An editorial in a prominent medical journal criticizes federal governments, academic institutions, and the media for stopping working to communicate the restrictions of research study into possible treatments during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Writing in JAMA, a medical professional at Boston University (BU) School of Public Health, MA, and a medical reporter alert of the dangers of spreading out “hurried, incomplete, biased misinformation” about possible treatments for SARS– CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19
They highlight the roles that government reports, news stories, talk programs, and press releases have played in sharing misleading info.
” Trust in science, medicine, public relations, and journalism may remain in jeopardy in the crossway where these professions fulfill,” write Dr. Richard Saitz, professor and chair of community health sciences at BU, and Gary Schwitzer, the creator and publisher of HealthNewsReview.org, an initiative that utilized to rate health news reports.
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” The COVID-19 pandemic has actually developed possibly the most challenging time for science communication in years,” they compose.
The editorial recognizes three possible defects in scientific interaction:
- focusing on results from a single study without providing the context of other studies, or stopping working to acknowledge that single research studies are hardly ever definitive
- overemphasizing results, particularly relative impacts (instead of absolute impacts), and not pointing out research studies’ constraints
- utilizing insufficient reports of unpublished studies and reports that have not been through a sufficient review procedure
As examples of flawed interaction, the editorial focuses on the reporting of results from research studies that investigated the drugs remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, and dexamethasone.
On April 10, 2020, the New England Journal of Medication published online a small observational study of the antiviral drug remdesivir for individuals with extreme COVID-19
The paper reported that there were medical improvements in 36 of 53 patients (68%) who received the drug. The authors concluded, “Measurement of effectiveness will need ongoing randomized, placebo– controlled trials of remdesivir therapy.”
The pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, which produces remdesivir, put out a press release that explained the limitations of the study and noted that the drug’s safety and effectiveness were unknown.
Nevertheless, the subtitle of the press release specified, “Remdesivir treatment led to scientific enhancement.”
” A statement that strongly suggests domino effect is an inappropriate description of the outcomes of a little observational study,” compose Dr. Saitz and Schwitzer in their editorial.
They go on to slam a news release later on that month by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a subsequent press conference. These associated to a larger, randomized controlled trial of remdesivir.
At that time, the research study was unpublished and had actually not undergone peer review, however the initial outcomes recommended that the drug lowered time to medical facility discharge compared to a placebo.
There was also a reduction in mortality, but this figure was not statistica