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The Pandemic Claims New Victims: Prestigious Medical Journals (archive)
One study promised that popular blood-pressure drugs were safe for people infected with the coronavirus. Another paper warned that anti-malaria drugs endorsed by President Trump actually were dangerous to these patients.
The studies, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet, were retracted shortly after publication, following an outcry from researchers who saw obvious flaws.
The hasty retractions, on the same day this month, have alarmed scientists worldwide who fear that the rush for research on the coronavirus has overwhelmed the peer review process and opened the door to fraud, threatening the credibility of respected medical journals just when they are needed most.
[...] "The problem with trust is that it's too easy to lose and too hard to get back," said Dr. Jerome Kassirer, a former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, which published one of the retracted papers in early May. "These are big blunders."
If outside scientists detected problems that weren't identified by the peer reviewers, then the journals failed, he said. Like hundreds of other researchers, Dr. Kassirer called on the editors to publish full explanations of what happened.
See also: US FDA pulls its emergency approval of chloroquine use for COVID-19
[NB: This follows up on "Doubt Looms Over Hydroxychloroquine Study That Halted Global Trials" which was part of 2020-06-15 Roundup of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV2, Coronavirus) Stories --martyb]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @10:15AM (1 child)
Do you know why the world has seen such relative peace? Is it because we've all become secretly nice and friendly even though literally every single observation you could make of such a notion (beyond groups of already homogeneous folks) would render such an idea absurd? Even though violent crime has skyrocketed since those old regressive times? No. The reason the world has seen such relative peace is because, and only because, of a little event [wikipedia.org] or two with a Fat Man that happened in the latter half of 1945. If not for that, then indeed you would see us regularly killing one another as we always have and very possibly always may.
Watch one of the countless time lapsed histories [youtube.com] of the world. It's quite informative. Ostensibly you'd come to believe that in modern times we reached something like a stability - finally coming to a peace with one another. But in reality the exact opposite is true. Up until 1945 the world was dividing and conquering, falling, and repeating more rapidly than ever before. The one and only thing that temporarily halted our tendencies was a Fat Man. But that deterrence will too eventually fade as it becomes counteracted by various defensive techniques at which point we're going to get right back to the game. Hell even look domestically. You think this country is going to last at its current rate?
In any point, modern 'progressivism' is little more than a rebranding of fascism with a bit of 1984 and newspeak added in. It's not about the politics (though I suspect most progressive would have loved the Italian Fascist party's political ideology) but about the intolerance that defines fascism. And indeed the intolerance invariably leads to an implosion and backlash. That you can't see this is already happening is indicative you are spending way too much time in echo chambers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @12:01PM
Violent crime rates have fallen lately, probably linked to the banning of leaded gasoline and lead paints.