After a petition from nearly two dozen people in Europe, the United States and Asia, a public health journal says it is investigating an article it published last January about a way to detect the virus that causes COVID-19.
[Please see an update on this post.]
The paper, “Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR,” appeared in Eurosurveillance. It was received on January 21 and accepted on January 22, a remarkably quick turnaround under normal circumstances, although not unheard of during the pandemic. It has been cited well over 800 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.
The senior author of the work was Christian Drosten, of the Charité University Hospital in Berlin, who became something of a celebrity virologist — the Anthony Fauci of Germany — in the early days of the pandemic. As Science reported in late April, Drosten’s podcast, Coronavirus Update, became the most popular podcast in Germany, garnering more than 1 million downloads per episode.
But, as with Fauci in the United States, Drosten has become a target of criticism, largely from political conservatives, who complain that what they consider to be flawed science is informing economically damaging policies. An article in May in Bild, a right-wing tabloid, accused Drosten of having “worked dishonestly,” and peddling “false conclusions” about the infectivity of the SARS-Co-V2 virus. But the newspaper apparently only gave him an hour to respond to their questions.
As Bloomberg reported in September, Drosten’s handling of the Bild story earned him hero status on social media:
A German model proposed to him on Twitter, demanding a response within the hour or else she’d assume they’re engaged. ZSK, a punk band in Berlin, released a song called I Have Better Things to Do. The accompanying music video features a cartoon Drosten angrily throwing away a cellphone with Bild on its screen and blasting viruses with laser beams shooting out of his eyeballs.
The petition doesn’t call Drosten dishonest. But it does demand that Eurosurveillance retract his group’s paper for a litany of “scientific and methodological blemishes,” which it enumerates in detail (10 points, to be precise). The second author of the petition, Bobby Rajesh Malhotra, described what he called “the very specific behavioral-patterns, underlying market-architecture, fraudulent scientific methods, orthodox rituals of the vast pharma-wasp nest set around the queen wasp Christian Drosten” in a 124-tweet thread in October.
Central to the group’s claims is the notion that Drosten and colleagues failed to prove that PCR testing can identify the SARS-Co-V-2 virus. The result, they claim, has been:
worldwide misdiagnosis of infections attributed to SARS-CoV-2 and associated with the disease COVID-19. We are confronted with stringent lockdowns which have destroyed many people’s lives and livelihoods, limited access to education and these imposed restrictions by governments around the world are a direct attack on people’s basic rights and their personal freedoms, resulting in collateral damage for entire economies on a global scale.
The statement from Eurosurveillance reads:
We have recently received correspondence regarding a paper published this year, questioning both the content and the editorial procedures used to evaluate the article prior to publication. We can assure our readers and authors that we take comments relating to scientific content, the processing of articles and editorial transparency seriously.
All articles published by the journal are peer-reviewed by at least two independent experts in the field (or at least one in the case of rapid communications). The article in question was also peer-reviewed by two experts on whose recommendation the decision to publish was made.
Eurosurveillance is seeking further expert advice and discussing the current correspondence in detail. We will, according to our existing procedures, evaluate the claims and make a decision as soon as we have investigated in full. In the meantime, it would be unfair to all concerned to comment or discuss further until we have looked at all the issues.
Drosten has not yet responded to a request for comment. (For the record: We gave him nearly 48 hours, not one.)
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].
“people in Europe” you say? Au contraire, it’s a “global team of experts” https://www.rt.com/op-ed/508383-fatal-flaws-covid-test/ .
In all seriousness, whenever Russia Today take a stance on something, assume the opposite is true.
In all seriousness, if you haven’t read the full retraction request, why are you making assumptions? It’s not secret, and doesn’t take that long to read.
Perhaps you could do so, and we could discuss the points in details, specifically that it tests for neither a definitive positive sequence, nor does it test for any negative sequence.
What Ct value do you consider to be appropriate for a positive result, and why?
https://cormandrostenreview.com/retraction-request-letter-to-eurosurveillance-editorial-board/
Why is this baseless conspiracy theory still being pushed? It’s been disproven over and over. Dr. Drosten is right. Instead of these Cormand/Drosten Review admitting they were wrong and PCR testing is in fact very accurate, they keep sowing distrust and endangering public health by spreading these false allegations. Saving face is more important to you than protecting people from a out of control pathogen? It’s this kind of thing that has allowed the pandemic to get so bad.
Disinformation is also a deadly disease.
I’m not sure you read the review and criticism of the paper.
Is FDA/CDC a part of that conspiracy theory?
CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) PCR Diagnostic Panel (July 13, 2020)
https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download
Page 2:
“Positive results are indicative of active infection with 2019-nCoV but do not rule out bacterial infection or co-infection with other viruses. The agent detected may not be the definite cause of disease. Laboratories within the United States and its territories are required to report all positive results to the appropriate public health authorities”.
Page 38
• “Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms”.
• “This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens”.
Page 39
“Since no quantified virus isolates of the 2019-nCoV are currently available…”
This “paper” by Borger et al was [“published” in globalresearch.ca](https://www.globalresearch.ca/external-peer-review-rt-pcr-test-detect-sars-cov-2-reveals-10-major-scientific-flaws-molecular-methodological-level-consequences-false-positive-results/5730889), a website well-known for spreading conspiracy theories. So I don’t know how serious are the authors if they “trust” the legitimacy of this conspiracy page.
Peter Borger is a Dutch scientist. He is a moleculair, gnome, epigenetic biologist. University Zurich. Heard him explain why the paper is cormand drosten paper is critcized by him in dutch hour long interview. I cannot fault him. I fear the covid test is flawed.
The inventor of PCR says it cannot detect viruses- who are you to say it does ? It makes copies of anything it samples – that’s all – “it doesn’t tell you you’re sick “ – wise up
You are quoting the wrong guy. He never said that.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-pcr-idUSKBN24420X
Actually he kind of said that, in the below video. Never trust “fact checks”. They are like vaccines against thought that is injected into feeble and conventional minds, so they never find their way to the source and the real discussion.
Can you please refer me to the relevant exact time point in that video? I’ve watched it, and I cannot find him “kind of” saying PCR cannot detect a virus.
I think you should “wise up”. This false claim has been going around on social media for months. The quote being attributed to Kary Mullis is actually a quote from someone back in the 90’s talking about HIV and what he said is taken out of context and spread by people that very obviously have no scientific knowledge.. You could search it and you’ll see that it’s been disproven over and over by many different sources. Here’s just one. Misinformation has caused enough damage, deaths and infections, already. Please don’t make it worse. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-pcr-idUSKBN24420X
Addressing those 10 points because I am curious what others think.
1) Primer concentration too high: Following the link they gave where allegedly a concentration of 100-200 nM is optimal, I cannot find that in there at all. It either says “The ideal primer concentration can be anywhere from 100 to 600 nM, while probe concentrations can be between 100 nM and 400 nM.” or “Optimal results may require a titration of primer concentrations between 50 and 500 nM. A final concentration of 200 nM for each primer is effective for most reactions.” Concentrations in the paper go up to 800 nM, not that much higher than 600 mentioned above. They are criticizing small errors harshly themselves, well please do your own research as thoroughly too then.
2) Wobbly positions: Could be a valid point to criticize as I am not familiar with how often such wobbly bases are used in primers. However if you want to say these cause unspecific reactions, why not make several combinations with specific base pairs and show it experimentally? It is ok to bring this up, but they did not test it either, it might not be a problem after all.
3) Not quite sure why they are so fixed at the “whole viral vs viral fragments” bit. Quite frankly they want the paper to be more precise when they themselves are not. Of course this does not detect the whole virus, it detects transcripts of the virus. Is there a published paper that shows parts of transcripts “floating” into people? If you can detect part of it, then at some point there has been an intact virus present. How else would that transcript be there? You cannot get half a virus in, can you? They mention somewhere even “dead virus” as a term. Viruses are neither alive or dead. No scientist I know would describe a virus as “dead”. Does not add to their credibility.
4) Sounds like a valid concern. However if the annealing temperature is not within acceptable range, how are we getting so many positive measurements? The gist of this review is that there are too many false positives and too many people are diagnosed positive. This would rather go the other way, you would not detect anything because the primers do not anneal correctly. So what is it? Too many detections or too few?
5) True, Ct not supplied as reference. I’d argue though setting it lower than necessary so that you don’t miss weakly asymptomatic people might be better than the other way round. Also at the time of writing there were not many observations of this and it would be difficult to define a “final” value that remains correct over the next months. Overall the Ct thresholds have been defined, just not in this paper. So why are too low values the authors faults?
6) Maybe valid too, however once again, you say they are not valid, run the experiment and show they are not. This is again just speculation they might be. The authors should have shown this, yes, but if you argue against it you need proof too.
7) Valid concern. It would need positive and negative control. Are the authors here sure that none of the tests based on the paper implement any? I would think not, but am happy to be corrected. They should have been included here, I agree.
8) This is not a point at all. You just summarized all previous concerns in another point. Test not valid. Not standardized. Ok, maybe, but not an additional point at all.
9) Peer review is not the end all of everything as we have seen, but I agree that the journal needs to release if there has been peer review or not for this paper.
10) Conflicts of interest are important as well, if those have not been declared properly it is a problem. Should it be enough to trigger retraction? Not sure.
Also the RT.com article mentions 70% of all tests world wide are conducted based on this protocol. Where does that number come from? And did they make the effort to see if the protocol has been copied 1:1 or if additions have been made, such as the proper controls?
Overall some valid points but mostly blown up for… publicity? Good luck to them, I guess. Why did they have to make their own website to publish this? Not even a predatory journal wanted to touch this?
As regards your 3rd point: Is this so hard to understand? Of course, you can
tell from fragments that virus had been present and you might be able to use it for backtracing. However, you cannot tell if what you have detected is infectious, which needs to at least have the components other tests look for. But every policy of quarantining, case numbers etc. is based on the assumption that you’re infectious when tested positive.
You should brush up your molecular biology knowledge.
A PCR, and this is actually a quantitative real time PCR, does not say anything about infectiousness. How could it? It does show whether or not viral particles are present and based on that a doctor needs to assess further what is going on. It is used as a proxy to define if someone has the virus and might spread it. We know there are asymptomatic people too so using this method you can find them. And that is why you want people to isolate in case they become spreaders later after finding they harbour the virus.
About primer placement. Unless you want to sequence the whole genome it does not matter where the primers are, as long as they don’t overlap. These assays are not multiplexing the signals, you get one signal for all primers together. How would you know you are getting a signal from all of them and not just one of them? There is no upside spacing out the primers to start and end since in the result you don’t know which pair of primers lead to amplification.
There can be better primer placement than what they have shown in their paper, yes. But no one argues against that? The Drosten lab had insufficient data to generate the perfect primers and all subsequent publications (check the links of another critic below) mention the Drosten primers work, but they can be improved on. So again, what’s your point on this?
Quote:
The paper, “Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR,” appeared in Eurosurveillance. It was received on January 21 and accepted on January 22, a remarkably quick turnaround under normal circumstances, although not unheard of during the pandemic. It has been cited well over 800 times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.
Unquote:
Pandemic was only announced on the 12th of march 2020 by WHO.
In January there were hardly any cases in Europe!?
Here is a genomic sequence submitted 2020-01-17:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN908947.3
The source context for this is the GISAID database reference here:
https://www.gisaid.org/epiflu-applications/phylodynamics/
The genomic sequence was first released Jan 10.
Peer review is not important? The author was on the editorial board and the paper was reviewed in 3.5hrs. No paper has been reviewed in less than 20 days in the past 5yrs. The paper was the basis for testing cases throughout the World on WHO recommendations. It has led to false science and creating economic devastation that has and will continue to result in millions of deaths. Puts your blase response into context.
=>>>>>>> “The paper was the basis for testing cases throughout the World on WHO recommendations. ”
I find your point extremely significant.
Could you please provide proof of that affirmative ASAP.
Thanks
Not only that but it is known the WHO created a false pandemic hysteria with the Swine flu in 2009-that was reported to have been influenced by Big Pharma itself.
“In 2010 a number of representatives from governments
all over the world as well as a number of international organizations i.e.
the Council of Europe agreed that WHO had caused an international panic and disaster by declaring the mildest flu ever, the A/H1N1 “Swine Flu” influenza, to be a pandemic threatening mankind. The Council of Europe pointed in a dire report to the problem of WHO
going private as the true cause of all the trouble [58].
During 2010 the situation continued to develop and turned
into a medical scandal of unknown proportions [1,2,17-59].
Ineffective and dangerous medicines worth billions of dollars were sent for destruction. Close and secret links between the WHO and the pharmaceutical industry producing the vaccines was exposed. The Danish newspaper “Information” found that five researchers involving in advising WHO during the scandal had been paid around
seven million EURO from the vaccine industry [38]
SOURCE https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281876323_Why_the_Corruption_of_the_World_Health_Organization_WHO_is_the_Biggest_Threat_to_the_World%27s_Public_Health_of_Our_Time
Regarding the paper Juan quotes from, it may be worth noting that it is published in a journal owned by Avens Publishing Group, a publisher that has been identified as predatory:
https://predatoryjournals.com/publishers/
https://scholarlyoa.com/the-increasing-use-of-predatory-journals-for-advocacy-research/
To add some further background, the author is a former doctor who had his license revoked in 2005 because he was considered a danger to his patients. Only in May last year was he allowed to take up the profession again, but he declined.
There is no need for the authors to run wet experiments as the peer reviewed literature is rich with examples of failure.
1)Muenchhoff et al. June 18th
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.24.2001057
This paper concludes that the RdRp primers need to be replaced.
Drosten is an author. In January he approached The WHO (and 2 testing companies) prior to publication in Eurosurveillance . In June, he didn’t update The WHO of this error and went to the Journal first. Why the change in the order of operations for public disclosure in June?
2)Jung et al
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsinfecdis.0c00464
“Unexpected amplifications from NTC samples were observed for RdRp_SARSr (Charite’) set”
Demonstrates the amplification in NTCs and in ddH20.
Also demonstrates these primers have reduced sensitivity as reported by Muenchhoff et al. So both FNs and FPs are generated with the primer set.
3)Etievant et al.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7355678/
Demonstrate poor results with E assay and attributes this to Primer contamination and Primer dimers. The Review highlights the dimerization that can occur between E and RdRp but this should be a rare occurrence if labs are running singleplex assays with out primer contamination. However, this primer contamination is seen in the peer reviewed literature by Etievant et al. Even with singleplex assays, RdRp probe forms a hairpin and a self-dimer and this likely explains the reduced sensitivity of this assay.
Etievant says “These False-positive results were explored (details below), but the sensitivity of these assays were not further assessed”.
This is the second peer reviewed paper that tosses these assays in the waste bin but are politely spelling out the problems.
4)Gand et al.
https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/21/15/5585
This paper notes that the Charite’ primers are the most widely used in Europe. The authors mention the false positives observed were predictable by in-silico analysis.
5)Konrad et al.
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.9.2000173
61% non specific signals from the Charite’ assays. Author improve this to 5.1% unspecific tests by changing the master mix.
Many of these papers point to the lack of specificity with these primers and the propensity for them to amplify other SARs viruses.
In summary, there is ample wet evidence already in the peer reviewed literature to ban these primers from public use. They still remain on the WHO website.
These poorly performing assays are being used unethically to perform medical tests on asymptomatic patients without informed consent. The lack of inform is directly related to the scientific communities lack of confidence in what these primers detect and which CQ values should be utilized to segregate infectious from non-infectious people to justify quarantine of global populations.
Each of these mistakes would be understood with science moving quickly under pandemic circumstances. But these are the exact times we need conflicts of interests known and peer review transparent. The fact that these primers were given to testing companies , cemented into WHO guidelines, and only after that rammed through a 24 hour peer review where the authors are on the editorial board is bad practice and is now known to have produced erroneous results. This same urgency is not replicated in addressing the errors in Muenchhoff et al which Drosten is an author of. These known errors were published in June 2020 and yet the WHO primers are not updated 6 months later? Why the race to get these primers to testing companies and onto the WHO website in January and the lack of urgency in addressing the FNs and FPs 6 months later? Testing labs generate more revenue with higher positivity tests due to contract trace testing. This COI may explain the different urgencies.
The liability of false quarantine and economic destruction now points to the WHO which points to Eurosurveillance. Class action law suites are being organized. The journal has no choice but to retract this 24 hour review (Outlier by all of the journals own metrics) and place that liability squarely on the source of the original error, the authors themselves.
Thanks for posting sources and keeping the discussion going.
To your points:
1) You say he did not update the WHO, is there a source for that? The paper itself concludes the protocols need updating. And do you know he approached them the first time around himself? Does the WHO not keep tabs on potential protocols themselves and should update them as they see literature coming in? And if Drosten did not notify them, there seem to plenty other scientists who could have done so, did nobody notify WHO up until the critics wrote up their review? Does that not push the blame to the WHO for not keeping their recommendations updated? I cannot see how this should show that specifically Dorsten messed it up, unless you have access to communication where he says he never did.
2) Valid point. Only thing to take away from this is that this was published in August, 7 months after the initial paper. So it is not surprising they are able to find better primers than in Drostens initial publication, they had access to multitudes of published sequences.
3) Valid point as well, as the previous one. This one is published in June, so better than the previous one. Now did any of these authors notify WHO personally? If not, once again, why should Drosten? The WHO needs to keep themselves up to date and it seems they failed to do so.
4) So unless I missed any extra sources in this article this is what you are referring to:”The RT-qPCR test developed by Corman and colleagues at Charité (Berlin) is the most widely used in Europe” and there are 2 references for this:
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.3.2000045
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.6.2000082
Did you notice the date on those? January and February. I would call that data outdated. In the meantime all these other publications you linked showed better versions of those primers, any testing lab or company that produces commercially available test kits that is interested to improve their processes should have monitored publications and updated their testing. Is there any data from the past few months if it is still the “majority” using the original protocol?
5) Also valid and interestingly from March, so the earliest you posted. Again, did anyone notify WHO from those authors? Same question as before. If the WHO did not see all this data and changed protocols themselves why do they need to hear from Drosten specifically?
You say the liability lies with the authors, I say the liability lies with WHO. Science corrected itself, that is the process of the follow-up by the various labs. Why the hate for the original publication that produced data based on what was available at the time? The alternative would have been not to have any specific protocol at all then? Would that have been better?
There are several conflicts of interest covered in the review that address your concerns. The journal has addressed some of them.
If protocols are given to the WHO pre-publication and pre-peer review (Jan 17) and also to various labs and kit companies where authors had an undisclosed financial interest in testing revenue, and the peer review goes to a 24hr journal (after the WHO and lab testing disclosure) where authors are on the editorial board….
And those primers are discovered to be faulty, I think it’s the authors responsibility to fess up to the conflicts (they have) and correct the record so these errors stop propagating.
There are countless more papers like this. It’s Groundhog Day in the literature where every paper has a Charite’ primer disclaimer.
I cannot speculate on communication with the WHO after Jan17. I can only see that the same problems still exist on their site in December.
I haven’t read the objection, because it looks like it is being handled by those who can actually change something, but you’re “criticism” is quite lame. It is not for the critics to prove the method doesn’t work, it is for the proponents to prove it does work. This is always the case with medical drugs, tests and procedures, for obvious reasons. And it’s such an obvious point, one wonders, what is your objective in raising your specious arguments?
As to testing only viral fragments, that is an obvious issue, maybe you are just ignorant of it so let me explain. A viral fragment neither proves infectiousness or illness. This is why the PCR inventor specifically indicated it was not a “diagnostic device”, though the hysterical lunatics running health policy keep treating it as such. To give an example, China conducted a PCR test on every (well every one they could find) resident of Wuhan, almost 10 million people. Not cure what their CT was, that was not in the paper, but something like 410 tested positive. You might argue that’s a low positivity rate, but unlike what the rest of the world does, they put each of these people (and their close contacts) into quarantine for two weeks and also did a cell culture. It turns out that not a single one of these persons was ill or infectious. Thus, the false positivity rate was actually 100% – because 0% of those testing positive were infectious or sick.
It helps to understand what people are talking about, before pretending to be an “expert” that “debunks” something.
70% of all tests are PCR tests but they are not based on the Eurosuirvellance paper at all. There was an updated protocol published by the FDA that is much more specific and thorough than the original paper (https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download). This original paper was more of a starting point and assuming that we have made 0 improvements to the testing protocols is just stupid. The paper was published in the first couple weeks of the pandemic, when 99% of the world didn’t know what sars-cov-2 was… Regardless, the protocol errors in this paper were much more likely to give false NEGATIVES and not false positives by my estimation.
Retraction Watch has a major ideological bias problem. This site only serves the interests of like minded thinkers, and really doesn’t care much about protecting the integrity of Science. I bet the goal of this project is to win some sort of designation as official ‘fact checker’ in the near future, thus securing some handsome profits and prestige. Having followed this site for awhile, it’s clearly evident that this site cannot be trusted with guardianship status. Good grief
What can be claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
So what is your evidence for these claims?
It is pretty obvious from their verbiage, like the below quote from the above article:
“But, as with Fauci in the United States, Drosten has become a target of criticism, largely from political conservatives, who complain that what they consider to be flawed science is informing economically damaging policies.”
You’ll see these puerile jabs elsewhere once you consciously look for them. The above poster is correct about their ideological bias, it is clearly displayed.
We all have to agree to simply follow the data wherever it leads, without the little snipes about politics/religion/ethnicity/etc.. This makes for bad science, and leads to situations like this mess we are on now, politics over facts, data suppressed and censored because it does not fit agendas.
What if it is a fact that conservatives are the ones mostly criticizing Drosten? It is a fact for Fauci. Isn’t Science about facts?
The petition is signed by doctors and scientists and is a discussion at a scientific level so of what relevance is the political leanings of those mostly criticising? Who cares? Keep the argument to the scientific discussion – speaking of political leanings comes under the logical fallacy “red herring” and logical fallacies of any kind undermine one’s argument and are always best avoided.
Having followed this site for awhile, it’s clearly evident that this site cannot be trusted with guardianship status.
–> any more examples?
The truth is: RW would have to have much more capacity to uncover all the nonsense that is branded with science.
This is how the R&A process for all publications at Eursurveillance shows. Hint: Look for the outlyers…
https://public.tableau.com/profile/aukema#!/vizhome/Meta-dataAnalysisateurosurveillance_org/ReviewProcessDashboard
wow this is gold.
its sounds like a joke this tiny little dot (days: 1)
Gee, I wonder why it was given urgent precedence.
Does not add to your own credibility if you are misquoting things: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-pcr-idUSKBN24420X
Also quoting a scientist who has been an active denier of the fact that HIV causes AIDS is also not a good look if you are trying to lecture someone.
How about you give a source to the Wuhan data was that published an peer reviewed?
Just by looking at articles around that you can see how the outcome is not surprising. You are aware they tested during a time when there was a low number of cases? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/world/asia/coronavirus-testing-china-wuhan.html
So of course most if not all they find in addition are either false positives or asymptomatic. You are aware there are false positives with just about any method? 400 out of 10 million is much lower than you would expect for false positives. So what is the point again?
Did you read the methods section of the 10M China person study? There are no PCR methods described but somehow they tested 10M people across 63 labs in 19 days. Authors list doesnt have any prior publications in this field and many corrections to their thin publication history. They have the thinnest supplemental data of any study that size.
https://twitter.com/kevin_mckernan/status/1330131313941209092?s=21
My comment was in response to user “CalDre” but it ended up somewhere else. You can find their comment a bit higher in the comment list.
They brought up the study as an example and I only linked it in response to their claims.
I agree that without proper method description it should not be taken serious.
@GlobalExpertReview2:
Can you help me – why do I have that feeling you never performed a PCR Tests yourself (in you professional career)?
You criticize numbers and statistics by posting newspaper articles wtf?
If you refer to my comment on December 10th, which is the only one where I cite newspaper articles: It was meant as a reply to user “CalDre” that ended up in the wrong place.
Both sites I only quoted in response to that users claims, so go ahead and read it in context if you like.
To your first question I am not sure what I should respond? It sounds like you would not believe me if I said I did? Care to explain why you think I never performed one?
Have a nice day.
Hey dude, some good insight you have provided in this thread. I appreciate critical thinking skills, something many lack.
Do you have Twitter by chance? You sound like someone worth following.
What strikes me as odd about the Corona PCR is the lack of scientific rigor that applies to this test and its use. Anybody who has ever run a PCR knows that a positive PCR result as such is of no value and no journal publishes positive PCR results alone. What is published are the results of confirmatory experiments that are performed without resorting to PCR methods (immunohistochemistry, Western blots etc.) Also, the PCR quality is always monitored and verified by at least agarose gel analysis routinely followed by cloning and sequencing of the PCR product.
I do understand that we are dealing in this case with a very high volume of tests. However, the efforts re quality control of the test must be placed into relation to the costs of the measures taken based on the results of that test. In the Corona case we have billions in costs. This would surely have justified the expense of routinely cloning and sequencing (or otherwise verifying) the PCR product of every 5th (or so) positive test. This would also have yielded a large gain in scientific knowledge about the test itself.
completely with you…
I struggle since the beginnings why not standardisation re PCR testing was suggested. And in this direction, the ct value is of immense importance as probably all agree.
There are many articles tackling the relationship between PCR ct value and culture positivity and I really wonder why this aspect was not discussed and determined from the beginning.
The WHO has taken that issue into account but why so late?
https://www.who.int/news/item/14-12-2020-who-information-notice-for-ivd-users#.X9pjhnAOs2Y.twitter
Advice on action to be taken by users:
Please read carefully the IFU in its entirety.
Contact your local representative if there is any aspect of the IFU that is unclear to you.
Check the IFU for each incoming consignment to detect any changes to the IFU.
Consider any positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) or negative results (SARS-CoV-2 not detected) in combination with specimen type, clinical observations, patient history, and epidemiological information.
Provide the Ct value in the report to the requesting healthcare provider.
I really dont understand this…
Should be retracted on Peer Review grounds alone. It could not be Peer Reviewed in the time scale alleged. If peer review is to mean anything it must be a reasonably trustworthy process. There are also problems with the authors failiure to declare their interests. The science may be right or wrong I’m in no position to judge, but paper needs retracting.
Borger Pieter (+ PCR experts) are late to the party. The problems in the primers are already reported in the literature (appearing as early as April 1). Kevin McKernan has put together a couple in this thread.
https://twitter.com/Kevin_McKernan/status/1338181922766336000?s=19
I would cut authors some slack as they submitted their work 11 days after the first #SARSCoV2 sequence became available in GISAID.
Do we need to improve qPCR test? – Yes.
Do we need to retract the paper? – No
Of course the paper has to be retracted.
Drosten clearly wanted to be first so he got it waived through without peer review. More fame and riches for him. And the consequences…..OMG
If it is scientifically wrong and incomplete – it MUST be retracted.
Here in Canada after the amount of censorship by mainstream media I almost now assume anything not reported by the MSM quite likely has much truth to it. Russia Today’s article can be easily verified – and it has – there was a group of scientists who challenged the paper, the journal did receive their challenge that outlined the paper’s serious flaws, and the journal has confirmed that it is considering retracting the article.
I do not possess the medical background that many of those who have comment here do so will refrain from technical comments.
What I find alarming is the lightning speed between when the paper was submitted to the journal to when it was published. Then followed by the equally fast speed at which the WHO endorsed it as the test procedure for mass testing for covid. There has to be a behind the scenes story behind those events.
Who funded the Drosten Corman research behind their paper? Who has funded other previous studies by Drosten & Corman? And who funds Eurosurveilance?
We know Big Pharma has the WHO under its money thumb – proven by the WHO letting pharma industry consultants help re-write the WHO’s definition of a “pandemic” so that H1N1 would qualify in 2009 .That helped Big Pharma make 3/4 trillion dollars in profits from H1N1 vaccine shots,the vast majority of which were never used and resulting in a damming Council of Europe investigation.
Follow the money trail – it would not surprise me at all if the hyper accelerated publishing time by Eurosurveilance of the paper was lubricated by Big Pharma money somehow – it is just what Big Pharma does & does very well.
I should also add that Facebook and other social media – as well as several major mainstream news agencies in Canada and the USA – are now blocking all news stories relating to the group of scientists who found the ten (10) fatal flaws in the Drosten Corman paper as well as the letter from the scientists to Eurosurveillance asking for the paper to be retracted. No explanation for this censorship is of course given by these social media outlets or by the mainstream news agencies.
You said yourself that you possess to medical training, so stop diarrhoeaing all over here about “censorship” nd “big pharma”
As someone else has noted, the bias of this article is apparent right from the first sentence (which characterizes a group of prominent scientists+ as a generic lump of people). And the bias continues from thereon.
I’ll move to sentence three – which makes the unsubstantiated claim that Christian Drosten’s paper being accepted/published in Eurosurveillance within 24 hours of submission is “remarkably quick turnaround under normal circumstances, although not unheard of during the pandemic”.
If this is “not unheard of” – what it is that’s been heard? The facts are that the second fastest turnaround in Eurosurveillance was close to three weeks, and the average time from submission to acceptance/publication is 179 days. So, to try and mitigate how exceptional is this circumstance is just not being straight. Somehow, too, the writers of this article fail to mention another flag that should raise concerns of propriety – Drosten is an Associate Editor at Eurosurveillance – the journal putting out his PCR paper in record time for its publication.
Thankfully, the court actions which are upcoming will be more objective about the facts of these matters. We can expect a very different understanding of Drosten’s role to become widely known in 2021.
We have compiled 20 peer reviewed manuscripts that demonstrate performance issues with this protocol.
https://osf.io/9mjy7/?fbclid=IwAR1Ij4AUAZ0o40CdchjjEYZqXG26ZY1hYysfQZK7NZzlK6Vy6egtu9_oyEo
Why haven’t these wet-lab evaluations of the different PCR-protocols been incorporated in the submitted retraction request? You submitted this retraction request several month after the article in question had been published, but it contains zero references to the numerous studies comparing the performance of PCRs that had been published in the meantime.
In the adendum to the retraction request you even state: “Several “advocatus diaboli” confronted us with correct or assumed problems in our report. The most common critique of the CD-report was the lack of “wet lab” experiments to support our concerns over the technical flaws in the PCR protocol.”
So, you are literally saying that you failed to review the current literature before submitting the retraction request and you needed other scientists to point this out.
Eurosurveillance has responded to the ‘retraction paper’:”
“In conclusion, after a thorough investigation in which we collected scientific advice from various sources, including several external reviewers, the editorial team—unanimously supported by its associate editors, except for those who were involved as co-authors—has decided that the criteria for a retraction of the article have not been fulfilled.
https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2021.26.5.2102041
Dr Stephen A Bustin may have a slight conflict of interest….
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-79233-x