Let's take a look at this @BMC Infectious Diseases paper claiming that methylene blue can be used to treat COVID-19. Let's do a proper post-publication peer review. Because the peer review system completely failed here.https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-021-05993-0 …
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In short, the authors claim this: Cells infected with viruses are treated with methylene blue (MB). Then, cells are beamed with 670 nm light. MB absorbs the light energy, transfers it to nucleic acids, and thus kills viruses.
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I found several problems with this paper. All of these could have been raised during peer review/editorial screening.
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Problem 1. Conflicts of interest. The treatment is performed in an "BX-1 AIDS treatment instrument", developed by Boxin Biotechnology Development LTD (Beijing, China). Guess where three of the authors work?pic.twitter.com/e1U2wx2xkX
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Now, this is not necessarily a problem. (Who knows, this might be a Wonderful Machine! It might even say Ping! - https://youtube.com/watch?v=arCITMfxvEc … ) But conflicts need to be declared. And the authors happily declared they had "no competing interests". That seems .... a bit off.
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The two references mentioned in the Introduction - 18 and 19 - are two patents, presumably from the same authors.pic.twitter.com/YWE9vOMkOQ
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Another problem: Figure 1 appears to show four overlapping panels. Now, the legend is a bit unclear, and does not seem to match the labels (no light/40 min light) so maybe I am misunderstanding this. But I do not think all four show the same sample.pic.twitter.com/NNSPwKQiaV
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Replying to @MicrobiomDigest
Looks like there might be even more overlap there? It seems like they might've just copied various sections from the bottom left panel onto other onespic.twitter.com/5kmR4GmaPl
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Replying to @GidMK @MicrobiomDigest
Any possible way someone could have mistaken the upload and added a few panned shots to the figure? Careless, for sure. At least no scaling changes...this is unfortunate :/
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To me the fact that the images have been shaded differently makes this unlikely, but not my area of expertise
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