It's not political, we're trying to find something that works.
Honestly I don't really get this at all. Not even a little bit. Why? Anyone who actually has a motive (like a company trying to make money) should be kept far away from the regulators that oversee the study, and the whole point of double blind trials is to keep self interested bias away from the result of a study where lives are literally at stake.
Isn't the point of a clinical intervention to save lives? Either the intervention saves lives or it doesn't. The researchers should be selected from people who can maintain a neutral viewpoint. If that is impossible their neutrality should still be maximized and biases should be eliminated as much as humanly possible.
Simply accepting that bias as a matter of course is imo the worst way to approach it.
> Honestly I don't really get this at all. Not even a little bit.
It's ok for scientists to think something's true before they have all the evidence lined up - especially in a predominantly empirical field like medicine. That's how new ideas happen.
Have you ever encountered someone who is motivated by altruism? Someone who is motivated by getting the truth out there?
Doctors and scientists need to be objective. Advocating a treatment before the data is there, or cherry picking results is not science.
Certainly a scientist can say "I very much hope that HCQ is an effective cure for Coronavirus" but that is very, very different from being "Pro-HCQ".
When I hear "Pro-HCQ" that implies to me a very strong suggestion of treatment, i.e. - "You should take HCQ as a treatment for Coronavirus infection", which is extremely different from, "I hope that the research shows that HCQ will be an effective treatment for Coronavirus, and I am doing a study with the goal of showing that this is the case".
Does that make sense?
I think that middle option is actually how a scientist would interpret the phrase. I can see why a layman would read it otherwise, though.
> Isn't the point of a clinical intervention to save lives?
Why do you think saving lives can't be the motive? If you do a study, and conclude based on that study that a treatment works, you're supposed to remain "neutral"?
Let me put it this way, I wouldn't want to receive treatment from a healthcare provider who is "neutral" about the surgery they are about to give me, I want them to have a positive informed opinion based on experience, studies, etc.
A scientific researcher is trying to answer an unanswered question dispassionately. I don’t see how taking a bias in testing a scientific hypothesis can possibly determine the truth of a scientific fact.
Are researchers who say that applying leeches won’t cure cancer bad for cancer patients? Why shouldn’t they be hopeful that leeches cure terminal cancer, rather than being downers? The answer is that cancer is the enemy, not people who oppose medical treatments that don’t work.