from Hacker News

French Scientist Didier Raoult Given Rusty Razor Award For Pseudoscience

by mikehall314 on 11/20/20, 12:10 PM with 67 comments

• by _Wintermute on 11/20/20, 1:42 PM

  As an actual pharmacologist I find it fascinating how the general public has suddenly taken such a poorly informed interest in drug discovery.

  For the HN audience it would be like people taking an almost tribal approach to go-lang vs rust, debating it on national television, without any of them knowing what a loop is.

• by dmix on 11/20/20, 2:18 PM

  Technically the Chinese Wuhan Institute was first to recommended hydroxychloroquine as a possible solution (among at least one other drug) months before this guy and the politicians ever published anything about it. There was also a small town US doctor who claimed anecdotal success among his hundreds of clients who was highly influential very early on. And tons of other speculative ‘experts’ talking about it on YouTube.

  Then months later as COVID got really bad there was multiple bad science on both sides of the argument just muddied the water in an extreme event the entire population has a never experienced before in their lives. Causing mass desperation and flailing about.

  I previously published a timeline on HN earlier that showed the UK also blocked exports of the drug at least a full month before the Trump brigades and bad papers came out. And other examples of authoritative institutions giving off signals and rumours which could easily be taken advantage of by people desperate to save family members lives. It was also listed as safe in small doses as by WHO so people were willing to take the risk before the full science was out.

  I also remember the general consensus became that it was only useful as a prophylactic not a treatment after the fact when the infection was serious, so it was even harder to pinpoint good evidence when the doctors were giving it out to thousands and only a tiny amount got serious infections. Then the uselessness is even easier to hide with an easy exit argument.

  It seems strange to me to target this one individual among a large group. Maybe he was the first to give it academic credibility with an actual paper?

• by hocuspocus on 11/20/20, 1:44 PM

  > “It is hard to find an example of quackery that has spread so far, influencing the public health response to a deadly pandemic and creating widespread confusion across the entire globe.”

  It isn't hard: the Lancet has published a completely made-up study written by an unknown team, before they retracted the paper. If I wanted to fuel conspiracy theories, I don't think I could come up with anything better.

• by jcq3 on 11/20/20, 2:41 PM

  I don't want to advocate for Didier Raoult but calling such a renown professor all over the world a pseudo scientist is a bit harsh... What is the legitimacy of these judges? Only a few people have the knowledge to debate about this subject, it's all about politics right now, not science

• by alesmaticic on 11/20/20, 1:59 PM

  I think the Lanced study about hydroxychloroquine that was later retracted deserved this award much more as it was completely made up.

• by prof-dr-ir on 11/20/20, 1:53 PM

  President Macron actually paid a visit to Raoult back in April. The visit probably inadvertently cast a gigantic spotlight on the shoddy (or at best preliminary) research. In my opinion it reflected quite poorly on the quality of Macron's scientific council.

  More generally, I spent way too much time comparing the pandemic responses of various European countries. For France, one thing that stood out to me was an outsize focus by media and politicians on research by French scientists.

• by tpoacher on 11/20/20, 6:41 PM

  It is a sad day for researchers worldwide when politics can shift your research efforts from "tried to do good research which could save the world" to "ermagehrd your science got used by orangeman bad let's name and shame you in public"

• by White_Wolf on 11/20/20, 1:12 PM

  That guy probably based his experiments/research on a 2005 paper.

  https://virologyj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-42...

• by tomohawk on 11/20/20, 1:27 PM

  This is really counter productive and snarky. How does this advance science?

  There have been multiple studies on this, and it has been a mixed bag. This one is positive:

  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32418114/

  There are others that are positive, and still others that are negative.

• by jmnicolas on 11/20/20, 1:29 PM

  There's a media war on Raoult in France.

  I don't know if Chloroquine is effective on COVID 19, but I know that it's comically cheap and people took it for years against malaria without side effects. So at worse it's a placebo.

  On the other hand there's Remdesivir that's astronomically expensive, destroys kidneys and hasn't any effectiveness against COVID (even the OMS says so). But it's still the recommended treatment in France since they forbid the chloroquine treatment.

  Color me skeptical about their motivations but all the big proponents of Remdesivir have financial links with Gilead.

• by FrancisOfAssisi on 11/20/20, 3:27 PM

  The article incorrectly states the nominating committees intentions: Raoult was given the "Rusty Razor Award" so that he could buy a new electric shaver to replace his old (and indeed rusty) razor, which had long since lost it's edge and been abandoned by the good doctor.

  Didier Raoult before Covid research:

  http://www.antimicrobe.org/Didier_Raoult3.JPG

  Didier Raoult after Covid research:

  http://www.d1softballnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/bie...

  France has for many years been chastised for its failure to properly fund scientific research and Raoult is yet another example of this sad neglect. Note also that "The Skeptic" is a British organization, Raoult is French, and that this is yet one more shot fired in two seemingly endless barrages across the Channel in both directions.

  Article re the Award:

  https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2020/11/french-scientist-didier-r...

• by rq1 on 11/20/20, 1:30 PM

  Didier Raoult is one of the brightest scientists in the world. Period.

  There’s no “major” flaw in his studies as people keep repeating.

  He was studying viral load in patients and excluded those who were in ICU because they did not have enough virus left.

  Thus suggesting his cocktail as an early treatment.

  There is indeed pseudoscientists and corrupt ones who published the famous now but ridiculous study in “the lancet” and who promote remdesivir.

  Edit: https://c19study.com/