Paris (AFP)
Hydroxychloroquine to prevent scooter accidents: a fierce hoax by doctors and researchers sheds light on the questionable practices of scientific-looking journals that publish any study, for payment.
The article, published on August 15 and since withdrawn from the site by the journal, is hilarious, riddled with absurdities, with wacky medical references like the magazines Picsou and Pomme d'Api.
The names of the authors and their institutions are invented: Didier Lembrouille, Nemo Macron (the president's dog), whose lab is located "Palais de l'Elysée", Otter F. Hantome (ghost author), Sylvano Trottinetta and Manis Javanica (Pangolin in learned language)
The author's contribution, prominently at the top of the first page, indicates that "DL was on vacation and added his name at the last moment" while "ST did not write anything but provided the scooters".
The authors of the hoax refer to an early 2020 video by Professor Didier Raoult, entitled "Coronavirus: fewer deaths than scooter accidents" in France. They targeted the Asian Journal of Medicine and Health (AJMH), which had published a study promoting hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19.
This study came from French doctors of the pro-hydroxychloroquine collective "Letons les médecins prescrire", led by Drs Martine Wonner (member of the #EcologieDemocratieSolidarite group) and Violaine Guérin. The most respected scientific journals refused to publish this study.
The hoax article is titled "Contrary to expectations, SARS-CoV-2 more lethal than scooters: could hydroxychloroquine be the only solution?"
Dr Michaël Rochoy, general practitioner and co-author of the hoax, recounts this adventure in detail on his blog (with access to the article deleted by the review).
The supposedly critical reviewers of the journal requested sometimes absurd details, relating for example to "the authors' chair". The authors indicate that this is an Ikea model ...
"We have sometimes added apples, insofar as their therapeutic efficacy is recognized by the general public", specify the authors in the article.
They go so far as to write that one of their clinical trials was intended to justify their hypothesis that the combination of hydroxychloroquine / azithromycin ("HCQ + AZT") "is the solution to all the problems in the world (see the diary by the second author for an application to the Israeli-Palestinian problem) ".
"Due to limited resources and funding, only two scooters (one very old, one new) were available," they say. Their study was "financed by the collective Letons les Vendeurs de Trottinette Prescrire".
With this hoax, the authors wish to demonstrate that it is not enough for an article to be published in a journal with scientific appearance to be "worthy of quality".
© 2020 AFP