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Comment by doesnotexist | Hacker News Reader

One person claiming that a drug has effectiveness based on their anecdotal experience just isn't the standard for medical evidence. If any of these people really wanted to change medical practice, they are aware of the actual standard and know what kind of studies, rigor and peer-review is necessary. Taking to youtube and twitter to claim it's a conspiracy but making no effort to actually do the work to prove your hypothesis, brings into question their motives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlatan

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> One person claiming that a drug has effectiveness based on their anecdotal experience

How about 31 randomized control trials?

https://c19ivermectin.com/

A nice meta analysis page:

https://ivmmeta.com/

Ivermectin is not the only substance studied:

https://c19early.com/

Those are nicely displayed, but it's not clear to me that they meet the standard of evidence required. Many others have looked at these studies and come to more ambiguous conclusions:

"My current opinion is pretty much exactly that of the WHO guidance: I do not think that the current evidence is strong enough to say that ivermectin is a useful therapy for coronavirus patients. I know that there are quite a few studies out there in the literature, but they suffer from various combinations of small sample size, poor trial design, not enough data reported, and (in many cases) inconclusive statistics."

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/06/07/iv...

"The Kory et al. preprint ignores the basics – there are no criteria for inclusion, studies have different mixes of treatment and control and different standards for describing treatments compared with ivermectin and mixes of treatments including ivermectin. These factors alone make the value of their meta-analysis doubtful. However, their evidence base is my major concern as it has been widely reported on social media without the wider (and more technical) context of how meta-analysis ought to be performed"

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Philip-Machanick/public...

But they at least make the case that a larger study is warranted.

A random blog just isn't the standard for medical evidence. Aren't you aware of the actual standard and know what kind of studies, rigor and peer-review is necessary? You need multiple peer-reviewed randomized control trials, at least 30.

> random blog

Let's put it this way - more people on this site know who Derek Lowe is (and respect his opinions) than every person combined that was involved in those 31 studies.

Same is true of Bret Weinstein

Whether or not that is strictly true, there's an enormous gulf between the renown and respect for Lowe versus that for Weinstein.

You obviously haven't watched the episode nor are you familiar with Bret and Heather's rigorous scientific approach regarding this topic.

Call me old fashioned but I don't source my medical evidence from two creators on youtube.

As I already stated, Bret and Heather both have PhD's in biology and the episode in question with Dr. Kory also featured Dr. Malone the inventor of mRNA vaccine technology. You are misrepresenting the content.

I’m curious about their motive for misrepresenting the content - I agree that they are, but it’s not obvious what the angle is for a commenter here.

They have committed to the new religion of “trust the experts” and are reacting to heresy.

I, too, only trust people in labcoats.

Ahem, I prefer beanie propeller hats.

> You obviously haven't watched the episode nor are you familiar...

If you are going to be rude to someone like that, you should provide your own evidence. Provide us links to specific points in the talk that you feel makes this episode substantial. Or show some manners.

How was I rude? The assertion, "One person claiming that a drug has effectiveness based on their anecdotal experience" is absolutely false and not at all representative of their channel content. I think the burden of proof lies on the one making the false assertion. Also my comment was also after this topic was flagged and taken down. I find that extremely rude and intellectually dishonest.

> I think the burden of proof lies on the one making the false assertion.

In an open democratic society everyone is responsible for surfacing the truth as they see it. Then we all decide indepedently what is a true or false assertion based off the evidence given.

Your job here is much easier: cite anything. Their job is much harder: they have to make an assertion about the entire episode. You should try to provide something substantial. Instead, you've come off as a bully & rude, dismissed the reply out of hand & done nothing to say why. You refuse to be helpful because you've asserted that you're right & they're wrong and that's all there is to it. It should be easy for you to make a real claim, beyond 'you're wrong'.

There is seemingly a lot of evidence for Ivermectin. I agree with you that people making a claim should provide evidence for it - but people asking for evidence shouldn't just assume there is none. It's like if I said I don't trust the vaccines because I don't trust one guy's anecdote about using the vaccines and not getting sick. That's not what vaccine-advocates are basing their argument on.

https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19/

Did you watch the episode with Dr. Kory and, if so, what are your objections on what was being said?

Note that as far as I can tell and remember, YouTube policy at that time was that content not in line with health authorities was not allowed, but since then Ivermectin was explicitly added (I might be wrong, that's just what I remember when I looked it up).

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