Michael Hiltzik: How a retracted research paper contaminated global coronavirus research
Call it the retraction that shook the coronavirus world.
On June 4, the Lancet, the British medical journal that is one of the most prestigious scientific publications in the world, withdrew a paper that had been one of the most consequential in the novel field of coronavirus studies.
The peer-reviewed paper, which the Lancet had published on May 22, said that treating COVID-19 with the antimalarial drugs chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine raised the heart-related death risk for COVID-19 patients in the hospital without showing any benefit.
The lead author of the paper, which employed a worldwide database of 96,000 patients from nearly 700 hospitals on six continents, was a highly regarded Harvard cardiac surgeon.
The findings were so striking that they prompted researchers in the U.S. and abroad, including the World Health Organization, to halt studies of the antimalarials immediately, citing the risk of heart problems.
But questions had been raised about that database almost within hours of the paper's
