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| Science & Technology |
| Retracted COVID Paper Lives on in New Citations (ACE Inhibitors, Surgisphere) |
| 2021-08-05 |
| [MedPageToday] Researchers around the world have continued breathing new life into a retracted study, which suggested that common antihypertensive medications were harmful in patients with COVID-19. The result of which was if you're hospitalized for Covid and taking ACE inhibitors, they discontinued them, even though they may have been helping. Published online on May 1, 2020 in the New England Journal of Medicine, the study relied on Surgisphere Surgisphere.... the same guys with the HCQ study. Hmm. data to claim an association between renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) inhibitor therapy and worse outcomes in hospitalized COVID-19 patients with cardiovascular disease. The journal retracted the paper due to concerns about fraudulent data on June 4, 2020 in a widely publicized move, but the study has continued to rack up citations -- totaling at least 652 as of May 31, 2021, reported Todd Lee, MD, MPH, of McGill University in Montreal, and colleagues. Just 17.6% of verified citations acknowledged or noted that the paper was retracted, according to their research letter published in JAMA Internal Medicine. In May of this year alone -- 11 months after the article was retracted -- it was referenced 21 times. "Our findings challenge authors, peer reviewers, journal editors, and academic institutions to do a better job of addressing the broader issues of ongoing citations of retracted scientific studies and protecting the integrity of the medical literature," Lee's group urged. The hypothesis that angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin-receptor blockers (ARBs) may be harmful in patients with COVID-19 has been floated since the early days of the pandemic, with the reasoning being that since the SARS-CoV-2 virus enters human cells through ACE2 receptors, upregulation of these receptors could put patients at risk. Several groups have rebutted this, showing that ACE inhibitors and ARBs are safe and perhaps even beneficial in patients with COVID-19. Lee's group relied on Google Scholar to identify 934 articles that cited the retracted paper. After excluding preprints, duplicate citations, and false links on the search engine, there were 652 verified citations. Most citations were used to support a statement in the article, and 2.6% included the data in a new analysis. More than a third of citations occurred within the first 2 months of the retraction. More than half were published after the 3-month mark or later, with 27.8% published after 6 months. "We chose to study [this paper] because it was retracted soon after publication, received prominent media attention, and was not subject to controversies, as has been the case for some studies of hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19, the topic of the other prominent article using the Surgisphere database that was also retracted around the same time," Lee and colleagues noted. They acknowledged that their reliance on a single search engine left room for missed citations. "Nevertheless, there is no reason for a retracted study to continue to be widely cited in the medical literature months after it was retracted, and, in some instances, for the retracted data to be incorporated into new analyses," the authors maintained. There's links in the original paper. |
| Posted by:Thing From Snowy Mountain |
| #3 COVID is China”s contribution to the climate control “problem”. Think of how much power those dead people would have used. |
| Posted by: Goober Bluetooth7005 2021-08-05 18:48 |
| #2 Well, Creationists have their "scientific" journals too. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2021-08-05 11:46 |
| #1 CDC reports that only 28.4% (the decimal point level of certainty is cute) of the black community are vaccinated in the US. So, anyone saying not getting vaxx is basically a serial DUI driver, murder, etc. is now a rayciss bastich also. Disclosure: I got the vaxx as soon as I was eligible and am still researching my legal remedies for missing out on the bribery freebies because I did the right thing (for me, YMMV, and I back to the hilt your right to choiose differently) |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2021-08-05 11:22 |