Thread by @Jikkyleaks

For the record, Ben Goldacre had campaigned for years for full data transparency.
In 2017 he backtracked.
The paper is here.


This happened under Stuart Buck's grant.

The call for full data transparency died in 2017.
Pfizer would benefit in 2020. bmj.com/content/357/bm…

https://twitter.com/Jikkyleaks/status/1695593364392124691

Also for the record there were two papers on the "failure" of #hydroxychloroquine published in the same journal, using huge datasets not available for audit, within 2 months late 2020.

The second was Ben Goldacre's OPENsafely group.
thelancet.com/journals/lanrh…

The earlier paper was funded by pharma and supposedly found over 300,000 patients who were taking Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin for Rheumatoid arthritis.

That is not a combination used for RA.

This paper needs to be fully audited.

thelancet.com/journals/lanrh…

So what is the probability that two huge papers (over 100,000 patients) appeared at around the same time, in the same journal, after the #surgisphere scandal had died down, using exactly the same kind of model as Surgisphere, and not available for inspection?

@chrismartenson

@chrismartenson I should also point out that we have looked at this many times before, so this is an archival (legal) record.

OPENsafely have produced papers previously that are not consistent with the same data from open sources.

#LancetGate #LancetGate2

https://twitter.com/Jikkyleaks/status/1658691730601033737?s=20

It's also worth noting that in the Lancet Rheumatology Goldacre paper, the COVID mortality rate for HCQ users was 0.2% - in the UK in April 2020.

The corresponding published mortality for the UK was over 0.5%.

For over 70's:
HCQ mortality 0.3%
UK mortality 1.2%

Over 80's
HCQ mortality 1%
UK mortality 5%

The whole cohort had similar mortality rates with or without HCQ, but the non-HCQ users were using other inflammatory modulators (DMARDs).

Goldacre's paper probably found one of the most striking cohorts (and thus treatment options) with reduced COVID mortality, but this was never investigated.

@profnfenton @joshg99 @ClareCraigPath @P_McCulloughMD @stkirsch @alexandrosM

And just imagine that the massive reduction (60%+) in death rate in the #Hydroxychloroquine (or DMARD) cohort was known by Rentsch and Goldacre in Jan 2021 but they failed to declare it, and refused to release the data...

There were 78,000 COVID deaths in the UK in 2021.