Live data from Hacker News

Ivermectin shows that not all science is worth following

theatlantic.com

41–50 of 93 posts

Re: Ivermectin shows that not all science is worth following

#41
post #27
post #15

The Actually Real Scandal About Ivermectin is something like the anthropic principle but about the fact that I know that nothing positive about Ivermectin would ever be allowed on the Atlantic. Is Ivermectin at best barely above useless for covid? Maybe. Is it crucial and it's a crime against humanity for being suppressed? Maybe, and I'm inclined to say probably because the same people who lie about everything are mi…

The people saying ivermectin works are the same people saying hcq worked last year. The people pushing the vaccine are the only people who have consistently been curing serious illnesses for the last 100 years. The ivermectin group are the people who have been pushing snake oil for the last 1000 years and cured nothing.

Wow you've really convinced me bud you definitely sound nuanced and educated, now I know that the vaccine = good and supported by smart people and ivermectin = bad and supported by dumb people, I know exactly which side I want to be on.

Re: Ivermectin shows that not all science is worth following

#42
post #4

Why would not some government fund the proper research into Ivermectin and Covid and be done with it. A lot of money was already thrown into the problem, throwing a bit more into a possible cheap and safe preventive treatment is a no brainer, unless I am missing something. Even this article suggests that there are some studies showing promise for Ivermectin, well, go create a big proper one and put an end to this deb…

Keep an eye out for TOGETHER[1], I-TECH[2], PRINCIPLE[3] and ACTIV-6[4] results (with TOGETHER already having dropped IVM for futility)

[1] https://www.togethertrial.com/

[2] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04920942

[3] https://www.principletrial.org/

[4] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04885530

Re: Ivermectin shows that not all science is worth following

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dose for prevention is a fraction of the dose for people already infected. Maybe per year? I don't know, I don't recall the details, but even so that's without the economies of scale that would intervene if it was a worldwide effort. Re: vaccines, JP Morgan estimated Pfizer alone will make $100B from vaccines. I don't think manufacturing Ivermectin is complex enough that it would net ANY profit, the effort would…

> Lastly, I don't think this is a conspiracy, either for money or politics, going for vaccines was just the easiest sell for both people and governments, and doing anything different would have been extremely difficult (see Sweden and lockdown policies). This is not true. Governments were and are being hammered by their inability to manage COVID. There is a massive incentive to find a therapeutic that can treat the i…

[deleted]

Re: Ivermectin shows that not all science is worth following

#44
post #17
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the government funds it, that will make it suspicious in the eyes of many people. There are already a number of high quality studies, and they are interpreted through people's own lens of preconception. The article points out a real problem in medical literature, but the public perception problem is much worse. Medical literature is at least trying to reach a truthful consensus.

Can you explain what "truthful consensus" means in this situation? The article does not give me any hope that medical literature is "trying" anything.

Most researchers are interested in the truth. There are incentives for people to be lazy and fast, which leads to bad science, but most of the time they would rather be right. They'll even defend bad results, but out of self protection rather than outright intent to mislead.

So there are plenty of problems, but of an entirely different character from the outright propaganda by non-scientists practicing ideological confirmation bias.

Re: Ivermectin shows that not all science is worth following

#45
post #11
post #4

Why would not some government fund the proper research into Ivermectin and Covid and be done with it. A lot of money was already thrown into the problem, throwing a bit more into a possible cheap and safe preventive treatment is a no brainer, unless I am missing something. Even this article suggests that there are some studies showing promise for Ivermectin, well, go create a big proper one and put an end to this deb…

If the government funds it, that will make it suspicious in the eyes of many people. There are already a number of high quality studies, and they are interpreted through people's own lens of preconception. The article points out a real problem in medical literature, but the public perception problem is much worse. Medical literature is at least trying to reach a truthful consensus.

[deleted]

Re: Ivermectin shows that not all science is worth following

#46
post #8

It's as though medical literature is going through the same process that the Internet did: built with the assumption of good behavior, and that good actors would swamp bad ones. That turns out to be untrue, and correcting it after the fact is much harder.

This is the fundamental problem of our time. Trust has been traditionally built via personal relationships. But that doesn’t scale, and every attempt people have made to try to curb the bad actors at scale is a cat-and-mouse problem that is eventually worked around. So media influencers of dubious provenance can establish a following and there’s no credible voice with enough “engagement” to debunk them (the truth is…

The exception I keep pondering is Wikipedia. It has many problems, but most of the time I get decent information. I expected it to be overrun by trolls and spammers. While they do exist, they don't dominate the way most other forums do without appointed police.

Re: Ivermectin shows that not all science is worth following

#47
post #25
post #2

The problem is that Ivermectin is off patent, so no drug company can make any money from it. Since there is no money for expensive research studies or clinical trials, all the research studies that get done will be low budget and subject to being called "lousy science". How about just properly reporting and studying the actual facts from one of the very large real world trials, like the one in India?

And why is Covid not really a thing in subsaharan Africa where everyone takes ivermectin anyway, because it’s a marvelous antiparasitic drug. You’d think the poorest parts of Africa with the worst medical systems in the world would be hit harder, but they’re not. And it’s probably not genetic since the African diaspora is hit hard by covid.

> And why is Covid not really a thing in subsaharan Africa where everyone takes ivermectin anyway,

False premise. Africa as a whole trended a lot like Europe and North America until late 2020, but the late 2020 to 2021 reopening explosion that the latter two places had was replaced with a slower gradual growth with a later and lower peak in Africa, which has been fairly hard hit compared to the rest of the world outside Europe and North America.

Re: Ivermectin shows that not all science is worth following

#48
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the fundamental problem of our time. Trust has been traditionally built via personal relationships. But that doesn’t scale, and every attempt people have made to try to curb the bad actors at scale is a cat-and-mouse problem that is eventually worked around. So media influencers of dubious provenance can establish a following and there’s no credible voice with enough “engagement” to debunk them (the truth is…

The exception I keep pondering is Wikipedia. It has many problems, but most of the time I get decent information. I expected it to be overrun by trolls and spammers. While they do exist, they don't dominate the way most other forums do without appointed police.

This is not the case in German language Wikipedia, though. There are many examples there of users with high reputation abusing their power and pushing their personal agendas.

Re: Ivermectin shows that not all science is worth following

#49
post #2

The problem is that Ivermectin is off patent, so no drug company can make any money from it. Since there is no money for expensive research studies or clinical trials, all the research studies that get done will be low budget and subject to being called "lousy science". How about just properly reporting and studying the actual facts from one of the very large real world trials, like the one in India?

The lousy studies aren't lousy because of the constraints of an insufficient budget. They're based on fraudulent/fabricated data.

As far as the "real world trial" of India, the peak of their delta wave roughly coinciding with an updated treatment guideline including ivermectin is hardly strong evidence.

A) Correlation isn't causation.

B) An updated treatment guideline doesn't indicate people were actually taking ivermectin.

C) Using it as a treatment (i.e. after a case occurs) can't possibly be responsible for preventing cases. There was some buzz about it being offered as a prophylactic, but it never panned out.

D) The peak of the wave coinciding with the update necessitates that the reproduction rate was dropping before the update

Further, just look at Peru for a clear demonstration that it isn't the miracle some would like to believe it is.

Re: Ivermectin shows that not all science is worth following

#50
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curing serious disease? That’s rich.

What do you mean? Smallpox is extinct, diptheria, pertussus and polio are nearly extinct, and measles mumps and rubella would be nearly extinct if not for pockets of antivaxers creating a constant stream of outbreaks. Go look up how many diseases these people killed prior to the vaccines, and then a few years after. You are absolutely taking for granted what we've accomplished through the use of vaccines.

I agree but those were scientists from the past that practiced real science. Meaning they accepted counter arguments and evidence; not just dictate. They also discovered through the scientific method that you can not vaccinate for corona viruses

They also were acutely aware you should never mass vaccinate during a pandemic.

They were correct and that is why you see the results in Israel, Singapore, England, and now the US, that you are seeing. That these are bad therapeutics at best. They could end up being worse.

The scientist and doctors who accomplished what you enumerated are indeed out there, but their voices are being suppressed by bureaucrats that now represent crony corrupt science; like fauci.

Post reply on HN