To be fair, if a study is written by idiots, and then reviewed by other idiots, the reviewers are indeed “peers” of the writer.
It’s debatable whether lousy peer review is better than no peer review at all.
Ivermectin enthusiasts were quick to flaunt a study out of Mexico that appeared on a pre-print server, claiming that ivermectin treatment significantly reduced Covid-19 hospitalizations. It has now been withdrawn, and the server is saying gee, sorry about that.
“Depending on which critique you prefer, the paper is either very poor quality or else deliberately false and misleading. PolitiFact debunked it here , partly based on this factcheck in Portuguese. We do not believe it provides reliable or useful information, and we are disappointed that it has been very popular (downloaded almost 10,000 times so far).”
“This has prompted us to clarify that our moderation process does not involve peer review, or substantive evaluation, of the research papers that we host. …”
A statement affirming that “we will not post such crap in the future” has not been forthcoming.
I don’t know about Facebook but Politifact checks out on impartiality:
In general, if anyone - on either side of the political fence - makes an accusation against anyone or anything, you should take it seriously.
There’s 300,000,000 people in this country and no shortage of scientific studies on medicine. If there are questions about the reliability of any particular individual option, you might as well move on to the next one until you finally get to the one that no one can say anything bad about. Why marry yourself to something that a roll of the dice would say is bad? There’s plenty of other options to move on to and, sure, maybe you were the magical person who spotted the diamond in the rough that half the country missed and you were right all along, but you don’t have to play that gamble if you just pick something that has no faults. Just grab the beautiful, lab tested, giant diamond when it comes by on the conveyor belt, and let the rest pass.
No one, for example, has said dick about Remdesivir and Paxlovid. A whole lot of people have said things against self-medicating - especially when you’re not a doctor.
Ultimately, you’re not called for here. If you get seriously ill, go to the doctor and let him do his job. If he tells you that you’re fat and should lose weight, then lose weight. If he tells you to sleep 7 hours a day, sleep 7 hours a day. If he says that you’re dying of Covid and he gives you Remdesivir, take the pill. If he tells you to put your hands in his pants or to read his book about how aliens are taking over the White House, find a different doctor. You don’t need to get complicated with this.