Fraudulent ivermectin studies open up new battleground

Ivermectin has never been proven as an effective Covid treatment, and studies that said it was have been either poorly conducted, too small for their findings to be applied more widely or outright faked. Yet the drug’s popularity has soared.

It started from a fraudulent study

One of the first fraudulent ivermectin studies was revealed just a few months into the pandemic, before it was even being widely used or promoted to treat the virus. That study found ivermectin was leading to improved and reduced mortality in hospitalised Covid-19 patients around the world. The paper was eventually retracted by the medical journal that published it after the data was found to have been falsified and the patients nonexistent.

Other studies found ivermectin has no significant impact on Covid-19 patients’ viral load, and that further, larger studies are needed to properly assess any impact of ivermectin on Covid-19. Despite all this, the drug has taken off beyond Peru and is now being used all around the world, promoted by politicians, celebrities and even some doctors and scientists as a credible treatment for Covid-19.

Misinformation fuels conspiracy theories

When asked why researchers would make so many mistakes or worse, deliberately mislead, misrepresent and falsify data, he says: “The real question is why none of the groups promoting ivermectin as a mass treatment for Covid-19 did their basic due diligence, because much of the fraud is really not that hard to identify.”

In the case of ivermectin, recognition has come from researchers that cite the papers, pushing the papers up the academic rankings and giving the journals or websites where they are published prominence. But politicians, celebrities and journalists are also promoting the findings.