# Hydroxychloroquine study "does not meet the Society's expected standard."

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydroxychloroquine-study-does-not-meet-the-societys-expected-standard/851443>\
**Category:** The Quarantine Zone\
**Tags:** covid-quarantine\
**Created:** [April 9, 2020, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydroxychloroquine-study-does-not-meet-the-societys-expected-standard/851443 "2020-04-09T16:55:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

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**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\
**Post date:** [April 9, 2020, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hydroxychloroquine-study-does-not-meet-the-societys-expected-standard/851443/4 "2020-04-09T17:33:45Z")

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> [@Tigers2B1](#):
>
> Rolain’s lab just published another observational study today covering over a thousand patients together with their outcomes using hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin and showing very good outcomes. There are no control groups and no double blinding. Again just an observational study. People who, for whatever reason, don’t like this information put out there are put on notice:-)

There is an argument that good science sets the parameters in advance and follows through with it. Fiddling with your methodology after the fact is one way to create results out of nothing, because you can find the things that was, by random happenstance, an outlier variable.

Rolain’s methodology was to perform mouth swabs. He ignored people who he couldn’t swab - like people who died.

That he stuck to it is, in the previous sense, good. But it is, obviously, a bad methodology. Sticking to a bad methodology - particularly after people have pointed it out - is also bad science.

If his new study uses a better methodology then that would be good. If he stuck with the old one, then I would be pretty hesitant to accept his numbers until I knew more about what data went missing midway through.

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