Evidence of Fabricated Data in a Vitamin C trial by Paul E Marik et al in CHEST

This is the same Marik behind efforts to treat COVID with Ivermectin. The paper he co-authored about treating COVID was found to have major issues and was retracted.<p>As for this particular paper about the Vitamin C trial (which hasn&#x27;t been retracted yet): numerous other groups tried replicating it and none could. Millions and millions and millions of dollars, countless hours wasted on conducting controlled trials all because of this guy&#x27;s fraud.<p>My two takeaways:<p>1) Kudos to Sheldrick, we absolutely need more people like him. We need statisticians to pick apart data in papers and see if it smells funny. This should have been caught earlier.<p>2) There should be a higher price to pay for this kind of fraud. For the confusion and mistrust that ensued, for the money and human capital that was wasted, he needs to be behind bars for a long, long time.

&gt; ...I have not requested access to the raw data or contacted the authors for explanation as the case is audacious...<p>Happily from the sidelines - it probably is fraud and this isn&#x27;t really an article targeted at the general audience. But the statistical evidence proves beyond a doubt that the data wasn&#x27;t collected by the methods described in the paper. That doesn&#x27;t prove it is fraudulent because formally speaking he can&#x27;t rule out that they just did a very bad job of explaining their methods.<p>Just from life experience, any time anyone goes in guns blazing based on statistical evidence - without actually talking to the people involved - it is often a mistake. Just because someone can&#x27;t think of an alternative reason says more about their imagination than the reality of the situation. Particularly coming in hot off a twitter argument.<p>That being said, these are unusual and unexpected patterns that show irregularities in the data, and I would certainly share his concerns.

For context:<p>“Remember that Vitamin C cures sepsis paper that could never be replicated in 9 RCTs?<p>Turns out there is a good reason why: it’s very likely fraudulent.<p>More brilliant statistical sleuthing by @K_Sheldrick.”<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;nickmmark&#x2F;status&#x2F;1506402015936581635?s=21&amp;t=1cbeN1bAO1W-qYYFwA7c2A" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;nickmmark&#x2F;status&#x2F;1506402015936581635?s=2...</a>

Paul Marik is also the co-founder of the Front Line COVID Critical Care Alliance, the foremost group of doctors promoting ivermectin <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.medpagetoday.com&#x2F;special-reports&#x2F;exclusives&#x2F;96522" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.medpagetoday.com&#x2F;special-reports&#x2F;exclusives&#x2F;9652...</a>

Once I had an argument with a PhD biologist at my university because she was doing a Fisher&#x27;s exact test in the most insane way I had ever seen: taking floating point ratios instead of integers, and because the stats program she used didn&#x27;t take floating points as valid inputs for the test---obviously---, her workaround was to multiply these numbers by 100 to get integers. She refused to back down on this madness because &quot;her supervisor did it like this, and his supervisor before him&quot;. In the end, her paper was peer reviewed and published and it was the first in a series of let downs that made me decide not to pursue a career in academia. Sometimes it&#x27;s not like researchers want to tamper with their results. It&#x27;s just that statistical ignorance is widespread and affect even the reviewers that were supposed to be the first line of defense. Which is a huge problem for an environment that relies too much on p-values and not so much on explaining them.

Wow. Wouldn’t believe it, if not because of life experience.<p>I’ve had this issue, arguing with bad faithed opportunists, whose approach was to just bury competing ideas in FUD.<p>Seems someone summarized it in this succinct statement:<p>[“The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it.”][1]<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Brandolini%27s_law" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Brandolini%27s_law</a>

Call me old-fashioned, but I suspect Sheldrick doesn&#x27;t really take the measure of the risks. It&#x27;s like walking on a wire. Very impressive, but just one misstep and you&#x27;re joining the crocodiles (MD profs) below. Some of them really have unsuspected reach and power. Actually, the sheer dishonesty and nastiness of the MD hierarchy is probably what surprised me the most at the onset of my career.<p>Good luck to this man!

Remind me the OTC company I have invested year ago, one of the cofounder had a really decent record, I am not expert in the bio research area but i had an impression that he was one of the respected authority in stem cell research. Then I try to find answers for &quot;why stocks are so cheap&quot;, turns out his group confidently started fast trials at the beginning of COVID and resulted some deaths. It&#x27;s hard to judge due to nature of pandemic executing a fast trial but his way of handling the aftermath was totally disaster for his company

In light of recent trends toward many more authors, I think it is worth revisiting scientific analysis of Ouija boards to look at how many participant processes arrive at a conclusion they find satisfactory without being aware of their own bias.

But this is just par for the course. Most studies are flawed.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Replication_crisis" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Replication_crisis</a><p>&quot;A 2016 poll of 1,500 scientists reported that 70% of them had failed to reproduce at least one other scientist&#x27;s experiment (50% had failed to reproduce one of their own experiments).&quot;<p>or at least - this is what it used to say! This has been memory holed.<p>and<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;science-environment-39054778" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;science-environment-39054778</a><p>&quot;According to a survey published in the journal Nature last summer, more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist&#x27;s experiments.&quot;

Shame on Chest Magazine&#x27;s editors for not catching this either way.<p>Most likely, one report-writer didn&#x27;t understand that these were MATCHED consecutive patients. The data is so clearly matched, it&#x27;s hard to believe it&#x27;s fraudulent.

So this is a recent study but surely there’s prior ones as well? How many people actually go and check studies like these for validation? I know there’s reproducibility issues with certain social sciences but how wide spread is this? Is anything being done to address such a glaring dependability issue?

How much of this type of stat checking in scientific papers could be automated with a well designed AI system

Unbelievable but sadly true. Thank you for sharing

The protocol is vitamin c + thiamine + hydrocortisone.<p>I&#x27;m 100% convinced hydrocortisone is bioactive is sepsis patients, like it is in anyone else . Also 100% convinced vitamin C boosts antioxidant levels in sepsis patients who&#x27;re vitamin-C-depleted.

It seems poignant to acknowledge that while this type of potential deception or fraud hiding in statistical analysis may be to the detriment of society or patients at large, a greater fraud is being perpetrated on the whole of humanity in the &#x27;one size fits all&#x27;, &#x27;gold standard&#x27; of clinical trials. The human body is unique between individuals, drug interaction is unique to body chemistry.<p>This isn&#x27;t up for debate nor is it absurd to call for genotype specific studies of efficacy. We, collectively, have allowed real miraculous discoveries to flounder as a result of this failure to appreciate personalized medicine.<p>We will look back on this Era in awe with the ineptitude of our methods.

I am only a sample size of 1, but twice now ascorbic acid about 1 or 2 teaspoons worth drank seems to have stopped a visual migraine after 15 minutes.

Single data point, but my grandfather was treated for a systemic infection at Sentara Norfolk General by Dr. Marik using his Vitamin C protocol and it brought him back from the brink of death when nothing else worked.<p>Is the study fraudulent? Could be, and his fight to use Ivermectin on Covid patients always struck me as quackery as well. That said, it seems to me that there is something about the Vitamin C protocol that should not be dismissed.