Quote

The World Health Organization and a number of national governments have changed their Covid-19 policies and treatments on the basis of flawed data from a little-known US healthcare analytics company, also calling into question the integrity of key studies published in some of the world’s most prestigious medical journals.
A Guardian investigation can reveal the US-based company Surgisphere, whose handful of employees appear to include a science fiction writer and an adult-content model, has provided data for multiple studies on Covid-19 co-authored by its chief executive, but has so far failed to adequately explain its data or methodology.

Data it claims to have legitimately obtained from more than a thousand hospitals worldwide formed the basis of scientific articles that have led to changes in Covid-19 treatment policies in Latin American countries. It was also behind a decision by the WHO and research institutes around the world to halt trials of the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine. On Wednesday, the WHO announced those trials would now resume.
Two of the world’s leading medical journals – the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine – published studies based on Surgisphere data. The studies were co-authored by the firm’s chief executive, Sapan Desai.

Quote (excellence @ Jun 4 2020 08:48am)

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgisphere-who-world-health-organization-hydroxychloroquine



wtf is going on

Quote (thesnipa @ 4 Jun 2020 16:47)

WHO going the way of the UN. few more years and they'll just be ignored.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jun 4 2020 10:15am)

Not the WHO's fault that such lacking research was accepted and published by the most prestigious medical journals without adequately reviewing the authors' data and methodology.
It's really unbelievable that these supposed top-notch journals accepted papers for publication without at least running a simple reproducibility check. This would immediately have revealed that the authors of these studies are either not able or not willin, to provide the data from which they derive their findings.

This is a new and very sad chapter in what is known in the academic world as the "reproducibility crisis". :(

Quote (excellence @ Jun 4 2020 06:48am)

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgisphere-who-world-health-organization-hydroxychloroquine



wtf is going on

Quote (thesnipa @ 4 Jun 2020 17:16)

when the creeks dry you'll eat mud. pandemics and lack of info are a crazy combo.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jun 4 2020 10:39am)

This is why everyone is publishing their coronavirus research on arXiv or other preprint platforms these days. With other researchers being well-aware that these results are preliminary and and thoroughly vetted yet.

But when a study is published in an actual scientific journal, the rest of the research community will (and should) assume that this particular study has been reviewed and wont contain basic errors or weaknesses, like e.g. missing reproducibility.

Quote (excellence @ Jun 4 2020 09:48am)

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgisphere-who-world-health-organization-hydroxychloroquine



wtf is going on

Quote

In a recent survey of six countries suffering from severe covid-19 outbreaks, Britain was a clear outlier in its reluctance to don masks. The survey, which included three Western countries (America, Britain and Italy) and three Asian ones (China, Japan and South Korea), asked roughly 1,000 individuals from each about how they have adjusted their behaviour as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. It found that, although Britons were about as likely as the other respondents to maintain social distance and wash their hands, they were only about half as likely to wear a mask.