Trials were halted and hydroxychloroquine abandoned as a potential COVID-19 treatment after The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine published papers linking it to harmful side effects.
But the research has since been accused of being junk science: the papers were retracted last week and the datasets questioned.
Experts warn this may be the tip of the iceberg in a slew of poor research practices as journals rush to publish during the pandemic.
In Australia retractions might not be so swift as it is one of the few countries without an independent body to investigate dodgy research and regulatory standards going backwards.
Little oversight and accountability
Since the pandemic began, 15 papers have been retracted and two temporarily retracted. Four were published by The Lancet and two by The New England Journal of Medicine. Eight covered hydroxychloroquine.
Retractions and junk science are not new, scientist Professor David Vaux at Walter and Eliza Hall Institute told Inq. But they are growing.
The number of published retractions increased tenfold between 2001 and 2011. One study found 67.4% of retracted papers were pulled due to misconduct and fraud; 3.8% of papers in scientific journals contained duplicated images; researchers were unable to reproduce the findings of 47 of 53 “landmark” cancer papers.
Australia doesn’t have an independent research integrity office to investigate claims of academic misconduct. Instead institutions rely on the Australian code for the responsible conduct of research, although changes to the code in 2018 have made it easier for them to cover up bad science.
“The new code removed any requirement for independence, strengthened the secrecy provisions, and made it so institutions don’t have to use the term misconduct,” Vaux said.
The term is reserved for serious, repeated and intentional cases, but even then it’s up to an institution to decide whether to call it misconduct.
The new code was co-written by Universities Australia.
“Like the church, universities deny there’s anything bad going on,” Vaux said. “They want to cover it up to protect their reputations.”
Publish or perish
Dr Ascelin Gordon, research fellow in the interdisciplinary conservation science research group at RMIT University in Melbourne, told Inq the business model of journals encouraged novel, headline-making research.
“There’s an incentive to churn out these novel results rather than what’s best for science as a whole which would be replication of research,” he said.
Journals and researchers look to publish headline-grabbing papers which will receive a large number of citations, he said. Researchers’ grants, promotions and salaries are tied to their published works.
“It makes it easy to focus on questions that will give you something novel and interesting and do it in a quick way … Journals have to accept papers they think will be influential,” Gordon said.
Some journals, including Nature and Science, have implemented pre-registration of planned research, meaning a paper will be published even if its results are negative or boring to ensure topics are addressed and replicated.
Associate Professor of Law at Bond University Dr Wendy Bonython was surprised flaws in the hydroxychloroquine studies had not been found earlier.
“There was no data governance documentation framework,” she said. “It wasn’t clear where the data came from.
“This isn’t the first instance of questions raised on COVID-19 research … There’s a risk some standards of practices are being glossed over.”
Concerns over data’s validity
A Health Department spokeswoman said the department had concerns over the validity of the data.
The Medical Journal of Australia’s editor-in-chief Nick Talley says there had been an influx of submissions during COVID-19.
“We’ve gone up nearly double in submissions, which is a lot, and of those about a third or more or [are] on COVID-19, so it’s a very big spike,” he said.
“There is pressure [to publish]. Obviously if you wait months to review papers, the risk is people may die. You want to get information out that’s accurate and allows policy and public health action.”
The journal has introduced a rapid review process — and pre-printing draft research papers — to get through all the submissions, but hasn’t hired extra staff.
“Speed like this means we can make errors,” Talley said.
As for the recent retractions, Talley found them “disturbing. What a disaster for everybody.”
Junk science can be dangerous. In 2010 The Lancet retracted a paper linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism, which is still widely cited by anti-vaxxers.
Deputy director at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science Rod Lamberts says the fact the results had been questioned showed the system was working: “Mechanisms are in place to keep an eye on things.”
He encouraged everyone to scrutinise research carefully.
I read both Science Alert on line and New Scientist in print. There is a lot of junk science out there and I can see that. The Lancet though must be seriously questioned. NO one is likely to be harmed by the stopping of the Covid 19 Hydroxychloroquine trial. But there is no doubt that the Andrew Wakefield article has resulted in deaths from measles. The first people who looked seriously at the Wakefield paper thought it was suspicious and it did not take long to see it was without foundation. It was not bad science, it was fraud, total fraud and the Lancet made a pox of it, allowing it to stand for far too long.
The other problem is though that the withdrawal of governments from funding research has produced a publish or perish ideology that is disastrous. I only knew one distinguished scientist well, he had a few clues about research though and a Nobel to prove it. It was a long and arduous piece of work, as was much of his career, initially for the RMRC in the UK and for Shell at Mill Hill, (he also gave me Lovelock’s Gaia book having worked with him at Mill Hill.) HE was scathing about the withdrawal of long term research funding. He worked in the lab from 23 odd until he was 93. A life of science you might say. Long term work.
Hang on a second OGO, the issue here is not Wakefield. The issue is spurious headline grabbing and reporting by main stream science denigrating hydroxychloroquine as a possible agent against covid and flu without a proper investigation.
Blaming Andrew Wakefield for measle deaths is a fkn stretch.
I have read where hydroxychloroquin has been used successfully in Indonesia against covid and flu in general.
Awesome journalism connecting the dots.
Isn’t the issue also the much vaunted “peer reviewers”?
Perhaps the reviewers of papers published by journals that like to see themselves as being the most prestigious should be named publicly and given the opportunity to explain why they gave the paper a tick.
Of course. Those “peer reviewers” often have links to vested interest medicine. better known as big farma. But it does n’t stop there either. Just another tentacle of the artificially created allusion.
I don’t want to get lost in a tangential issue, but Wakefield was more cautious that you assume. The following is from the paper retracted by the Lancet:
We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described. …..
If there is a causal link between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and this syndrome, a rising incidence might be anticipated after the introduction of this vaccine in the UK in 1988. Published evidence is inadequate to show whether there is a change in incidence or a link with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.
…. Further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and its possible relation to this vaccine.
Over the years, Wakefield has been crucified and character assassinated by both journalists and commenters alike here on Cky. It’s baffling when you do the slog research which proves it unjustified.
“We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described. …..…. Further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and its possible relation to this vaccine.”
I rearranged a couple of lines to put it in the right context. In other words, they say no, but then they say maybe..huh! I would have thought with hold the vaccine until those investigations are determined. In the meant time $$$.
Clearly the publication of dubious papers is nothing wotsoever to do with penurious researchers & institutions desperate for funding for other worthwhile purposes.
In the commercialised tertiary “industry” (or should that be ‘comunity’?) who could have anticipated that people will do unconscionable things for money?
The useless sheep who get their kicks regurgitating MSM talking points can never admit Hydroxychloroquine is beneficial in combination with inc supplements, even as more cases like that of the discredited Lancet come to light. The VA “study” is another piece of rubbish. All in the unwitting service of Big Pharma. Pathetic. But it is Darwinian selection of sorts.
I LOVE that you’re paying attention to incorrect research and fraudulent publication of things as scientific fact when they are not. History, including recent history is littered with them. Thank you. I don’t understand how come you don’t see that people who are questioning the current standard medical model, have observed those incorrect researches and outright frauds (67% of retracted papers pulled fro fraud – crikey!) and THAT’s why they have lost confidence in the system. THIS is precisely WHY they want to decide for THEMSELVES whether to do something or not, take some medicine or not And it THEIR bodies, so why should they not be able to choose for themselves?