Agreeing to do free work (reviewing papers) should not require more free work (creating 100s of logins on editorial management systems)
Oh, I forgot the specific, unique username you assigned to me 5 years ago? WHAT A SURPRISE GUESS I'LL RESET THAT
"Use your ORCID to login!"
*tries ORCID*
"Looks like you don't have an account. Create one today!"
*Creates account*
"Looks like you DO have an account. Forgotten your username?" 🙃🙃🙃
Also, and I cannot stress this enough, even if I'm perfect with a password manager or similar and never forget a login, there are literally 1,000s of journals and you have to create an account with EVERY SINGLE ONE. So much effort for no reward
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One of the weirdest things about the ivermectin discussion has been watching people go from "the evidence is good quality" to "it's just one fraud" to "lots of fraud isn't an issue" as the story has progressed
Most of the time, having the single biggest and most positive study looking at a topic withdrawn due to research misconduct would be enough for any researcher to reassess their position, but not with ivermectin!
Instead, people argue that it's fine because there's a "baseline" of fraud in other research, or because there are still (mostly null) trials which are not fraudulent
I always find it bizarre that people treat voting rights as some sort of philosophical battle when it's really very simple maths: right-wing groups will always act to block rights, left-wing groups will always try to get more people voting
The groups who don't vote are traditionally disadvantaged groups - younger people, lower-income, minorities etc. There's some variation within that structure, but it's pretty consistent
These are also the groups most likely to vote left-wing. If you're being brutally pragmatic (as most political people are), and left-wing group will want to broaden the vote because most of those extra voters will probably vote for them
There is a lot of medical nonsense out there that is depressing and sad, but every once in a while it's worth remembering that large animal chiropractic exists and is both very silly and incredibly funny to watch
Here is a video of a chiropractor 'adjusting' a giraffe's spine by poking it. A giraffe has vertebrae that are ~30cm thick, you can't adjust that without a large hammer of some kind
Here's a video of someone adjusting the spine of a ~600Kg dairy cow with their bare hands. The cow does not even notice
The Lebanese ivermectin study has been retracted, with the lead author claiming that the fake data used in the paper was meant to "train a research assistant"
How this mistake was made, and why they generated an entirely fake dataset that matches their actual conclusions which was statistically analyzed and published is not elucidated on
Gotta say, I've never created fake outcome data to train a research assistant (in what?), but if I did I doubt it would be kept anywhere near the real data from my trial 🤷♂️
People commonly claim that pharmaceutical companies can't make money on drugs that are off or close to being off-patent
So let's talk about the famous case of Nexium and Prilosec 1/n
2/n The story begins in 1989, when the company that later became Astrazeneca patented a drug for acid reflux that worked better than anything on the market. The drug, named Prilosec, became one of the best-selling medications at the time
3/n However, in the late 90s/early 00s, the company making Prilosec faced an issue - their drug was soon to be off patent, and despite record sales generic manufacturers wanted to start selling cheaper versions
2/n Firstly, we've got studies that probably or definitely did not take place as described. I'd not include these in any analysis, certainly not an aggregate model
3/n We've got a few case series that are just a bit of a waste of time - without even controlling for age, these provide no useful evidence even as part of an aggregate model