Thread by @GidMK

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Most of the time, having the single biggest and most positive study looking at a topic withdrawn due to research misconduct would be enough for any researcher to reassess their position, but not with ivermectin!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

And then they fall back to the old charlatans argument, that RCTs can't answer the question

There are questions RCTs can't answer, but a drug for an infectious disease isn't one of them!