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Many scientists citing two scandalous Covid-19 papers ignore their retractions

sciencemag.org

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Re: Many scientists citing two scandalous Covid-19 papers ignore their retractions

#31

Post by FabHK »

tboyd47 wrote: post #30
FabHK wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. So, here's what happened: Drosten, Corman et al. from the Charité (among Europe's largest and most reputable university hospitals and medical schools) published a paper [1] in January 2020 [2] in the "Eurosurveillance Journal" in which they described a diagnostic workflow to detect SARS-CoV-2 (not "SARS-CoV-19", as you say) which they had developed and tested (both sensitivity and specificity). That became…

This comment is a bonanza of appeals to authority, straw man arguments, and ad hominems. At HN we generally prefer to see steelmanning. Would you like to take a shot at explaining why the most charitable interpretation of the Drosten review is misguided?

It would be ad hominem if I said that they are nutcases with bad English, and therefore their arguments were invalid. It would be an appeal to authority if I said that the Drosten has received Germany's Federal Cross of Merit (twice), is co-discoverer of SARS-CoV (the previous one), has researched MERS-CoV, and has been called "one of the world’s foremost experts on coronaviruses" by Science magazine, and therefore the Drosten PCR is good.

However, I am saying that these guys are nutcases with bad English, and Drosten is an eminent expert on coronaviruses, and also the Drosten PCR has proven to be fine, and also the "report" the nutcases wrote has been largely refuted, by people that know much more about this than I do.

This article outlining the "Ad hominem fallacy fallacy" might be instructive.

https://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html

> Put briefly, ad hominem is "You are an ignorant person, therefore your arguments are wrong", and not "Your arguments are wrong, therefore you are an ignorant person." The latter statement may be fallacious, but it's not an ad hominem fallacy.

Re: Many scientists citing two scandalous Covid-19 papers ignore their retractions

#32

Post by danappelxx »

samizdis wrote: post #2

Here is a list of retracted Covid-19 papers, as collated by Retraction Watch: https://retractionwatch.com/retracted-coronavirus-covid-19-p...

This is gold

“Worst paper of 2020?” https://scienceintegritydigest.com/2020/07/23/worst-paper-of...

Re: Many scientists citing two scandalous Covid-19 papers ignore their retractions

#33

Post by aaron695 »

tboyd47 wrote: post #30
FabHK wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. So, here's what happened: Drosten, Corman et al. from the Charité (among Europe's largest and most reputable university hospitals and medical schools) published a paper [1] in January 2020 [2] in the "Eurosurveillance Journal" in which they described a diagnostic workflow to detect SARS-CoV-2 (not "SARS-CoV-19", as you say) which they had developed and tested (both sensitivity and specificity). That became…

This comment is a bonanza of appeals to authority, straw man arguments, and ad hominems. At HN we generally prefer to see steelmanning. Would you like to take a shot at explaining why the most charitable interpretation of the Drosten review is misguided?

Rubbish, it was the well thought out explanations I come here for.

You should have contributed something to the conversation other than saying steelman.

I picked a randomish name (English based since there will be more English articles) from the signatures and found this

Dr. Kevin P. Corbett

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/who-were-the-so-calle...

Re: Many scientists citing two scandalous Covid-19 papers ignore their retractions

#34

Post by chrisseaton »

jjk166 wrote: post #18
chrisseaton wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, the issue is not the citation... it's what the citation is used to do. If an historian cites Mein Kampf it's not because they're agreeing with it, is it?

If a historian cites Mein Kampf, they're using it as a primary source - they might not agree with the opinions expressed within but they do believe Hitler expressed those opinions. If a historian cited a work that turned out to be a forgery, and did not acknowledge in their paper that it was a forgery, then their paper would certainly be suspect. True citing a retracted paper is not automatically 100% unacceptable, b…

> If a historian cites Mein Kampf, they're using it as a primary source - they might not agree with the opinions expressed within but they do believe Hitler expressed those opinions.

Yes... same as a scientist uses citations.

Citing someone doesn't mean 'I fully believe and support this person', it means 'I'm referring to what this person said' and they believe that's what the paper said. That's all. The text using the citation adds the context of what the author thinks.

Re: Many scientists citing two scandalous Covid-19 papers ignore their retractions

#36

Post by tboyd47 »

FabHK wrote: post #31
tboyd47 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is a bonanza of appeals to authority, straw man arguments, and ad hominems. At HN we generally prefer to see steelmanning. Would you like to take a shot at explaining why the most charitable interpretation of the Drosten review is misguided?

It would be ad hominem if I said that they are nutcases with bad English, and therefore their arguments were invalid. It would be an appeal to authority if I said that the Drosten has received Germany's Federal Cross of Merit (twice), is co-discoverer of SARS-CoV (the previous one), has researched MERS-CoV, and has been called "one of the world’s foremost experts on coronaviruses" by Science magazine, and therefore t…

You just repeated the same thoughts in an even more condescending way and still didn’t explain why they’re wrong.

It’s so odd that top level comment would be flagged.

Re: Many scientists citing two scandalous Covid-19 papers ignore their retractions

#37

Post by andrewflnr »

danappelxx wrote: post #32
samizdis wrote: post #2

Here is a list of retracted Covid-19 papers, as collated by Retraction Watch: https://retractionwatch.com/retracted-coronavirus-covid-19-p...

This is gold “Worst paper of 2020?” https://scienceintegritydigest.com/2020/07/23/worst-paper-of...

Wow, the comments under that are wild. Is is just me or is the fraction of crazy people in that thread pretty high?

Re: Many scientists citing two scandalous Covid-19 papers ignore their retractions

#38

Post by de6u99er »

A couple of years ago I had an idea how to solve this issue.

IMO blocchain technology could be actually a solution for such a problem, where one publications cryptographic hash consists of the content of the publication and the cryptographic hashes of it's citations. If a citation get's invalidated for whatever reason, papers citing it would automatically get invalidated too, and so on. Until someone fixes or removes the faulty citation and revalidates their part of the chain, and so forth.

Just imagine authors having puplic wallets proving their authorship.

If someone wants to pick up this idea, I'd be happy with 10% of the earnings that can be made with it.

Re: Many scientists citing two scandalous Covid-19 papers ignore their retractions

#39

Post by rualca »

tboyd47 wrote: post #36
FabHK wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be ad hominem if I said that they are nutcases with bad English, and therefore their arguments were invalid. It would be an appeal to authority if I said that the Drosten has received Germany's Federal Cross of Merit (twice), is co-discoverer of SARS-CoV (the previous one), has researched MERS-CoV, and has been called "one of the world’s foremost experts on coronaviruses" by Science magazine, and therefore t…

You just repeated the same thoughts in an even more condescending way and still didn’t explain why they’re wrong. It’s so odd that top level comment would be flagged.

On the contrary. The reply is a clear explanation of why the ad hominem accusation makes no sense.

The initial comment was rightfully flagged because it either ignores the bad and unscientific nature of the attacks on the paper.

Re: Many scientists citing two scandalous Covid-19 papers ignore their retractions

#40

Post by [deleted] »

rualca wrote: post #39
tboyd47 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just repeated the same thoughts in an even more condescending way and still didn’t explain why they’re wrong. It’s so odd that top level comment would be flagged.

On the contrary. The reply is a clear explanation of why the ad hominem accusation makes no sense. The initial comment was rightfully flagged because it either ignores the bad and unscientific nature of the attacks on the paper.

[deleted]
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