Comment by whynotmaybe
16 hours ago
Dr Raoult was very vocal in France about hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for covid 19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Raoult
It seems today that he was just wrong and used to make "dubious" clinical trials.
> As of 2025, 46 of Raoult's research publications have been retracted, and at least another 218 of his publications have received an expression of concern from their publishers, due to questions related to ethics approval for his studies.
Raoult's case is so strange.. he's not the usual fringe doctor, up until covid, he had a center seat in national health institution and everybody around him was listening. I still don't get why nobody was wary of him there..
In this case, he was actually spreading misinformation. Anyone with two braincells could see it at the time.
> Anyone with two braincells could see it at the time. It seems a captain obvious now but it wasn't so at the time. (Or maybe my.braincells.count() < 2)
Many people listened because he wasn't some youtuber doing his research, he was the head of the "Infectious and Tropical Emergent Diseases Research Unit" ad the Faculty of Medicine of Marseille.
I've watched one of his interviews where he stated that people survived in his unit with hydroxychloroquine and that he had numbers to prove it.
When you look at his credentials, and my.braincells.count(), it was hard to identify it as misinformation.
I definitely exaggerated with my "two braincells". Even the french president said about the guy "we need more people like him" (although I wouldn't say he's that smart himself...).
But even without being knowledgeable about statistics, there were a lot of very serious people giving very good arguments against his results. You just had to see them. And seeing all the Facebook doctors lunatics instantly side with Raoult and defend him tooth and nail should definitely raise some red flags...