Agreed, reading takes effort, bummer. Luckily the authors have done the work for you, and linked to the two studies. When you're finished reading them, please let me know what faults you found in their research:
1. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Effect%20of%...
2. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=Repurposed%2...
They will immediately find large numbers of flaws (in any paper), some of which may invalidate the conclusion.
Papers which survive multiple rounds of attempts to invalidate the conclusion, are less likely to be incorrect.
You can't just naively go in and ask "did they follow the scientific method" or "does the data make sense", etc, unless you understand the field in enough detail to not repeat the copious mistakes of past generations.
For example, this study is retrospective, while the RECOVERY study was designed to be prospective (if I read their study design correctly; I'm not an epidemiologist, my phd is in biophysics). In general, retrospective studies produce less convincing evidence and so if yuou asked me to compare the results of the two studies, I would place more weight on RECOVERY. IIUC it also has a larger sample size. But all these things pale in comparison to complex, detailed analysis of the study plans to identify any major mistakes.
Hard work, right? How did you determine the validity of the "couple of [unnamed] doctors" that you trust over published research?
> "science" these days is corrupted by [...] I am suspicious of all of it
Including the science done by the "couple of doctors" you mentioned? You believe "they could've stopped the pandemic early on" and you're suspicious of them?