A study that stoked enthusiasm for the now-disproven idea that a cheap malaria drug can treat COVID-19 has been retracted — more than four-and-a-half years after it was published.
… Its eventual withdrawal, on the grounds of concerns over ethical approval and doubts about the conduct of the research, marks the 28th retraction for co-author Didier Raoult, a French microbiologist, formerly at Marseille’s Hospital-University Institute Mediterranean Infection (IHU), who shot to global prominence in the pandemic. French investigations found that he and the IHU had violated ethics-approval protocols in numerous studies, and Raoult has now retired.
“Why it took more than four-and-a-half years after the study was initially published for the journal to come to this conclusion is not clear. It is also somewhat surprising that most of the paper’s authors still stand by study’s findings and conclusions despite its obvious inconsistencies, methodological flaws and potential ethical issues as outlined in the retraction note,” says Søgaard.
The paper (now marked as retracted): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.105949
I’ve never seen people sneer at doctors of physics talking about physics or doctors of medieval literature discussing the influences on chaucer (though they do get routinely mocked for thinking themselves employable).
What people do sneer at is doctors of electrical engineering claiming that they’ve disproven speciation by evolution and doctors of law declaring medical establishment wrong about medicine.
A doctorate just means you’re an expert at something not everything
A medical doctor is a well regarded and well numerated profession. They are pillars of society. They are trusted and revered in a way that teachers rarely are. The status of a doctor in the field of computer science or engineering is not much more than someone with a common or garden degree. Nobody knows what a research question is or how science is advanced. Everyone knows House and Grays Anatomy. Fuck those fake doctors with their models and predictive power. We don’t revere truth tellers, we revere celebrity. We want dat bedside rizz. That’s how Dr Shipman killed us. That’s why Professor Nutt was fired from his post.