Fake scientific papers push research credibility to crisis point

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Amity Island

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Tens of thousands of bogus research papers are being published in journals in an international scandal that is worsening every year, scientists have warned. Medical research is being compromised, drug development hindered and promising academic research jeopardised thanks to a global wave of sham science that is sweeping laboratories and universities.

Last year the annual number of papers retracted by research journals topped 10,000 for the first time. Most analysts believe the figure is only the tip of an iceberg of scientific fraud.

“The situation has become appalling,” said Professor Dorothy Bishop of Oxford University. “The level of publishing of fraudulent papers is creating serious problems for science.

“Editors are not fulfilling their roles properly, and peer reviewers are not doing their jobs. And some are being paid large sums of money,” said Professor Alison Avenell of Aberdeen University. “It is deeply worrying.”

 

 
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It's arguable that she was persuaded by the several Ivermectin studies which were faked, but I think she's said that there's no evidence that would persuade her that Ivermectin doesn't work for COVID-19. (I'm not sure how strongly she believes in its effect against cancer. It seems she's moved on (or back) to homeopathy as the medicine that cures all.)

(I suspect her interviews with Campbell were what started his descent.)

 
It's arguable that she was persuaded by the several Ivermectin studies which were faked, but I think she's said that there's no evidence that would persuade her that Ivermectin doesn't work for COVID-19. (I'm not sure how strongly she believes in its effect against cancer. It seems she's moved on (or back) to homeopathy as the medicine that cures all.)

(I suspect her interviews with Campbell were what started his descent.)

I don't think there was any ill intention behind her wanting to find a readily available treatment that had already been prescribed billions of times before. It was Dr Andrew Hill in the UK that was tasked with sifting through all the available studies on ivermectin (known to be safe for humans all over the world). He was solidly in favour stating he would have given it to his family had it been made available. At the time there were an estimated 15k deaths a day from covid, so having something all ready available would have been a god sent. Unfortunately he changed his conclusion on ivermectin and thus, the new novel vaccines were then permitted to be rolled out under emergency authorisation. This emergency authorisation was only permitted if no other existing treatments were available.
 
Unfortunately he changed his conclusion on ivermectin
Why unfortunately? The earlier evidence was surely just wrong. As better studies were done (some of the earlier ones turned out to be entirely made up) it became clear that Ivermectin just didn't work for this. (Some of the more moderate people suggested that the outright fraud was perhaps unfortunately preventing discovering a more modest benefit of the drug, but I think that's all but disappeared now. It just doesn't work for COVID-19.)

I don't think there's anything wrong with looking at existing drugs to see if they might have worked. Hence Dexamethasone (the only one I can think of, though I'm sure there have been others). But you want to check to see if they actually work (and when, and how well).
 
Why unfortunately? The earlier evidence was surely just wrong. As better studies were done (some of the earlier ones turned out to be entirely made up) it became clear that Ivermectin just didn't work for this. (Some of the more moderate people suggested that the outright fraud was perhaps unfortunately preventing discovering a more modest benefit of the drug, but I think that's all but disappeared now. It just doesn't work for COVID-19.)
Given a virus is a parasite. Why doesn't ivermectin - an anti-parasitic - work?

"Viruses are small obligate intracellular parasites"


 
I use Ivermectin on my horses from time to time and it doesn't even work on all digestive parasites, so it is a very big leap, to suggest it would work on a virus because that is a parasite. It will kill large round worms but it won't kill encysted round worms or tape worms or bots and I am not sure it works on lung worm and of course, a bit like antibiotics, if you use it too frequently and unnecessarily, resistance develops and then it becomes ineffective, even for the parasites that it is supposed to treat.
 
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