The BFD | Utter Nonsense in a Medical Journal

The once-esteemed Lancet has long taken a leftward-bent trajectory and that’s why, call me cynical if you like, before reading any editorial content published by the outfit I recommend a grain of salt at the ready.

In the course of the last week-and-a-bit, that journal of medicine published two articles of a controversial nature; one of research, the other of philosophy. The research paper had almost immediate world-wide repercussions in the ‘finding’ of increased risk of COVID-19 patient mortality among users of hydroxychloroquine, re-interpreted globally by media as ‘Trump advice bad’ and sufficiently spooking the WHO to suspend endorsement of clinical trials for the drug’s use while the headlines were still reverberating through the world’s news-organs.

But within days it was our mates across the ditch that opened up the obvious cracks in the report, cracks the Lancet should have picked up well before publication.

Claiming Australian statistics among their dataset ‘Surgisphere‘, the authors of the report, were challenged by Aussie epidemiologists and medical researchers asking (politely) ‘Where the bloody hell did’ya get that from?’ Australian researchers and experts had no knowledge of Surgisphere, nor did any Aussie hospital or agency have any known data-sharing agreement with the authors.

Surgisphere’s response was ‘the dog ate our homework’:

“We, at Surgisphere, appreciate the enthusiasm and lively discussion with respect to our important multi-national observational registry study published in The Lancet medical journal.”

But ultimately refusing to address the Australian concerns, ‘cos confidentiality,

“As with most corporations, the access to individual hospital data is strictly governed. Our data use agreements do not allow us to make this data public.”

Strewth. Stone the crows. Surgisphere did concede that, upon self-review of their confidential sources, one supposedly Aussie hospital dataset which had exclusively, 100% Asian patients, was probably an error among the otherwise infallible findings. “If they got this wrong, what else could be wrong?” asked Dr Allen Cheng, an epidemiologist with Alfred Health in Melbourne.

The impudent Ocker is also questioning the minor miracle of just four authors wading through, and analysing, the data of 81,000+ individuals in such a short time, claiming it would take a team of researchers in size proportional to the population of Ballarat to get a proper job done with such an enormous dataset in the timeframe, but that’s just rude.

The other Lancet article worthy of low-light “After COVID-19—is an “alternate society” possible?” begins:

“How do we make sense of this pandemic? The first interpretations are now appearing. Slavoj Žižek is a prolific philosopher and cultural theorist.”

Ahm; yeah, nah. Žižek is an arch-Communist actually, proudly so. No surprises then, of the COVID menace, our Marxist posits that “even horrible events can have unpredictable positive consequences”, like, for instance to:

“compel us to re-invent Communism based on trust in the people and in science”. Not a Soviet-style Communism, not “an idealised solidarity between people”. But a Communism that recognises that “global capitalism is approaching a crisis”. It is a “Communism imposed by the necessities of bare survival.”

But Žižek laments: “The most probable outcome of the epidemic is that a new barbarian capitalism will prevail.” Poor thing.

What is such utter nonsense doing in a ‘medical’ journal? The scribble has no redeeming feature, bar one: accompanied by four illustrations, all photographs, that feature the said author, the cover of his tawdry screed, what one supposes is the face of barbarian capitalism (Mr Bolsonaro, of Brazil) and another which one fairly supposes is the intended face of new Communism based on trust in the people and in science’.

So, here’s the brain-teaser: who do you reckon that face of ‘re-invented Communism’ might be?

Or was that so easy to guess it doesn’t even qualify as a tease?