Zelfs de BBC drinkt de Kool-Aid

If there was one broadcaster you could rely on, it was the English BBC. The BBC has always had an excellent reputation, not only journalistically but also in the scientific field, it was an institution you could build on. "In times of confusion, the BBC brings us back to reality with truth, objectivity and empirical realism", that is the image and that is also what they radiate, especially when they publish a "reality check". Or rather, that was the image, because BBC has also jumped on the pharma-driven anti-ivermectin bandwagon. This is evident from the article "Ivermectin: How false science created a Covid 'miracle' drug, a reality check by Rachel Schraer & Jack Goodman".

Drinking the Kool-Aid

The phrase "Drinking the Kool-Aid" originates from events in Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978, in which more than 900 members of the Peoples Temple movement committed suicide. Brainwashed by cult leader Jim Jones, they took a powdered drink (coincidentally Kool-Aid) that had been poisoned with cyanide and other drugs. The expression comes from there and now means: accepting an idea or changing a preference because of popularity, peer pressure or persuasiveness. That can even lead to suicide, just as the BBC is also destroying its own reputation here.

What is wrong with the IVM debunk due to the BBC article

If you have half an hour, be sure to check out Dr. John Campbell's video further down. Continue in this article

• Additional information on the video regarding the footnotes
• A little about Dr. John Campbell himself
• Beforehand: preparing for the video
• The video itself
• A textual summary of what he says in that video, for anyone who has difficulty with information through videos or simply does not have or does not take the time to do so.

Additional: the footnotes

Unfortunately, what Campbell forgets in the video is to check the footnotes of an opinion piece in Nature. That piece is the basis of the BBC article. The references in that article are the following footnotes:

1. Elgazzar, A. et al. Withdrawn study in which student Jack Lawrence discovered methodological errors. The study no longer carries any weight in the assessment of ivermectin.
2. Andrew Bryant et al. A PRE-PRINT meta-study in which the withdrawn Elgazzar study was still included. It is expected that the pre-primt will be corrected for this during the peer review.
3. Andrew Hill et al. A temporarily withdrawn Oxford study which will be republished after exclusion from the Elgazzar study.
4. One article in the Guardian about the withdrawal of -again- the Elgazzar study. The article put forward as a scientific basis begins with "The efficacy of a drug promoted by right-wing figures..."
5. AURL to yet another Elgazzar study.
6. A study in which the Twitter group suspects errors.
7. A wrong link, that should have been this one: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02958-2 which describes the problem that doing large studies on Covid-19 and ivermectin in Latin America is difficult. ivermectin is freely available there and is used there, which makes it difficult to compare with placebo, as also described in my VV article of 5 March 2021. This says nothing about effectiveness or safety.

All in all, very poor evidence. One study that is being revised and another study in which the authors suspect a minor inaccuracy (out of a total of 122 studies). Meta-studies that included these studies in their reviews in the past will re-weigh them after republication, or exclude them after withdrawal.

Beforehand

I have not yet heard Campbell talk about the rule that vaccines (especially under emergency conditions) may only be used in the absence of medication. It is also possible that this rule has been abolished at the request of the pharmaceutical companies or that the emergency conditions have expired and that everything is 100% approved because it has been proven effective and super safe. At least I don't hear much about it anymore, not even in relation to Molnupiravir, Merck's brand new Covid drug (more on that in a future article).

As an old-school physician, Campbell always first looks at the stature of the authors. In this case, the debunk is done by two 'journalists'. I would also like to make a comment on that.

You would expect that Campbell would also realize by now that stature says little about the independent quality of a piece. (In the Netherlands, top virologists have been selling nonsense about virus spread for years – it remains a good example.) Nevertheless, I agree with him that the term 'journalist' is a disqualification in this case. Especially MSM (science) journalists should be seen as unreliable in terms of corona for the time being, not to mention the exceptions because they probably exist too.

Nevertheless, journalists can certainly do important work, provided they build an argument based on falsifiable sources. That is a scientific, critical way of working and something very different from copying/pasting texts from news agencies and government institutes and then looking for some anecdotal evidence at best. Sources should generally be scientific studies with clear hypotheses, assessed in a way that can be verified. Preferably peer reviewed, preferably Ranomized Controlled Trials. In the Netherlands, we have examples of excellent non-medical authors and researchers. Not that they are always right, but at least it is possible to check where they are and why. Important discoveries in a field also arise at the edges of that field, or even outside it.

None of this in this BBC article. These BBC journalists think that the label 'BBC' has enough authority to be able to do "debunks" and "reality checks" without substantiating references. There are some clues in the article from which Campbell was able to conclude what the basis for the article was. This appears to be a opinion piece, published in Nature, again built around assumptions and claims based on meager evidence (see the footnotes discussed above).

In the BBC article itself it is not always clear what the journalists' interpretation is and what comes out of the 'study', so for the sake of readability, we are not going to make a drama out of that. I highly recommend this thirty-minute video, if only for its humor. He keeps himself neutral – but in the meantime. He doesn't often get so worked up... Otherwise, read the key points below the video in a few minutes.

Dr John Campbell on BBC's "ivermectin debunk"

Campbell peels the 'debunk' like an onion, from the outside. He starts with the BBC. In a sarcastic way he sketches the reputation of the BBC. Of which he is normally happy when they speak out about something to put things right.

Campbell strongly doubts whether a BBC journalist without a background as a scientist, academic researcher and/or doctor is capable of giving a medical-technical reality check. He gives nice examples ("I've been having a bit of a stomach ache lately, I'm going to make an appointment with the journalist, see what he says". 🙂

Guideline for BBC journalists appears to be an opinion piece submitted to Nature. Lead author is Jack Lawrence, a student who has mobilized some academic supporters via Twitter. He has discovered methodological errors in one, possibly two studies and links them to an article about meta-studies in general, an article that should question all meta-studies on every medical subject, because they were conducted incorrectly. The article contains no further research data, it is an opinion article, signed by an "academic group" whose members found each other on Twitter.

The BBC can reveal that there is something seriously wrong with the studies that proponents of ivermectin rely on.

The arguments:

• The proponents of ivermectin are "mostly anti-vaxxers".
  Is that true or is that just an assumption? It is not only blackening by association but also an incorrect association. Campbell himself, as mentioned, is strongly pro-vax and he is definitely pro-ivermectin. [By the way, there are many indications that C19 vaccine hesitants are often not anti-vaxxers. That statement therefore needs proof.]
• It is a medicine for horses. On social media, tips are even exchanged about human use of the version for animals. This ignores the fact that 3.7 billion doses have been given to people. [The journalists also don't seem to know that medicines often started out as veterinary medicines. Of course, people exchange tips among themselves because doctors a) are not allowed to prescribe it and b) many doctors consider the drug a scam.]
• The BBC first reveals that the researchers found 26 studies of which "more than a third contain major errors or signs of potential fraud." No substantiation is given for this either: it does not say which studies are involved! Apparently, there is not much to criticize about two-thirds of the studies. The BBC does not talk about that further.
• Then the BBC reports again that the researchers have evaluated almost all studies. So not 26 after all? [On https://c19ivermectin.com/ you see that there are more than 100. On https://ivmmeta.com/ only the 63 large Randomized Controlled Trials.]
• BBC does not provide any references, based on an article by a united Twitter group with the student as the main author.
• Campbell checks some claims but cannot find the corresponding studies or encounters a scientific debate about less essential details.
• Criticism of ivermectin side effects ignores the fact that 3.7 billion doses in humans showed exceptionally few side effects compared to other drugs, including, for example, the over-the-counter ibuprofen. Again, BBC refers to people who are forced to mess around with veterinary medicines themselves – which says nothing about the effect of the drug itself.
• The controversy that ivermectin evokes is cited again to put ivermectin in a bad light.
• An anecdote about a deceased Covid patient who performed her own ivermectin treatment at home should serve as tragic evidence to reinforce this. However, generalizing from the anecdotal is non-scientific thinking (inductive vs deductive).

According to student author Jack Lawrence - and BBC seems to agree - this leads to the conclusion that all reviews of large medical studies (meta-analyses of RCTs) carried out so far should be carried out again. This includes reviewing the individual patient data again, even after peer review. That means: every study involved, even if it has been peer reviewed, checks again down to the individual patient data. The whole of medical science has to be turned upside down... Then you have to be prepared. However, there is no publication in which

Conclusion: The BBC cites unpublished evidence and thus disqualifies itself.

Dr. John Campbell then makes a case for the pharmacists, doctors and hospitals who have set up studies with limited budgets to make their point and points out https://ivmmeta.com, where only accepted studies are reviewed.

The discoverer of ivermectin, Satoshi Ömura, has asked Merck to investigate its effect on COVID-19 in a large, thorough Randomized Controlled Trial. Merck refused.