In war against scientific malpractice, a group of nine researchers has just published an article reminding the editors of scientific journals of their duty. “Studies that contain ethical, legal and methodological issues should be retracted [NDLR : retirées de la revue]”, they argue in a document, posted online on the pre-publication platform OSFpreprint. The authors, including Mahmoud Zureik, professor of epidemiology and public health at Versailles Saint-Quentin University, David Gorski, surgical oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and professor at the university’s medical school Wayne State (United States), or Fabrice Frank, computer scientist and independent researcher, are targeting in particular the publications of the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée Infection (IHUm) and its former director Didier Raoult.
Some of these researchers are also at the origin of the fall of the Marseille professor, who fell after numerous media revelations and investigations by the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM) and the The General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (IGAS) have uncovered serious misconduct within the IHUm. Everyone has been fighting for years, and in particular since the Covid-19 crisis, for respect for scientific integrity and ethics and are outraged that the IHUm can, even today, act with complete impunity .
“The largest wild-type clinical trial known to date”
Particularly in the collective’s sights, an IHUm study published in the journal New Microbes and New Infections (NMNI) on October 30, 2023, “the last publication in a long controversial series both scientifically and legally”, they write, referring to a study describing a clinical trial – under legal investigation – signed Didier Raoult and relating to the systematic prescription, between 2020 and 2021, of hydroxychloroquine, but also of zinc, ivermectin and azithromycin to more than 30,000 patients with Covid-19. Prescriptions made without a pharmacological basis and in the absence of any proof of effectiveness.
The Marseille institute had already published a preprint – a non-peer-reviewed version – of this work, in March 2023, on the MedRxiv platform. An extremely rare occurrence in the world of research, 16 learned societies had decided to publish a column in The world calling the IHUm study “the largest wild-type clinical trial known to date”. The ANSM subsequently ruled in favor of the 16 learned societies by announcing that it was going to court. If the preprint was finally withdrawn, the management of the IHUm decided to submit new works to the journal NMNI, who published them on October 30. The opportunity for the ANSM to “once again take legal action under article 40 of the Penal Code”, as indicated by L’Express at the time.
The inaction of the scientific world and the authorities worries
In addition to being outraged by the behavior of the IHUm management, which amounts to a snub not only to the French judicial and health authorities, but also to the scientific world, the authors of the article published in OSFpreprint take the opportunity to detail, point by point, all the legal, ethical and methodological problems of the October 30 study: absence of authorization from a personal protection committee or the ANSM, obligatory in this case , illegal nature of the prescription of hydroxychloroquine, etc. “It should also be noted that, in the October 30 article, several authors of the preprint have disappeared and another [NDLR : Peter A. McCullough, figures du complotisme aux Etats-Unis], of which we do not see any real contribution, has been added. This seems to violate all the rules of publication”, add collectively the authors, contacted by L’Express.
The latter also point out the behavior of NMNI and underline that many researchers have demonstrated that it is a “self-promotional journal” of the IHUm, as L’Express already indicated in 2020, or that it has published certain studies in deadlines far too short – sometimes less than 24 hours – for a rereading and credible verification of the data to have been carried out.
Finally, they list the long series of studies published by the IHUm which involve serious ethical or legal problems. “Nearly 50 of the IHUm articles received an ‘Expression of Concern’ from a single editor (Plos) for ethical questions, they emphasize. And Scientific Reports recently withdrew two articles published by the IHUm for other ethical questions, following a report published on 456 IHUm studies which raise ethical questions”. The facts denounced and the arguments put forward are not new , since they have already been reported in the press – including articles published in L’Express – and denounced by numerous researchers and, above all, by investigators from the ANSM and IGAS. Reason why the authors denounce the too late action of the authorities, but also of the review NMNI and its parent company, the scientific publishing giant Elsevier.
“We decided to publish this article because it is important that this story is not only Franco-French and that the international scientific community notes that the IHUm seems to make fun of the legal actions of the French authorities and that Elsevier, the publisher which publishes these studies, seems not to act to avoid publishing work which poses a problem to the French authorities”, insist the authors.