The Covid-19 epidemic is fertile ground for the proliferation of fake news : “false information” fuels concerns about vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, amplifies mistrust of health authorities and promotes sometimes dangerous “cures”…
But it’s not just the fake news. Some “scientific” studies with dubious methodology and conclusions also contribute to misinformation.
Thus, at the end of June 2021, a study published in the specialized journal Vaccines (and validated upstream by a scientific reading committee) claimed that the anti-Covid-19 vaccine causes two deaths for every three people it protects from the virus. This study was unpublished on July 2, 2021 due to “several errors fundamentally compromising the interpretation of its conclusions“.
Weak studies… which still influence our choices
Too late though:once the paper is published, the damages are irrevocable“explained Emerson Brooking, a researcher specializing in the identification and analysis of disinformation (in the United States), to AFP.
Other examples: in June 2020, 3 studies were withdrawn from prestigious scientific journals – the LancetTHE New England Journal of Medicine and the Annals of Internal Medicine. Two of them praised chloroquine as a treatment against Covid-19, and the third questioned the interest of the mask against the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
“All the studies that have been produced and massively shared during the pandemic have not always been very scientifically robustremarks Maimuna Majumder, epidemiologist and statistician at Harvard Medical School (in the United States). It’s a problem because [ces études] influence people’s choices [notamment] those related to vaccination.“And if we continued to trust the specialists?
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