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Comment by mritun | Hacker News Reader

> investigators did not receive a response from Raoult, the corresponding author. To date, 32 papers published by IHU authors have been retracted, 28 of them co-authored by Raoult, and 243 have expressions of concern.

I am not a scientist but it of 32 faulty widgets, 28 widgets are made by a guy called Raoult, then even blue collar workers know Raoult is an idiot with no business making widgets. If that does not happen, ACME Widgets will eventually go out of business.

This is how science gets discredited - by allowing idiots do “science”. Here Raoult does not get kicked out, but is Director of the ACME - this is how entire field of medicine research gor tainted.

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> This is how science gets discredited - by allowing idiots do “science”.

Not really - science has to be open to all as otherwise we risk having a "priesthood" of scientists. What we need are better systems to deal with rogue researchers and retracted papers.

The scientific principle is fine, it's just our implementation that is lacking.

The biggest issue, I think, is what happens after a paper is released; it gets spread, reinterpreted, diluted, popularised, editorialised, etc through three or four layers of media (university press room -> serious news/science outlets -> popular news/science outlets, going from "these numbers indicate with 89.1346% certainty that this exoplanet may contain traces of h2o" to "EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE FOUND PACK YOUR STUFF WE'RE GONNA COLONISE IT"), then onto social media.

The Wakefield paper linking autism to vaccines has become so mainstream in certain communities it's impossible to undo the damage even though it was (finally) retracted in 2010 and Wakefield himself was struck off the register. At this point only through a very long, slow and arduous process can you get this idea out of people's heads, thanks to constant repetition, reinterpretation, scaremongering, and a whole community forming. It's going to be the same with this paper and the idea that dewormer is effective against the 'rona, or any quack 'rona countermeasures for that matter.

Yes, but why do you believe publications should be optimized towards a better public opinion (whatever that means) and not the progress of science?

For the progress of science everyone should be able to share their results so that others can try to reproduce them.

This IS the real question: whether it's reproducible or not. By adding more barriers to publishing (like stricter peer reviews) you're not actually getting closer to the answer. The opposite can be true because there's a chance of censoring reproducible results that don't fit the current consensus.

I think it would be fun to see if it is possible to get the very popular notion that the Wakefield paper is the only source of all concerns about vaccines and autism out of the minds of "rational" Normatives.

I would be surprised if anyone could do it.

Funnily enough the idea that hydroxychloroquine helps (as in Raoult's paper) was replaced in cranks heads by the dewormer (ivermectin).

There is probably a reasonable amount of retractions to expect in your career- if you work for 40 years doing research and publish a couple papers per year, then I will allow that a researcher might have become involved in a study that was deeply flawed, and the related papers need retracted. But to stay in good standing with the community, the researchers should admit the flaws (as some of the authors of this paper did).

Didier Raoult is on a whole other level. He refuses to admit any issues with the study. He has been under criminal investigation for this. This isn't the first time this has been a big deal (scroll through here to see the issues he's had for the last few years https://retractionwatch.com/?s=Didier+Raoult).

This misses the context that Raoult alone has published more than 3000 papers and is one of the most highly cited researchers in his field. Take the combined sum of all the IHU authors and it's likely in the tens of thousands.

This is also why people increasingly believe whatever they want. Nobody is honest, everything is framed in the most exaggerated ways - which then makes it easy to undermine, and there's mass corruption everywhere on top of all of this especially in covid related stuff where you have geopolitics, politics, and hundreds of billions of dollars in profiteering stewing in one giant, and quite toxic, pot.

people have always believed whatever they want. hence, it has been a game of persuation for eons. the most persuasive person was always listened to regardless of what they said.

science changed the game by insisting that it is not what we believe, but whats out there. But, it doesnt come naturally to most of us. we still love narratives, and are easily fooled.

Scientists are not superhuman, even in the golden era of science it was Max Plank that remarked, 'Science advances one funeral at a time.' And things have rather worsened since his era.

It's not science that really changed anything but rather humanity freeing itself from bias and opening itself to having a discourse and debate on practically any issue, without consequence - accepting all the discomfort that that entails.

But such eras are brief and can fade rapidly. The Islamic world was once a global leader in the sciences. Algebra = al jabr, Arabic numerals, alongside countless contributions to astronomy and other fields. Oh but how fast that candle of learning can be snuffed out when it becomes inconvenient.

I think it is very interesting how people talk about science as if it is (near) perfect, and that this perfection passes on to those who are believers in it.

I wonder what the causality is behind so many people ending up with this same conceptualization within their minds. It has an eerie resemblance to the behavior of people in other ideological groups, like religion.

regardless of where you are in the world, your race, religion, language, whether you are left or right in political leaning,

you are better off believing in newton's theories. it will help you build tools to navigate the world better and weapons to protect you.

If this applies at the individual level, I would love to read even an attempt at a proof.

One interesting aspect of science is that so much of what's true within it requires no proof, like religion. A lot of people try to get around this by saying that people aren't a part of science, but then they always seem to lose track of the thread when asked how science accomplishes anything without having either people involved, or the supernatural (which "doesn't exist" dontcha know).

My personal view is that science is our human “interpretation” of what’s “out there” Using a language (math) and a method (scientific method) which leave no room for doubt.

It is purely a human endeavor much like other arts we pursue - except in this art, we settle opinion/belief with a specific method. For a belief to be inducted into science, it has to endure rigorous tests.

Cs peirce attempted a proof here: https://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html

At an individual level, I suspect, we fear the uncertainty that comes with the “irritation of doubt” and we also fear being a social outcaste. Therefore to optimize happiness we would rather stick with the beliefs of our tribe - however unscientific they may be - because they serve as a mental anchor. Hence the prevalence of religions and beliefs that are tribal.

> Raoult alone has published more than 3000 papers

Hum...

There's something very wrong with a figure like that.

I've heard he published 300+ a year since 2009 when the French research minister of that time changed how grant attribution worked. The majority of them in two different publications directed by two of his friends/coworkers.

> This is how science gets discredited - by allowing idiots do “science”. Here Raoult does not get kicked out, but is Director of the ACME - this is how entire field of medicine research gor tainted.

It should be noted that a few months after Raoult's paper was published another one contradicting his was

* https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022926

It's just the contradiction may not have been as widely known, especially by those that aren't involved in the field.

Isn't this how science is (at least partly) done? Claim (which is falsifiable) and counter-claim (verification/repudiation).

Based on my experience as an analyst of Looney Tunes, it would appear that being a Director of ACME Widgets is right up his alley.

He is under criminal investigation and has been banned from practicing medicine for two years - I think that substantially undercuts your argument.

> by allowing idiots do “science”.

Anyone can "do science". No permission is required. The question is who publishes what garbage.

it has always been an "attention"-economy rather than a "science"-economy. and scientists are human too, with their biases.

there are two kinds of people. the majority of us have made up our minds and find evidence for it. the rare few listen to whats out there with an open mind. once someone has put their name on something, they fight hard to protect that.

entire populations have always been and still are driven by pseudo-science (astrology etc).

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