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Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

nature.com

211–220 of 493 posts

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#211
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really the reason or is it that they can't get a doctor to write them an off-label prescription?

A friend of mine found a doctor to prescribe it but his pharmacy won't fill it. He is so pissed. He was only planning to take small doses here or there as he's a teacher and around sick kids all the time, as if it were like Zinc to hopefully help reduce the severity of Covid-19 if he does get it, but despite going through the effort and succeeding in finding a doctor willing to prescribe it (and my friend even signed…

Is your friend vaccinated?

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the TV tells you something, you do not have to believe it. Where do you think most of the people taking ivermectin heard about it? They probably have no idea how ivermectin would actually work, but heard it from some conservative talk show host that they trust more than scientists backing the actual COVID vaccine. I'm astonished by how totally backwards all of this is.

I learned about Ivermectin from MedCram circa May 2020. Everybody I know personally who did not learn about it from me learned about it from Eric Weinstein on the Joe Rogan podcast. A good friend of mine watches Fox News no less than three hours a day and took both Pfizer doses months ago. I suspect you might be projecting, and perhaps you learned about Ivermectin from a neoliberal TV show. Most of the people who bel…

I consider Joe Rogan a right wing host, and I had heard he was telling people about ivermectin. I didn't know that originally people heard it from Eric Weinstein on his show, although I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes. Aren't all right wing / conservative hosts or media pretty much saying the same things in terms of COVID, anyway?

I do think people also form their opinions of the COVID vaccine on real information. I personally consulted someone I know who has a PhD in Molecular Biology to gather more information on the mRNA vaccines.

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#213

I'm going to make what is probably a controversial statement, which is that, in my experience, most meta-analyses are trash. A meta-analysis is usually grounded on the assumption that an aggregation of multiple, well-conducted studies can provide significant information that may not be evident by taking each study individually. Essential to this assumption is the premise that those studies included in the meta-analys…

Do researchers ever pre-register their studies when they do meta analyses? Pre-registration makes sense for the timing of doing actual studies, but not as much in the case of meta analyses (which presumably happen on a much faster timeline). But given what we've seen with p-hacking, it seems like it could be good if people pre-registered their meta analyses before crunching the numbers.

Sure some researchers do pre-register their meta analysis studies on clinicaltrials.gov. It's generally optional. Of course there's nothing stopping a dishonest researcher from doing a little secret p-hacking before pre-registering.

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said a word about any of that. I said that people are self medicating and incorrectly calculating an appropriate dosage, and I am not wrong. [1] 1. https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul...

What evidence did you have that people were doing this, which presumably affected your opinion on this topic?

1. Facebook groups where people have admitted to taking more than they should have, causing incontinence. Not public groups, but one local to my area.

2. The FDA themselves

I have to ask, are you actually advocating for self-medicating with products from Tractor Supply? I've not once said anything about my opinion of Ivermectin, only that of self medication.

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#215
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States CDC literally changed the definition of "vaccine" this year, so that these products could still be identified as vaccines. You're going to tell me that it's "science illiterate" to consider mRNA therapy as gene therapy, because the genes are not actually changed, but instead only expressed to create the therapeutic effect. But it is "scientifically literate" to call such a therapy a "vaccine"? I hop…

> The United States CDC literally changed the definition of "vaccine" this year, so that these products could still be identified as vaccines. For anyone else curious: Before the change, the definition for “vaccination” read, “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Now, the word “immunity” has been switched to “protection.” [1] It seems obvious to me that this was c…

For anybody else who stumbles across the above uninformed comment, here is some information for context (wrt "gene therapy", etc.):

https://www.nature.com/gt/journal-information

https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/gene-based-therape...

A certain degree of ignorance can be forgiven in this day and age, because everything is being constantly re-defined by the television, and most folks get their information from the television.

So don't attack people for not knowing things, but just be aware how many low information people are unintentionally misleading others. You can even see in the parent comment, the primary source of information for most of these people is some form of media company (Miami Herald, in this case). This is, unfortunately, the new normal.

Logging in with different accounts and downvoting this won't change the facts.

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're [often] using the horse formulation because their doctor said no .

This is such a hypothetical. How many people got ivermectin against their doctor prescription, and how many got adverse effects from that? 1 in 100M?

Who said anything about adverse effects?

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#217
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If iver is a good gamble, then wouldn't the vaccine be a better gamble? After all, unlike iver, there is very good hospitalization data about vaccinated vs unvaccinated now.

This is true, but just because the two are on opposite sides of the culture war doesn't mean they're medically mutually exclusive.

I didn’t realize the lottery gave out different odds based on political affiliation.

Do republicans or liberals get better probabilities? Or is it only for Covid related odds?

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#218
What I find almost more interesting than the article itself is the comments that show a non-zero portion of the HN community (which I think is generally more intellectually curious and educated than average) are actually strongly arguing that ivermectin has strong effect, and even crazier, that it may be safer or more effective than the mRNA vaccines.

Is this from being incapable of following science and drawing rational conclusions? Or is it more of a tribal thing, where they are exposed to a biased subset of information/misinformation, and are now emotionally invested in the success of ivermectin because their tribe is?

Either way, like someone else in the comments said, these past 2 years have shown us that laypeople are incapable of following active science in real time and drawing reasoned conclusions. Frankly, this is probably true of everyone who is not an expert in the field in question. We need organizations like the CDC and FDA to be much better about their messaging (remember the no-mask debacle? Great way to lose credibility, guys and gals), and we need much better tools to shut down the spread and weaponization of misinformation from the anti-vax crowd et al. I honestly don’t have any idea of how either of those get fixed, however.

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are literally taking horse formulations of ivermectin because doctors are rightfully refusing to prescribe ivermectin for an off label and ineffective use. Oh, and the access to this medicine is “marginalized” BECAUSE IT DOESNT WORK TO TREAT COVID. We generally do not expect doctors to prescribe medicine that will not work or is not appropriate for the patients condition. Complaining about their access being m…

> People are literally taking horse formulations of ivermectin People are taking the horse formulation because most pharmacists won't even fill an off-label prescription for the drug, which - even if it has no effect on COVID - is safe and taken by a quarter billion people every year. Let people take it. It's not harmful. Or, make a big huge deal about people taking it and, well, then it becomes a big huge deal.

[deleted]

Re: Lesson of ivermectin: meta-analyses based on summary data alone are unreliable

#220

I'm going to make what is probably a controversial statement, which is that, in my experience, most meta-analyses are trash. A meta-analysis is usually grounded on the assumption that an aggregation of multiple, well-conducted studies can provide significant information that may not be evident by taking each study individually. Essential to this assumption is the premise that those studies included in the meta-analys…

Do researchers ever pre-register their studies when they do meta analyses? Pre-registration makes sense for the timing of doing actual studies, but not as much in the case of meta analyses (which presumably happen on a much faster timeline). But given what we've seen with p-hacking, it seems like it could be good if people pre-registered their meta analyses before crunching the numbers.

Good practices dictate that preregistration should always be done nowadays, including for meta-analysis. In practice though, this has very little impact. There is absolutely no guarantee that what's written in the paper is a faithful report of what really happened. There's nothing holding back dishonest (or, at that point I guess I should write 'standard') researcher from doing absolutely whatever they want.
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