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GidMK's profile
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
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@GidMK

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Health NerdVerified account

@GidMK

Epidemiologist. Writer (Guardian, Observer etc). "Well known research trouble-maker". PhDing at @UoW Host of @senscipod Email gidmk.healthnerd@gmail.com he/him

Sydney, New South Wales
theguardian.com/profile/gideon…
Joined November 2015

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    1. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

      Health Nerd Retweeted Health Nerd

      So, one of the biggest studies to date on ivermectin for COVID-19 has issues significant enough that, if not fraud, are so serious that it invalidates the study without further explanation I promised a thread Here we go 1/nhttps://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1415764372362649601 …

      Health Nerd added,

      Health NerdVerified account @GidMK
      My new piece on ivermectin for COVID-19, potential fraud, and some really astonishing implications Thread to come soon https://gidmk.medium.com/is-ivermectin-for-covid-19-based-on-fraudulent-research-5cc079278602 …
      Show this thread
      47 replies 702 retweets 1,294 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

      2/n Firstly, none of this would've been possible without @JackMLawrence, who uncovered this in the first place and investigated it himself well before any of us gronks got on board Read his piece here:https://grftr.news/why-was-a-major-study-on-ivermectin-for-covid-19-just-retracted/ …

      2 replies 34 retweets 177 likes
      Show this thread
      Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

      Health Nerd Retweeted Health Nerd

      3/n The basic story is pretty astonishing. I've previously written about this study, Elgazzar et al, and why there are some indications that it's low-quality and potentially very unreliablehttps://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1407140636281638912?s=20 …

      Health Nerd added,

      Health NerdVerified account @GidMK
      11/n Randomization sequence generation is rated at low risk, but here's the information we have on randomization. It contradicts the protocol, which isn't great (they should've had 6 groups, not 2) pic.twitter.com/6C1BKGFvwd
      Show this thread
      5:04 PM - 15 Jul 2021
      • 11 Retweets
      • 92 Likes
      • amyfromarlington moosie gee Nandissa Mathematiker plädiert für Ruhe und Rationalität sally MaximusDerrick robbio Claire Luck Chris Street, 🇬🇧 MBA, MSc (Medicinal Chemistry)
      1 reply 11 retweets 92 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          4/n But @JackMLawrence noticed something weirder when he read the paper It appears that pretty much the entire introduction is plagiarized That's...not great Left is Elgazzar et al, right another study published 3 months beforepic.twitter.com/yVg4WrR6CG

          1 reply 12 retweets 120 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          5/n But that's just the start of this wild story You see, the authors had shared their data online They locked it, but our tenacious hero @JackMLawrence figured out the password - 1234pic.twitter.com/E2Wc2O9wU0

          5 replies 20 retweets 213 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          6/n To cut a very long story short, the file uploaded by the authors as the data for the study is filled with errors, and certainly not data collected from real patients in a real study @sTeamTraen with the in-depth analysis here: https://steamtraen.blogspot.com/2021/07/Some-problems-with-the-data-from-a-Covid-study.html …

          1 reply 21 retweets 138 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          7/n One tiny example of the issues with the data - most of the patients in one of the control groups are clones of each other, with very minor changes This is a very common feature of scientific fraudpic.twitter.com/8VlPC5nkJP

          1 reply 17 retweets 148 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          8/n Moreover, the study is meant to have started on the 8th of June according to the authors Of the people who died, fully 1/3 had been hospitalized and died BEFORE this date That's...badpic.twitter.com/3HPbTViNTD

          1 reply 14 retweets 126 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          9/n You can actually download the file yourself to check, although the website is a morass of malware so it's a bit dicey

          1 reply 4 retweets 87 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          10/n So is this the data file used in this study? Well...we don't know. Maybepic.twitter.com/DIMyycE2zN

          1 reply 3 retweets 74 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          11/n It's certainly what the authors uploaded, and in many ways matches their results, but it is also inconsistent in some other ways that make the whole thing extraordinarily confusing

          1 reply 4 retweets 83 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          12/n Problem is, even if this ISN'T the data that the authors actually collected (assuming they collected any data at all), there are still issues in the study For example, they used the wrong statistical tests several timespic.twitter.com/zURo3fpP0g

          1 reply 5 retweets 103 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          13/n Their statistical methodology is...frankly really bizarre They had SPSS but looked up p-values by hand in paper tables? Wildpic.twitter.com/JSA6NMy2Hy

          2 replies 9 retweets 114 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          14/n And let's not forget, pretty much the entire introduction WAS PLAGIARIZED Not good. Not good at all

          1 reply 6 retweets 92 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          14.5/n Is the study fraud? We may never know. It is really, really hard to prove anything in cases like these, and unless the authors go public we might never know what actually happened beyond the issues that we've seen so far

          1 reply 4 retweets 86 likes
          Show this thread
        14. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          15/n What does this mean more broadly? Well, here's where the story gets both more interesting and somewhat darker This is currently THE BIGGEST RCT of ivermectin. It shows a mortality benefit of 90% That's huge

          1 reply 10 retweets 97 likes
          Show this thread
        15. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          16/n Being such a big study, it has been included in multiple meta-analyses. With such a vast benefit, it has a very large influence on the meta-analytic resultspic.twitter.com/hkaBoyN0Dq

          1 reply 12 retweets 99 likes
          Show this thread
        16. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          17/n Indeed, removing ~just this single piece of research~ from recent meta-analyses either mostly or entirely overturns the positive results that they found for ivermectin 👀👀👀pic.twitter.com/Bgw7fGOFyL

          6 replies 28 retweets 150 likes
          Show this thread
        17. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          18/n Worse still, the paper has been viewed over 130,000 times, and the comments are filled with medical doctors praising the authors and recommending ivermectin based on their results

          2 replies 11 retweets 107 likes
          Show this thread
        18. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          19/n In other words, this single study has drive ivermectin as a treatment to thousands, perhaps millions, of people And it is either so flawed as to be totally unreliable, or potentially outright fraud

          1 reply 43 retweets 149 likes
          Show this thread
        19. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          20/n But the story doesn't stop there. Remember, several meta-analyses have included this study in their results. Why would they do that? Well, they thought it was at LOW risk of bias (i.e. high-quality)pic.twitter.com/OG79Rv9MML

          2 replies 15 retweets 131 likes
          Show this thread
        20. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          21/n The pretty obvious issue we now have is that this study is clearly filled with problems, yet it's been included in meta-analyses that considered it to be a piece of top-quality research

          1 reply 7 retweets 104 likes
          Show this thread
        21. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          22/n At the absolute minimum, studies including this paper should revise their main analysis to exclude it until we have a reasonable explanation for all these issues

          1 reply 5 retweets 94 likes
          Show this thread
        22. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          23/n But we're left with the depressing realization that somehow EVERYONE MISSED THIS I reviewed the study. While I noted concerns with the way it was reported, I never even checked to see if it was fraud

          6 replies 8 retweets 151 likes
          Show this thread
        23. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          24/n How can it be that a study this problematic was used as evidence to treat 1,000s of people since November 2020, and no one noticed? No one cared?

          8 replies 12 retweets 144 likes
          Show this thread
        24. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          25/n Anyway, the TL:DR is that the largest study to date of ivermectin for COVID-19, which found a HUGE benefit for the drug, has just been retracted amid very serious concerns about plagiarism and fraud This will echo in the scientific community for years to come

          3 replies 98 retweets 278 likes
          Show this thread
        25. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Jul 15

          26/n While it is still certainly possible that ivermectin works for COVID-19, this has made a huge dent in that possibility. I await the large studies that are currently being conducted, because we really have no good evidence to rely on

          8 replies 14 retweets 164 likes
          Show this thread
        26. End of conversation

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