Skip to content
By using Twitter’s services you agree to our Cookies Use. We and our partners operate globally and use cookies, including for analytics, personalisation, and ads.
  • Home Home Home, current page.
  • About

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Language: English
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • Bahasa Melayu
    • Català
    • Čeština
    • Dansk
    • Deutsch
    • English UK
    • Español
    • Filipino
    • Français
    • Hrvatski
    • Italiano
    • Magyar
    • Nederlands
    • Norsk
    • Polski
    • Português
    • Română
    • Slovenčina
    • Suomi
    • Svenska
    • Tiếng Việt
    • Türkçe
    • Ελληνικά
    • Български език
    • Русский
    • Српски
    • Українська мова
    • עִבְרִית
    • العربية
    • فارسی
    • मराठी
    • हिन्दी
    • বাংলা
    • ગુજરાતી
    • தமிழ்
    • ಕನ್ನಡ
    • ภาษาไทย
    • 한국어
    • 日本語
    • 简体中文
    • 繁體中文
  • Have an account? Log in
    Have an account?
    · Forgot password?

    New to Twitter?
    Sign up
GidMK's profile
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
Health Nerd
Verified account
@GidMK

Tweets

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

Tweets

  • © 2021 Twitter
  • About
  • Help Center
  • Terms
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies
  • Ads info
Dismiss
Previous
Next

Go to a person's profile

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @

Promote this Tweet

Block

  • Tweet with a location

    You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

    Your lists

    Create a new list


    Under 100 characters, optional

    Privacy

    Copy link to Tweet

    Embed this Tweet

    Embed this Video

    Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Hmm, there was a problem reaching the server.

    By embedding Twitter content in your website or app, you are agreeing to the Twitter Developer Agreement and Developer Policy.

    Preview

    Why you're seeing this ad

    Log in to Twitter

    · Forgot password?
    Don't have an account? Sign up »

    Sign up for Twitter

    Not on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.

    Sign up
    Have an account? Log in »

    Two-way (sending and receiving) short codes:

    Country Code For customers of
    United States 40404 (any)
    Canada 21212 (any)
    United Kingdom 86444 Vodafone, Orange, 3, O2
    Brazil 40404 Nextel, TIM
    Haiti 40404 Digicel, Voila
    Ireland 51210 Vodafone, O2
    India 53000 Bharti Airtel, Videocon, Reliance
    Indonesia 89887 AXIS, 3, Telkomsel, Indosat, XL Axiata
    Italy 4880804 Wind
    3424486444 Vodafone
    » See SMS short codes for other countries

    Confirmation

     

    Welcome home!

    This timeline is where you’ll spend most of your time, getting instant updates about what matters to you.

    Tweets not working for you?

    Hover over the profile pic and click the Following button to unfollow any account.

    Say a lot with a little

    When you see a Tweet you love, tap the heart — it lets the person who wrote it know you shared the love.

    Spread the word

    The fastest way to share someone else’s Tweet with your followers is with a Retweet. Tap the icon to send it instantly.

    Join the conversation

    Add your thoughts about any Tweet with a Reply. Find a topic you’re passionate about, and jump right in.

    Learn the latest

    Get instant insight into what people are talking about now.

    Get more of what you love

    Follow more accounts to get instant updates about topics you care about.

    Find what's happening

    See the latest conversations about any topic instantly.

    Never miss a Moment

    Catch up instantly on the best stories happening as they unfold.

    1. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

      I've been talking about ivermectin a bit recently, and every time I mention it someone will link me to this odd website - ivmmeta dot com So, a bit of a review. I think this falls pretty solidly into the category of pseudoscience 1/npic.twitter.com/JPVUIeKOcs

      162 replies 1,316 retweets 3,507 likes
      Show this thread
      Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

      2/n The semi-anonymous site claims to be a "real-time meta analysis" of all published studies on ivermectin, collating an impressive 60 pieces of research It's flashy, well-designed, and at face value appears very legitimate

      8:59 PM - 1 Aug 2021
      7 replies 32 retweets 401 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          3/n The benefits that this website show for ivermectin are pretty amazing - 96%(!) lower mortality based on 10,797 patients worth of data is quite astonishing. Sounds like we should all be using ivermectin! Except, well, these numbers are totally meaninglesspic.twitter.com/B0rrocOEpS

          7 replies 41 retweets 429 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          4/n Digging into the site, you're immediately hit with this error. That's not how p-values work at all, any stats textbook will show you why this statement is entirely untruepic.twitter.com/Hzb4K1NYaH

          17 replies 49 retweets 555 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          5/n Most of these dotpoints are wrong in some way (heterogeneity causing an underestimate is particularly hilarious) but this statement about CoIs is wild considering that there are several potentially fraudulent studies in the IVM literaturepic.twitter.com/pWS2gaywrF

          8 replies 30 retweets 379 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          6/n Going back to the heterogeneity point, this is the explanation from the authors about why heterogeneity is not a problem in their analysis. They appear to have entirely misunderstood what heterogeneity is (hint: this is more about BIAS than heterogeneity)pic.twitter.com/m2YLGSFfKy

          2 replies 19 retweets 327 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          7/n Also worth noting, I've previously shown the heterogeneity is high in meta-analysis of IVM for COVID-19 mortality, and that's almost entirely because there are 2 studies that show a massive benefit and a bunch of studies that show no benefit at all

          5 replies 25 retweets 346 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          8/n Anyway, back to the website - the authors then present this forest plot of effect estimates Each dot is a point estimate, and the lines around the dots represent confidence intervalspic.twitter.com/bQhmFfGU1L

          5 replies 17 retweets 245 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          9/n Now, any data thug will immediately notice something wildly improbable about this forest plot (H/T @jamesheathers) Can you see the issue? 👀👀👀👀

          4 replies 16 retweets 247 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          10/n While you have a think, here's a graph I made replicating these results. Not very pretty, but the final result is the same (with some minor rounding differences)pic.twitter.com/gDheBO5em6

          2 replies 19 retweets 236 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          11/n Ok, so back to the question - why does this look problematic? It comes down to confidence intervals. When you've got a bunch of very wide confidence intervals from different studies, you expect the point estimates to move around inside them quite a bit

          2 replies 17 retweets 261 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          12/n Instead, look at those point-estimates! Even though they've all got MASSIVE intervals, virtually all the PEs are within 0.05-0.1 either side of 0.15pic.twitter.com/2f7HQYpoCW

          3 replies 18 retweets 253 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          13/n We can actually graph this. In Stata, I made what's called a funnel plot, which basically plots each point estimate against its standard error, with a line at the overall estimate from the meta-analysis modelpic.twitter.com/tF3U3ToFGv

          4 replies 19 retweets 253 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          14/n What you expect to see, if there are no issues, is an equal number of points on either side of the line at similar positions Instead, ~virtually every point is below the estimate of the effect~pic.twitter.com/oLoaGQRdh4

          4 replies 20 retweets 217 likes
          Show this thread
        14. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          15/n I ran an Egger's regression to test the statistical significance of this, and the result is that there is a huge amount of what would usually be called 'publication' bias in the results. In other words, this is extremely weirdpic.twitter.com/7bKqGFrTSU

          4 replies 21 retweets 279 likes
          Show this thread
        15. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          16/n What's happening here? Well, this is where we really get into the weeds You see, the meta-analysis on this website is REALLY BIZARRE

          1 reply 16 retweets 250 likes
          Show this thread
        16. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          17/n How bizarre? Well, here are the measurements from the 'early' treatment studies - hospitalization is in the same model as % viral positivity, recovery time, symptoms, and death All in the same model WILDpic.twitter.com/LDzNRQ8JId

          6 replies 24 retweets 252 likes
          Show this thread
        17. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          18/n Worse still, these appear to be picked almost entirely arbitrarily. The website claims to choose the "most serious" outcome, but then immediately says that in cases where no patients died or most people recovered a different estimate was usedpic.twitter.com/xspr31qd7m

          3 replies 18 retweets 249 likes
          Show this thread
        18. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          19/n Even a fairly surface skim shows that what appears to actually be happening here is that the authors choose the outcome that shows the biggest benefit for ivermectin

          4 replies 29 retweets 296 likes
          Show this thread
        19. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          20/n For example, the analysis includes this paper. The primary outcome was viral load, which was identical between groups Never fear however, because ivmmeta won't take "null findings" as an answer!pic.twitter.com/xW0WmYGaV9

          2 replies 17 retweets 249 likes
          Show this thread
        20. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          21/n If you dig through the supplementaries, what you find is that for "all reported symptoms" there was a large but statistically insignificant difference, represented in this graph of marginal predicted probabilities from a logistic model. It is mostly driven by an/hyposmiapic.twitter.com/h64IdG4LJF

          3 replies 16 retweets 209 likes
          Show this thread
        21. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          22/n If you eyeball "any symptoms", you get the results that ivmmeta included in their analysis But that's TOTALLY ARBITRARY. Why not choose cough (where there's no difference) or fever (where IVM did WORSE)

          3 replies 19 retweets 232 likes
          Show this thread
        22. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          23/n Also, hilariously, this study used the last observation carried forward method to account for missing data in symptom reporting. You can actually see this in the supplementaries - it's possible the entire result comes from a few people not filling out their diaries properlypic.twitter.com/rA7PO4o4hd

          2 replies 17 retweets 225 likes
          Show this thread
        23. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          24/n None of this should matter, because the trial found NO BENEFIT FOR IVERMECTIN, but this has been reported and included into ivmmeta dot com as a hugely beneficial resultpic.twitter.com/mjGBDnpVW5

          5 replies 37 retweets 315 likes
          Show this thread
        24. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          25/n This explains the bias I noted above - it's not publication bias, it's that the authors appear to have generally chosen whichever result makes ivermectin look better to include in their model Not really scientific, that!

          5 replies 37 retweets 405 likes
          Show this thread
        25. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          26/n But the fun doesn't stop there. The inclusion criteria for this website is any study published on ivermectin, which has led to what I can only call total junk science being lumped in with decent studies

          1 reply 20 retweets 248 likes
          Show this thread
        26. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          27/n Here's a study with impossible percentages in table 1 that used a comparator of 12 completely random patients as their control. They don't even say if these 12 people had COVID-19 Included in ivmmeta, no questions askedpic.twitter.com/3AlGdGcPnW

          4 replies 15 retweets 233 likes
          Show this thread
        27. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          Health Nerd Retweeted Health Nerd

          28/n ivmmeta includes all of the studies I've been tweeting about recently including this one https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1421368493975359490?s=20 … And this one https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1420582871031373824?s=20 … And this onehttps://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1419557546872819719?s=20 …

          Health Nerd added,

          Health NerdVerified account @GidMK
          People have claimed that ivermectin is 100% effective as a prophylactic for COVID-19 based on an observational trial of the drug I'm extremely concerned about this trial. It definitely should not be used as evidence for anything 1/n pic.twitter.com/G61i7hI6Eo
          Show this thread
          3 replies 16 retweets 205 likes
          Show this thread
        28. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          29/n I've now read through about 3/4 of all the studies on the website, and I would say at least 1/2 of them are so low-quality that the figures they report are basically meaningless

          3 replies 15 retweets 280 likes
          Show this thread
        29. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          30/n Moreover, sometimes the website just does stuff that is wildly strange Here's a study with no placebo control. They appear to have calculated a relative risk of...whether the patients in this hospital got treated with ivermectin? WHYpic.twitter.com/qH9PRewSPS

          8 replies 14 retweets 220 likes
          Show this thread
        30. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          31/n I could keep going - there's just so much there. Even just the basic concept of combining literally any number from any study and saying that it makes the model MORE ROBUST is so intrinsically flawed So. Many. Mistakes

          12 replies 20 retweets 326 likes
          Show this thread
        31. Health Nerd‏Verified account @GidMK Aug 1

          32/n But this thread is already too long, so to sum up - the website looks flashy - the methodology is totally broken - I would call this pretty pseudoscientific; all the trappings of science, with none of the rigor

          6 replies 25 retweets 282 likes
          Show this thread
        32. Show replies

      Loading seems to be taking a while.

      Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.

        Promoted Tweet

        false

        • © 2021 Twitter
        • About
        • Help Center
        • Terms
        • Privacy policy
        • Cookies
        • Ads info