Richard Horton on Covid-19

R

Robert 1973

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Interesting interview in the FT with Richard Horton, who has become a prominent critic of UK’s Covid-19 strategy: https://www.ft.com/content/8e54c36a-8311-11ea-b872-8db45d5f6714

I’m not a subscriber but I seem to be able read about one FT article a week for free. However, the second time I clicked the link I couldn’t get access it, so be sure to read it the first time you click.

I hope this post is allowed because it’s about Horton rather than UK politics.

The article mentions the Wakefield MMR paper which took so long for the Lancet to retract but (unsurprisingly) makes no mention of his controversial decision to fast track publication the PACE trial.

I didn’t know that Horton has cancer and clearly believes that he may not have long to live. This may explain why he has been so forthright in voicing his criticism of the medical and scientific establishment over its response to Covid-19. He clearly feels he has nothing to lose:
He is now writing a book about why, despite the warning signs, the Covid-19 pandemic caught the world by surprise. Meanwhile, that formidable to-do list leaves no time to answer his critics: “You said earlier that people think I’m a pariah. Maybe in previous years that might have upset me. But now? I really don’t care what people think of me. If I’m not here in six months or a year . . . f*** them. Seriously.”
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It’s hard to equate this man with the attitude he has taken to PACE. He is clearly currently preoccupied with Covid-19 but I just wonder if he may now find the courage to hold his hands up and say he got it wrong about PACE and ME – particularly if it transpires that some of the PACE supporters are responsible for some of the mistakes that have been made over Covid-19.

in the meantime I wonder if the medical and scientific establishment will accuse him of harassment and abuse.

Another quote which jumped out form the article:
Western countries have fared poorly in their coronavirus response compared to Asian countries, he thinks, because they saw the threat through the lens of influenza. China and Hong Kong feared a rerun of Sars, a much deadlier illness, and clamped down quickly. The cognitive bias, he says, has cost us dearly.
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So much easier to see cognitive bias in others.
 
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I put this here, even though PACE is not mentioned in this New Yorker article from two days ago. But other bumps in the road for The Lancet editor in chief are mentioned and he gives this interesting quote regarding the newly retracted hydroxochloroquine study:

“Science is not immune to having bad people. There are bad people in society, and there are bad people in science. Science is very vulnerable to deceit. . . . When somebody submits a paper to The Lancet, the first thing I think is not, Do I need to consider research misconduct?” He acknowledged the political appeal of the hydroxychloroquine study, in light of Trump’s remarks. “It certainly excited our editors and peer reviewers about the possibility of answering that question,” Horton said. “And we all made a collective error, and that collective mistake was to believe what we were being told.”

The journalist is London based Sam Knight.

The Lancet Editor's Wild Ride Through The Coronavirus Pandemic
 
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"Two major study retractions in one month have left researchers wondering if the peer review process is broken."

One study promised that popular blood-pressure drugs were safe for people infected with the coronavirus. Another paper warned that anti-malaria drugs endorsed by President Trump actually were dangerous to these patients.

The studies, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet, were retracted shortly after publication, following an outcry from researchers who saw obvious flaws.

The hasty retractions, on the same day this month, have alarmed scientists worldwide who fear that the rush for research on the coronavirus has overwhelmed the peer review process and opened the door to fraud, threatening the credibility of respected medical journals just when they are needed most.
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Dr. Horton called the paper retracted by his journal a “fabrication” and “a monumental fraud.” But peer review was never intended to detect outright deceit, he said, and anyone who thinks otherwise has “a fundamental misunderstanding of what peer review is.”
“If you have an author who deliberately tries to mislead, it’s surprisingly easy for them to do so,” he said.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/health/virus-journals.html
 
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“If you have an author who deliberately tries to mislead, it’s surprisingly easy for them to do so,” he said.
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Especially so when the editor-in-chief is in on the fraud, to the point of publicizing it with blatant lies in the media, and there is high-level political support demanding it. Very easy. You might even say it is rather common and threatens the very fabric of scientific evidence in a way that will damage public health by turning people away from modern medicine because clearly they make stuff up without any accountability, even when caught red-handed.

What's the worst that could happen? Besides massively increasing the ranks of anti-vaccine fanatics who will make solving the pandemic very difficult and prompting people to ignore other recommendations from medical authorities since, you know, they make stuff up all the time, as evidenced by the many fraudulent publications in "the best" medical journal out there.
 
Sean said:
“If you have an author who deliberately tries to mislead, it’s surprisingly easy for them to do so,” he said.

Especially if they are telling you what you already want to hear.
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And when individuals in the wild are repeatedly mislead by others we call them gullible. And I think the likes of RH would go so far as to call them fools.

Should we expect less from scientific journals than to maybe have some standard with which to assess a paper for publication with regards to fraudulent intent?

ETA: with regards to fraudulent intent (for clarity)
 
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alarmed scientists worldwide who fear that the rush for research on the coronavirus has overwhelmed the peer review process and opened the door to fraud
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... because the peer review process was working perfectly before? It's just been recently overwhelmed? I'm not sure "scientists worldwide" are that gullible, they just have to carry on the charade if they want to get anywhere. The whole system is broken, and Horton is a part of it.
 
This makes peer review sound rather like auditing accounts. Take the money for doing the job and express astonishment when some whistleblower points out what you were paid to find. Though as in the recent German case the whistleblower may not receive the attention warranted by circumstances.

EDIT except of course that peer reviewers are not paid. It's the editor who is.
 
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ocial&utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_source=twitter

Long interview of Richard Horton

Moderator note: We are aware that the linked article includes some quotes from Horton that are in breach of this forum's 'No non-ME politics' rule. We have decided in this case the content of the article is of sufficient interest to members that we are making an exception and allowing the link.
 
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Jaybee00 said:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ocial&utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_source=twitter

Long interview of Richard Horton
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Richard Horton : "Yes, the anti-vaccine movement is mobilizing again. And I see Andrew Wakefield has popped up in the United States and is part of the anti-vaccine movement related to covid-19."


Twelve years after publishing a landmark study that turned tens of thousands of parents around the world against the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine because of an implied link between vaccinations and autism, The Lancet has retracted the paper.

In a statement published on Feb. 2, the British medical journal said that it is now clear that “several elements” of a 1998 paper it published by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues (Lancet 1998;351[9103]:637–41) “are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation.”

Dr. Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, declined through a spokesperson to speak to CMAJ about this issue.
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831678/
 
Sly Saint said:
Richard Horton : "Yes, the anti-vaccine movement is mobilizing again. And I see Andrew Wakefield has popped up in the United States and is part of the anti-vaccine movement related to covid-19."
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So, Horton initially dismissed COVID as fear-mongering, then turned around yelling that people need to take this seriously without skipping a beat, chiding those who did not take it seriously. And here he whines about the impact of a monster he created and defended for 12 years, without skipping a beat. Takes no responsibility whatsoever despite being very insulting about whatever positions he happens to take.

With people like that leading medical science, it's no wonder the effectiveness is awful. What terrible leadership, no institution can survive sabotage and incompetence from within. Medicine does a very poor job self-regulating itself. That self-regulation needs to end, it shows that no institution can actually self-regulate itself, no matter who runs it or what it does.
 
Richard Horton on the UK's Covid enquiry,

"A former minister for health in England wrote to me that “The COVID-19 inquiry will make us the laughing stock in the eyes of the world.” But it is worse than that. The level of criminal incompetence exposed by recent witnesses to the UK COVID-19 Inquiry, chaired by Baroness Heather Hallett, has proven that many, if not most, of over 230 000 deaths were preventable. Amid the claims of extreme misogyny, profanity, and chaos that litter the evidence is a story of complete government breakdown."

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02504-7/fulltext

Funnily enough, there is no mention of Long Covid, as far as I can find.
 
There hasn't been much in the Inquiry so far on Long Covid. The first module a few months ago was on pre pandemic preparation, and the current one is focused on the initial response in the first few months of the pandemic.
 
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