n7axw wrote:TFLYTSNBN wrote:
You are somewhat mistaken about the peer review process. A study is considered scientifically valid if a review by peers confirms that the methodology is appropriate. Further investigation by other researchers can then either validate the research or invalidate the research. There are going to be a multitude of studies on treating Covidvirus with Hydro... and the results will be inconsistent. Unless there is fraud involved or mistakes I. Methodology, all will be scientifically valid. Only after several studies confirm or disprove that Hydro... is safe and effective will it be deemed an appropriate treatment under normal circumstances. Given the fact that circumstances are not normal, a certain amount of uncertainty will not be adequate cause for rejecting a treatment.
Some of us remember how the TTAPS Nuclear Winter theory was published in Science without peer review but concurrently with a public relations blitzkrieg. That was fraud.
Ok, I can accept this as friendly amendment to what I said. The fundamental to my post was that other researchers had to be able to replicate the study using the same methods before it could be regarded as actionable science.
Don
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No, it's not a matter of replicating the study as nothing was actually performed, it's a matter of actually *doing* a real study.
This is what is referred to as an "observational study", or in other words there were no controls, no methodology, no double blinds, they just scoured hospital records after the fact and ran some analysis. The only thing observational studies are good for is giving potential indications that a follow up *actual clinical study* might be something to look at to figure out if anything is really there.
Which is exactly what the authors of this paper say if you read past the abstract... which TFLY likely neglected to do.
"This study has several limitations. First, this was an observational retrospective analysis that could be impacted by confounding variables. This is well demonstrated by the analyses adjusting for the difference in timing between the patients who did not receive zinc and those who did. In addition, we only looked at patients taking hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. We do not know whether the observed added
benefit of zinc sulfate to hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin on mortality would have been seen in patients who took zinc sulfate alone or in combination with just one of those medications. We also do not have data on the time at which the patients included in the study initiated therapy with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc. Those drugs would have been started at the same time as a combination therapy, but the point in clinical disease at which patients received those medications could have differed between our two groups. Finally, the cohorts were identified based on medications
ordered rather than confirmed administration, which may bias findings towards favoring equipoise between the two groups. In light of these limitations, this study should not be
used to guide clinical practice. Rather, our observations support the initiation of future randomized clinical trials investigating zinc sulfate against COVID-19. "