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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: 4, Informative) by KritonK on Wednesday June 17 2020, @10:52AM
This is more or less what we did in Greece, apart from the infinite funding bit. The government's policy on COVID-19 is dictated by a committee of epidemiologists, and we've had great success in limiting the spread of the disease. The government acted on their advice from the beginning; they started gradually implementing a lockdown even before the first COVID-19 case in the country, and implemented a full lockdown before the first death. Now that the lockdown is over, there are safety rules in place, dictated by the committee, for just about every activity. There are even rules for how brothels should operate [kathimerini.gr][article in Greek]! Some of these rules may be unenforceable, but the more that are followed, the better. Again, according to the epidemiologists, even if part of the people do not follow these rules, we should still be OK, with OK being defined as the transmission factor R0 remaining less than 1.
Would politicians, who thought they knew better and/or weighed in other factors, such as the effect on the economy or their political careers, have acted as effectively? I doubt it.