<story><title>A mysterious company’s Covid-19 papers in top medical journals may be unraveling</title><url>https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/mysterious-company-s-coronavirus-papers-top-medical-journals-may-be-unraveling</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tuna-piano</author><text>Ugh. I&amp;#x27;m so disappointed in this whole situation. Feels like Theranos.&lt;p&gt;I want to cover my eyes and ears for the media and political shit show that&amp;#x27;s going to come from this.  It&amp;#x27;s true that a certain politician shouldn&amp;#x27;t be trumpeting unproven treatments, but the media seemed to celebrate when that politician was &amp;quot;proven&amp;quot; wrong. Did we forget that we should all be rooting for treatments to work?&lt;p&gt;I hoped during this pandemic science would move fast and sacrifice some accuracy for speed. But I didn&amp;#x27;t expect (a seemingly) complete fabrication could go so far with so many eyes.  Now I worry the overreaction toward accuracy-over-speed will cause significant slowdowns in published data.&lt;p&gt;We shouldn&amp;#x27;t over-punish honest mistakes when we value speed over accuracy... but this just feels awful. Would think prison is likely to come.&lt;p&gt;A good read: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;freerangestats.info&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;implausible-health-data-firm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;freerangestats.info&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;implausible-healt...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gfodor</author><text>Even I hadn&amp;#x27;t let my cynicism about our national discourse sink so low as to think medical treatments would be politicized. Ultimately, it was a new low point. Once it started it was clear where this was going. Many may have died from it if the worse case scenario turns out to be true: this treatment does in fact work, and was stalled or prevented due to politics.&lt;p&gt;Similarly, the complete disregard by the medical community of playing their role in reminding others organizing protests to take steps to prevent participants from spreading the virus has been equally disturbing. I&amp;#x27;ve heard literally nothing from the medical community about tips, methods, or instructions for ensuring protestors do not cause a new outbreak. There does not seem to be any innovation happening in helping people organize and protest while keeping social distancing in mind. I don&amp;#x27;t know what that would look like, but it&amp;#x27;s a moral failure that the problem hasn&amp;#x27;t been worked whatsoever. I haven&amp;#x27;t even heard stories of people just handing out masks. Things are quite dire.</text></comment>
<story><title>A mysterious company’s Covid-19 papers in top medical journals may be unraveling</title><url>https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/mysterious-company-s-coronavirus-papers-top-medical-journals-may-be-unraveling</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tuna-piano</author><text>Ugh. I&amp;#x27;m so disappointed in this whole situation. Feels like Theranos.&lt;p&gt;I want to cover my eyes and ears for the media and political shit show that&amp;#x27;s going to come from this.  It&amp;#x27;s true that a certain politician shouldn&amp;#x27;t be trumpeting unproven treatments, but the media seemed to celebrate when that politician was &amp;quot;proven&amp;quot; wrong. Did we forget that we should all be rooting for treatments to work?&lt;p&gt;I hoped during this pandemic science would move fast and sacrifice some accuracy for speed. But I didn&amp;#x27;t expect (a seemingly) complete fabrication could go so far with so many eyes.  Now I worry the overreaction toward accuracy-over-speed will cause significant slowdowns in published data.&lt;p&gt;We shouldn&amp;#x27;t over-punish honest mistakes when we value speed over accuracy... but this just feels awful. Would think prison is likely to come.&lt;p&gt;A good read: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;freerangestats.info&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;implausible-health-data-firm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;freerangestats.info&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;implausible-healt...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jmull</author><text>&amp;gt; but the media ...&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think you can blame the media here.&lt;p&gt;They reported on extremely important and relevant scientific research that was credible by any kind of reasonable journalistic standard. How could they have done otherwise?&lt;p&gt;Contrasting the research claims against the claims of &amp;quot;a certain politician&amp;quot; would be a natural and necessary part of that.&lt;p&gt;Some commentators went too far -- some always do, often the same ones -- but the failing here wasn&amp;#x27;t generally the media.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Did we forget that we should all be rooting for treatments to work?&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think that&amp;#x27;s being forgotten that outside the lunatic fringe. Notice that this story is getting wide coverage, just like the coverage of the original finding.</text></comment>