I’m also sure he didn’t know that not one BUT TWO other researchers raised concerns about the accuracy of the tests, asked that they wait to validate the results before publishing the paper AND (more importantly) notifying the participants who tested positive that they were positive. Not only did the lead authors ignore this, they went ahead and published the results anyways, and didn’t include the validation in even the refusing nor did they even mention it. And those two other researchers requested their name and involvement be complete removed from the project altogether (which is crazy to me).

Yet Ioannidis still out his name on the paper, and while he may not have had any reason to know about some of the stuff above, he has no excuse for not questioning the accuracy of the testing, unless he didn’t care if his name was on a study that was guilty of the same flaws he so infamously pointed it out in other studies and built his career on.

But we can at least excuse they as a passive and unintentional failure on his part, but ironic nonetheless. HOWEVER, it’s been over 6 weeks since the initial preprint of the study was released, and despite revisions due to criticisms (which did improve it), plenty of statisticians (Andrew Gelman in particular), epidemiologists, social scientists, virologists, and biostatisticians have shown that the methodology (particular the sampling) and analyses still have some serious flaws, some “fatal” (the sampling) and some correctable but inexcusable because they should have been corrected.

Worse yet, it’s been a few weeks since whistleblower complaint regarding the study and all of those problems was reported in the news (and filed before that). Yet, to the best of my knowledge, he hasn’t said a thing about it, which is inexcusable given who he is.

So his past achievements and scientific ability are still unquestioned; HOWEVER, these not only do not excuse the issues at hand, let alone somehow makes them nonexistent and validates they study, they actually make it more inexcusable given that he is and should be held to a higher standard. And the quality of science is not based on who the scientists studying it are and/or the quality of their science before, it’s based on the quality of that science itself. And this was science of exceptionally poor quality.

Utah Senate president tests positive for COVID-19 antibodies

Never knew he had anything.

Copypasta from /r/coronavirus malfunction

I read through that an overall was disappointed in the structure of the study because I was so excited for it

only about 12-15% of their COVID cases were actually confirmed with PCR, the rest were assumed if they had symptoms like sore throat, runny nose etc.

in the middle of allergy season.

I'm extra skeptical because we have about a 20% positive rate on covid tests at our institution and some people who we "know have covid" have been negative for multiple tests.



I also don't really understand their power calculation. They said they would need 400 in each group for 90% power but the HEROES trial needs 15000 enrolled for 90% power which is basically the same concept

Serious questions in regards to "peer review" at these leading journals need to be asked.

I agree that the study was weak. I wonder if their study with HCQ given to early symptomatic people will be a little higher powered.

The Swedish epidemiologist who has overseen the country’s laissez-faire response to the coronavirus said yesterday that it should have taken more aggressive steps. The epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, had previously defended the approach — meant to build up “herd immunity,” by encouraging normal behavior — and criticized other countries.

The Guardian reported that Sweden suffered the world’s highest per capita death rate in the week that ended Tuesday, although some other countries still have higher overall death rates.

A view from Gothenburg: “It was a shock at first to see young people sitting in bars, office workers crowding food trucks and hair salons filled with clients,” says my colleague Lara Takenaga, who recently relocated to Sweden from New York. “There are sometimes signs in stores instructing you to keep two meters apart or a lone bottle of hand sanitizer, but no one wears face coverings or gloves. The threat of the virus feels distant — it’s almost like the Before Times.”

quote:

---

Serious questions in regards to "peer review" at these leading journals need to be asked.

---

Replying to and quoting myself...

Check out this Twitter thread where this lady found up to eight published papers on different types of cancers that had the same results and figures...

fricking pitiful.

I'm beginning to think I am becoming a heretic and apostate to what has become the new orthodoxy.

UK study shows that HCQ provides no benefit in hospitalized patients.

LINK

Of course, I think that there was broad agreement at this point that HCQ was unlikely to be significantly beneficial once patients get to the point of needing hospitalization, so I'm not sure that this tells us much.

I think that we all knew that if HCQ does help, it has to be given early.