The mantra of the COVID-19 pandemic has been, “Follow the science.”
This statement assumes that science is unbiased, objective and not swayed by emotions.
In theory, this is correct. Yet, who gets funding, what topics get funded and what research is published can become embroiled in politics and emotion, which introduce an element of subjectivity and bias.
The unconscious desire for specific answers often leads professionals astray, and this can have a negative impact upon public health policy. COVID-19 has shown us this pitfall and the weaknesses within the scientific infrastructure.
For example, we have seen many COVID-19 research papers retracted or removed from academic journals, including The Lancet, which retracted a study purporting to look at the effectiveness of treating COVID-19.
The study claimed to follow 96,000 COVID-19 patients from around the world, concluding that taking the drug hydroxychloroquine doubles a patient’s chance of death.
Soon after publication, experts noted that its mortality rates were inaccurate. Most notably, the paper reported more participant deaths in Australian hospitals than the Australian government reported for its whole population. In addition, it was difficult to confirm what hospitals did and did not participate in the study.
This article’s retraction invalidated the primary data source of another article, prompting its removal from The New England Journal of Medicine.
A publication promoting Ivermectin as a viable COVID-19 treatment was removed due to similar issues with its research and data.
The study claimed over a 90% success rate in preventing death, but the paper was removed for concerns over plagiarism, data manipulation and data interpretation errors. In some cases, patients were included in the data set who died before they could have possibly participated in the study.
Before its removal, the study was viewed 150,000 times, cited in 30 other papers and included in several meta-analyses which have since been retracted. This required a significant amount of time and energy to counter the disinformation resulting from this study that could have been invested in more fruitful research.
Another questionable Ivermectin study was conducted in Mexico City. The Mexican government sent out 83,000 COVID-19 kits to patients who tested positive. The kits contained Ivermectin, paracetamol, aspirin and oximeters, and officials stated that this resulted in a 52% reduction in hospitalizations.
This study is an example of poor research methodologies, because there is no way to know who did and did not take which drug, or what other factors were at play. It’s an example of the common fallacy that correlation equals causation.
In addition, it is not appropriate to conduct a medical study when the subjects are unaware that they are participating. Nevertheless, the study has been touted by many conservative media outlets as evidence that Ivermectin is effective in treating COVID-19.
Other Ivermectin studies have been canceled or removed because they either were based on similar data sets as the first two studies above or used flawed methodology. It is time consuming to run a forensic analysis of a research article, so there is no way to know how many fraudulent articles are still in circulation.
Since July 2020, the forensic article investigators at Retraction Watch have documented over 200 COVID-19-related article retractions from well-respected journals. Of course, not all retracted articles are related to fraud or fabricated data. Some reflect honest errors of calculation. Nevertheless, the public is left wondering who to trust.
Unfortunately, the scientific community has been influenced by politics just as much as the rest of us. In a zeal to find a miracle cure or to disprove what seems ridiculous, some researchers have distracted policymakers and the public from finding effective, proven methods to protect the world from COVID-19.
We trust researchers to be objective and unbiased. Unfortunately, poorly designed or fraudulent studies – both for and against the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 – have prevented legitimate research that could have cleared up the question for millions.
More importantly, if researchers had been more careful and publishers more responsible, then we would not have wasted so much time and money on it.
It is not my purpose to promote the use or non-use of particular drugs. As stated in other columns I’ve written, this is a subject for you and your primary care physician.
My concern is for how scientific research has been conducted during this global health crisis. Good public policy and guidelines are dependent upon good research, and the pandemic has revealed shortcomings in how trusted publications vet the research findings being submitted to them.
If there is no faith in the nation’s ability to publish solid, accurate data, then the general public will not have faith or confidence in any policy, mandate, guideline or suggestion that comes from public health officials.
Senior Staff Chaplain and Clinical Ethicist at the Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock, Arkansas.
