ORIGINS OF SNAKE OIL
The Truth About the Most Famous Retracted COVID-19 Study
How false hope from a fatally flawed study provided fertile ground for the COVID contrarian movement
Published in
10 min readAug 14, 2020
The controversial hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) study gave hope to the world. That was three seconds before scientists realized the trial suffered from flaws so grievous as to render the results meaningless.
Whether the drug helped people heal faster, this study never could tell. Reviewing the paper, one finds problems that reach such extremes it’s hard to understand how the paper got published. How could this research have seen peer review and come out — like this?
Therein lies the story. Ultimately, the study showed us one truth to a dramatic effect: Studies may be so troubled as to defy belief in their publication and still mislead the public as if the results had been pristine.
