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French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award For Pseudoscience

skeptic.org.uk

11–20 of 74 posts

Re: French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award For Pseudoscience

#11
As an actual pharmacologist I find it fascinating how the general public has suddenly taken such a poorly informed interest in drug discovery.

For the HN audience it would be like people taking an almost tribal approach to go-lang vs rust, debating it on national television, without any of them knowing what a loop is.

Re: French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award For Pseudoscience

#12
> “It is hard to find an example of quackery that has spread so far, influencing the public health response to a deadly pandemic and creating widespread confusion across the entire globe.”

It isn't hard: the Lancet has published a completely made-up study written by an unknown team, before they retracted the paper. If I wanted to fuel conspiracy theories, I don't think I could come up with anything better.

Re: French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award For Pseudoscience

#13
post #7
post #3

This is really counter productive and snarky. How does this advance science? There have been multiple studies on this, and it has been a mixed bag. This one is positive: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32418114/ There are others that are positive, and still others that are negative.

This award isn't about those other studies, it's about his choice to over-egg his research. > Subsequent analysis of Raoult’s data found that his sample size was incredibly small, with only 6 patients given the hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin combination. The study was also found to be improperly controlled, and data was excluded for a number of patients whose condition worsened as they were either transferred to int…

The Gilead stock options trading squad has been extremely good. Too bad for some livers, lives, and trust in science amongst many.

Re: French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award For Pseudoscience

#14

> “It is hard to find an example of quackery that has spread so far, influencing the public health response to a deadly pandemic and creating widespread confusion across the entire globe.” It isn't hard: the Lancet has published a completely made-up study written by an unknown team, before they retracted the paper. If I wanted to fuel conspiracy theories, I don't think I could come up with anything better.

To make sure HN'ers don't get things mixed up: Raoult has nothing to do with the Lancet's "study", and in an environment where such hogwash gets published, how is one clinician with the daily burden of the families of the many covid dead not going to try and do something?

Re: French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award For Pseudoscience

#15

There's a media war on Raoult in France. I don't know if Chloroquine is effective on COVID 19, but I know that it's comically cheap and people took it for years against malaria without side effects. So at worse it's a placebo. On the other hand there's Remdesivir that's astronomically expensive, destroys kidneys and hasn't any effectiveness against COVID (even the OMS says so). But it's still the recommended treatmen…

Wow, gray downvoted posts appear to be the quality contents on health related themes here!

Re: French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award For Pseudoscience

#16
post #7
post #3

This is really counter productive and snarky. How does this advance science? There have been multiple studies on this, and it has been a mixed bag. This one is positive: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32418114/ There are others that are positive, and still others that are negative.

This award isn't about those other studies, it's about his choice to over-egg his research. > Subsequent analysis of Raoult’s data found that his sample size was incredibly small, with only 6 patients given the hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin combination. The study was also found to be improperly controlled, and data was excluded for a number of patients whose condition worsened as they were either transferred to int…

None of this makes his research "pseudoscience".

Re: French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award For Pseudoscience

#17
President Macron actually paid a visit to Raoult back in April. The visit probably inadvertently cast a gigantic spotlight on the shoddy (or at best preliminary) research. In my opinion it reflected quite poorly on the quality of Macron's scientific council.

More generally, I spent way too much time comparing the pandemic responses of various European countries. For France, one thing that stood out to me was an outsize focus by media and politicians on research by French scientists.

Re: French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award For Pseudoscience

#18

As an actual pharmacologist I find it fascinating how the general public has suddenly taken such a poorly informed interest in drug discovery. For the HN audience it would be like people taking an almost tribal approach to go-lang vs rust, debating it on national television, without any of them knowing what a loop is.

My mother-in-law is an architect by training but she was convinced (by youtube) that she ought to have some HCQ so she had family members ship us some. She's even suggested out of the blue that she should start taking it as a preventative for no particular except that she read amazon workers have been contracting covid and we get a lot of amazon packages.

When we told her that's not a good idea she felt compelled to defend HCQ against the mainstream media slander, as if that were the problem here.

Re: French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award For Pseudoscience

#19

As an actual pharmacologist I find it fascinating how the general public has suddenly taken such a poorly informed interest in drug discovery. For the HN audience it would be like people taking an almost tribal approach to go-lang vs rust, debating it on national television, without any of them knowing what a loop is.

Is it fascinating, or concerning and scary?

Tell me if I'm wrong, but low quality papers get published all the time, in all domains. But nobody cares about Rust vs Go in the current crisis.

Then the media take results at face value because they're constantly looking for breaking news, they give a platform to people with strong opinions rather than nuanced ones (good scientists probably don't have time for that anyway). It seems only logical that the general population has a misguided and emotional interest in the topic, especially when it has disrupted the life of so many.

Re: French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award For Pseudoscience

#20
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This award isn't about those other studies, it's about his choice to over-egg his research. > Subsequent analysis of Raoult’s data found that his sample size was incredibly small, with only 6 patients given the hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin combination. The study was also found to be improperly controlled, and data was excluded for a number of patients whose condition worsened as they were either transferred to int…

You're going to fault a clinician working in a pandemic who has found an interesting result when all the experts are stumped?

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