Some context, quoting myself from another discussion site:
https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2020/06/03/widely-publicized-hydroxychloroquine-study-appears-based-bogus-data/Widely Publicized Hydroxychloroquine Study Appears To Be Based On Bogus DataJOHN SEXTON, Posted at 1:01 pm on June 3, 2020
This certainly looks like a significant case of medical fraud. A company called Surgisphere claimed it had a database of information gathered from over 600 hospitals around the world on the success of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of the coronavirus. The company’s owner authored several papers published in prominent medical journals based on this data. Those papers were then widely reported in the media last month and resulted in drug trials that were already underway being paused:
On its face, it was a major finding: Antimalarial drugs touted by the White House as possible COVID-19 treatments looked to be not just ineffective, but downright deadly. A study published on 22 May in The Lancet used hospital records procured by a little-known data analytics company called Surgisphere to conclude that coronavirus patients taking chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine were more likely to show an irregular heart rhythm—a known side effect thought to be rare—and were more likely to die in the hospital.
Within days, some large randomized trials of the drugs—the type that might prove or disprove the retrospective study’s analysis—screeched to a halt. Solidarity, the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) megatrial of potential COVID-19 treatments, paused recruitment into its hydroxychloroquine arm, for example.
...
Last week, a group of 100 doctors and scientists wrote an open letter to Lancet asking that the data underlying the study be explained in more detail because it appeared the numbers didn’t add up. At the time, Dr. Sapan S. Desai, the owner of Surgisphere vigorously defended the accuracy of his data but refused to show it to anyone. He later agreed to let Lancet review it. However, today the Guardian reported some additional problems with the credibility of Surgisphere, a company whose total of six employees include a science fiction author and an adult model:
How in Hades did the august
Lancet let itself get fooled by such a
mountebank entity?! I'm at a loss for an explanation not predicated on agenda or confirmation bias. And who is backing/feeding Surgisphere in this mess? Are they a political cut-out?!
A member on that site later reminded me that Lancet also published the bogus
Iraq Body Count numbers. So Lancet is politicized, sadly.
