This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/science by /u/shiruken on 2024-09-07 16:07:57+00:00.
We wish to inform the r/science community of an article submitted to the subreddit that has since been retracted by the journal. The submission garnered broad exposure on r/science and significant media coverage. Per our rules, the flair on this submission has been updated with "RETRACTED". The submission has also been added to our wiki of retracted submissions.
--
Reddit Submission: Nearly 17,000 people may have died after taking hydroxycholoroquine during the first wave of COVID. The anti-malaria drug was prescribed to some patients hospitalized with COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic, "despite the absence of evidence documenting its clinical benefits,"
The article "Deaths induced by compassionate use of hydroxychloroquine during the first COVID-19 wave: An estimate" has been retracted from Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy as of August 26, 2024. After concerns were raised by readers, the Editor-in-Chief ordered a review and ultimately requested the retraction of the article.
The decision to retract was based on two major issues: 1) Reliability of the data (in particular the Belgian dataset) and 2) the assumption that all patients were being treated the same pharmacologically. Because of these issues, the Editor-in-Chief found the conclusions of the article to be unreliable and ordered the retraction.
--
This retraction is somewhat controversial, as reported by L'Express, since it involves the disgraced French scientist Didier Raoult (See our recent AMA with the science sleuths who exposed massive ethics violations at his research institute).
--
Should you encounter a submission on r/science that has been retracted, please notify the moderators via Modmail.