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Comment by doesnotexist | Hacker News Reader

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Top medical journal editor, eh? Why not ask the man himself what he thinks about that?

"We know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong." -- Richard Horton

"The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue." -- Richard Horton

When a man who runs a scientific journal estimates that maybe half of what he publishes "may simply be untrue", it seems reasonable to conclude that maybe that journal isn't (or shouldn't be) a top journal. You could also ask how he allowed that situation to develop, because that would be a worse track record than even the dodgiest of newspapers.

In case you think he's really far out on that self-judgement:

"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgement of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine." -- Marcia Angell

By the way, Horton's justification for why leaving the WHO would be bad was nothing to do with science. He said:

"President Trump’s decision to defund WHO is simply this—a crime against humanity. Every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity."

Betraying global solidarity is not a part of the scientific process, it's a political concept.

Turns out you can be critical of a system, see it’s imperfections and not throw the baby out with the bath water.

A pandemic by definition is a global problem.

He never advocated injecting bleach.

Nobody ever advocated injecting bleach. Blowing up one off-the-cuff remark is all fun and games in politics, but it was never a policy. The policy was lockdowns, restrictions and Operation Warp Speed.

The man did enough that was actually objectionable, people shouldn't feel a need to make up silly stuff.

"So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just a very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn't been checked because of the testing, And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you're going to test that, too. I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that."

That reads as "I don't know if this is viable, so let me ask the experts" to me. Rather than advocacy.

Another reading might be inhaling bleach

To me, that reading requires assuming bad faith.

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