True to himself. At 71, Didier Raoult published his 17th book on Thursday April 6, Autobiography (ed. Michel Lafon, 336 pages). It comes to close the literary return of the most controversial researchers, since Laurent Toubiana, Laurent Mucchielli, Alexandra Henrion-Caude or even Pierre Chaillot, who all captured large audiences during the Covid-19 crisis, have recently published successful works. . Lucrative operations, from which the Marseille microbiologist could also benefit, since he has already sold more than 3,500 copies just three days after its publication.
In his autobiography, the former director of the IHU Méditerranée (IHUm) details his childhood, his family history and indulges in a few confessions. He is neither stingy in criticizing his detractors, nor in compliments towards himself. Didier Raoult thus has an “exceptional IQ of 180” and an “equally cumbersome physical power” – “an incredible alliance that I had to learn to tame”. He also defines himself as an “alpha male” and has, above all, the ability to be right almost always before anyone else.
His book is above all a defense of his career and his convictions, while he is at the center of many controversies. Among them, lawsuits for defamation or for harassment (one opposes Pr. Eric Chabrière, faithful researcher of the IHUm whom he warmly congratulates, to his daughter Magali Raoult, for whom he has not a word), but also investigations into the practices and illegal scientific studies of the IHUm, detailed in two vitriolic reports from the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM) and the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs (Igas). Regardless, Didier Raoult disputes and counter-attacks, even if it means coming to terms with the facts.
Hydroxychloroquine, alone against all
Unsurprisingly, he claims to have been “well and truly right” from the start on hydroxychloroquine. Denying any error, he only admits having “failed to convince at the right time”. Associated or not with azithromycin, the molecule would be effective against Covid-19, he insists, before going further: “The vast majority of French people remain convinced […] that hydroxychloroquine has never demonstrated its effectiveness, or even that we have demonstrated its ineffectiveness, which has never formally been the case, whatever the media have said and still say. “The reason is simple, according to him: the scientific journals that published the studies highlighting the effectiveness of his treatment are not published in the West. “They are out of most Western scientists who still consider that it is not of science elsewhere than in the so-called developed countries, which are predominantly white and Christian”, he argues.
However, the scientific community as a whole agrees: hydroxychloroquine does not work, which has been demonstrated through the analysis of a large number of methodologically robust studies. This position, which has been a consensus for more than two years, has been adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the main world health authorities.
Disinformation sites in the spotlight
Not enough to convince the former director of the IHUm, who prefers to quote “the largest database in the world (2,500 studies analyzed), C19early.org“, which confirms, according to him, the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. This site is however part of COVIDAnalysis, a network of misinformation sites born during the pandemic, including C19ivm, C19hcq, C19vitaminD and a whole myriad of sites that regularly change their Web address. The methods of this network – whose authors remain anonymous – have been denounced by several recognized researchers, such as the oncologist David Gorski or the biologist Carl T. Bergstrom. In order to demonstrate that hydroxychloroquine works, C19early compares, for example, all scientific studies step by step, as if they were equal. However, a dozen studies of poor quality are not worth a good study. It also compiles invalid works and non-scientific documents, including press articles or press releases. Above all, it distorts the conclusions of certain works or, even worse, transforms positive results into negative ones, and vice versa.
However, other tools for evaluating reliable scientific evidence exist, including that of the Covid-NMA projectsupported by AP-HP and the Cochrane collaboration, or that of the project meta-evidence.org, funded by the University and the University Hospital of Lyon. These sites also bring together a large number of scientific studies, classify them according to their level of proof, all updated regularly. Unsurprisingly, both conclude that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are not effective.
A grudge against any form of criticism
Didier Raoult also returns to his “first violent confrontation with a form of the press more concerned with ‘making buzz’ and disseminating accurate and verified information”. In reality, it was above all a confrontation with an English researcher in evolutionary biology, who was one of the first to have the audacity to question his work.
The story dates back to the late 1990s. A lively debate then occupied part of the scientific community, which attempts to determine whether the bacterium Yersina Pestis is responsible for the Black Death, which affected Europe from 1347-1352. Two camps are opposed, each hoping that the DNA analysis of the remains of the corpses will provide an answer. Since 2000, Didier Raoult has been publishing with colleagues from the IHUm a study in the journal Pnas in which he claims to have found traces of Yersinia Pestis in teeth from a 14th century mass grave. Yersina Pestis would be responsible for the Black Death. “We think we can put an end to the controversy,” he says with his colleagues.
But in 2001, a young English researcher, Marcus Thomas Pius Gilbert, gave a conference in Marseilles and explained that he had not succeeded in reproducing the results of Didier Raoult’s study. However, in the scientific field, reproduction is a crucial stage which makes it possible to reinforce a hypothesis or confirm a proof. Three years later, he publishes a study in collaboration with another team of researchers who had also failed to reproduce Didier Raoult’s results. “We explained that it was not possible to exclude that Pr. Raoult’s results were linked to contamination of their samples”, recalls Pr. Gilbert. The document points out the limits of the IHUm team’s methodology and calls on the scientific community to continue research.
The criticism is bad. Thomas Gilbert “had never done high-level science before and has never done it since”, his “work should be appreciated at its fair value, that is to say as the ravings of a totally pseudoscientist incompetent”, writes Didier Raoult, still furious 20 years later. A few lines later, he is glad that history has proven him right, since a a study published in 2011 in the journal Nature definitively proved that Yersina Pestis was responsible for the Black Death. “This confirmed that our results obtained by the same methods in 1998 were perfectly consistent and that Thomas Gilbert’s efforts were at best stupidity, at worst malicious. […] The publication of this article was therefore a real relief, even if he refrained from mentioning our previously published articles, while the strategy used was strictly identical to ours, result included, “he continues, half fig half- grape.
A questionable interpretation. Marcus Thomas Pius Gilbert may have been a young researcher in 2001, but today he is the director of the Center for Hologenomics at the University of Copenhagen and authored nearly 400 scientific articles including around sixty in prestigious journals Science And Nature. “I have never been in the camp of those who thought it was impossible that Yersina Pestis was responsible for the Black Death, I simply explained that Didier Raoult’s study did not constitute definitive proof”, underlines the English researcher. Finally, the 2011 study published in Nature was not based on “the same methods” as those of Didier Raoult, contrary to what he claims. The researchers used innovative “DNA fishing” and next-generation sequencing techniques and carried out independent sampling and analysis. What exactly Thomas Gilbert suggested. “Accusing me of being a pseudoscientist makes me laugh a lot, laughs the English researcher. It seems to me that Professor Raoult is above all upset by the fact that our work was much more rigorous than his”.
(No)Fake Med
of “fake medical news” which he accuses of harassment. If Didier Raoult pretends to forget the “No”, the reference to the collective “No Fake Med”, which brings together doctors and researchers committed against medical misinformation, is clear. They too had the audacity to express doubts very early on about the work of the IHUm. Along with other scientists who share their commitment, they denounced the many irregularities in the studies published by the IHUm, which the ANSM and IGAS reports subsequently confirmed. These positions have earned them the target, on social networks, of a horde of anonymous accounts, whose violence – insults, death threats and revelation of the home address of some – has given rise to several legal proceedings.
In his book, the Marseille professor chose to thank these “faithful soldiers of the army of shadows” who came to his defense and whom he compares to “heroes of the Resistance (sic)”. He also does not forget Pr. Chabrière, “at the forefront of this fight” … And yet accused of harassment in a lawsuit brought by Magali Raoult.
An IQ of 180
Didier Raoult briefly returns to the controversy around his intelligence quotient “outside the norm of 180”. A confidence made to journalists Ariane Chemin and Marie-France Etchegoin, who were preparing their book Raoult. A French madness and that he regrets. Far from acknowledging that this figure can surprise or question, he explains that he has tried all his life to hide this intellectual superiority “out of modesty”. “Before this pandemic, on the contrary, I was rather on the reserve, never mentioning in public what I had done, written or realized and which could have seemed too much or disproportionate for a single man”, he notes. In all modesty.
However, the score boasted by the Marseille professor is as exceptional as it is probably fanciful, as Franck Ramus, researcher at the CNRS and associate professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, explained to L’Express. According to this cognitive science specialist, who knows perfectly well the limits of the methods of calculating and evaluating IQ, any score exceeding 145 is necessarily extrapolated and “any score greater than 160 is likely to be fanciful and must inspire mistrust,” he said.
Studies published thanks to “connections”
Finally Didier Raoult makes some surprising confessions. In particular, he reveals that he succeeded in publishing two articles in the prestigious journal Science “thanks to the relations of Jean-Michel Claverie”, emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Aix-Marseille and director of the Mediterranean Microbiology Institute. Scientific publication should, in principle, not be linked to influences or friendships. Even if it would be naïve to think that this never happens, it is still amazing that a researcher would boast about it, since it reflects more the quality of an address book than scientific excellence.