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In this week's episode we tackle headlines from the month in research and have a candid analysis and discussion around each article.
This is a common in office discussion that our team naturally has and we figured we would do an episode reflecting our common discussion and insight of the various headlines.
There is so much research being published each day, week, and month. What influences which ones reach the media outlets and the public eye? Is it their significance? Is it their financial ties? Each day there are hundreds to thousands of articles published across the globe on various health subjects. Weekly, there are several thousand published and monthly this number easily hits tens of thousands.
What is even more astonishing is that last year over 10,000 articles were retracted, setting a new annual record. This number of retractions reflects issues with an increase in fraudulent papers and compromised peer-reviewed processes. An article is retracted because there are findings that question the merits of the article and its findings and/or its legitimacy. Now how often do we hear about the hype of a new article but fail to hear if that article has later been retracted? This happened in the case of COVID 19 and early treatment using a pre-existing medication. Major media outlets pushed the retracted article and offered no apology when the article was later retracted. This is despite numerous articles demonstrating benefit and yet one article that was soaked up to push away from the majority of these other articles. This is why it is critical to always question and allow discussion. The moment the ability to question and have open discussion is taken away around a subject is the moment one should have suspicion on the article in reference. Scientific prinicples welcomes debate and discussion and acknowledges that what we know today may change with new research findings of tomorrow and that is ok.
We hope you enjoy this discussion by our team!