> That's a prime example of disinformation, and indeed the most reputable journals unfortunately play a role in it.
I'm going to trust an opinion in the BMJ over:
> There are over 50 studies showing that Ivermectin is effective
There have been a vast number of junk studies produced during the pandemic and rolling out 50 of them means very little. How many of them are pre-registered RCTs? How many of them are in low-quality journals?
"Different websites (such as https://ivmmeta.com/, https://c19ivermectin.com/, https://tratamientotemprano.org/estudios-ivermectina/, among others) have conducted meta-analyses with ivermectin studies, showing unpublished colourful forest plots which rapidly gained public acknowledgement and were disseminated via social media, without following any methodological or report guidelines. These websites do not include protocol registration with methods, search strategies, inclusion criteria, quality assessment of the included studies nor the certainty of the evidence of the pooled estimates. Prospective registration of systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis protocols is a key feature for providing transparency in the review process and ensuring protection against reporting biases, by revealing differences between the methods or outcomes reported in the published review and those planned in the registered protocol."
To be fair the c19ivermectin site only states: Database of all ivermectin COVID-19 studies. If you want a meta-analysis that picks for you the quality studies from that list that's also avilable: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088823/
If that opinion contains patently false information and assumptions (e.g. early in-vitro study needed a high dose, therefore that same dose must be required in clinical patients), then that opinion is not trustworthy, regardless of whether it's on the BMJ website or not.
See also here [1] under the "Big Science" heading, why the current system is broken.
I'm going to trust an opinion in the BMJ over:
> There are over 50 studies showing that Ivermectin is effective
There have been a vast number of junk studies produced during the pandemic and rolling out 50 of them means very little. How many of them are pre-registered RCTs? How many of them are in low-quality journals?
The BMJ article actually refers to that https://c19ivermectin.com/ site:
"Different websites (such as https://ivmmeta.com/, https://c19ivermectin.com/, https://tratamientotemprano.org/estudios-ivermectina/, among others) have conducted meta-analyses with ivermectin studies, showing unpublished colourful forest plots which rapidly gained public acknowledgement and were disseminated via social media, without following any methodological or report guidelines. These websites do not include protocol registration with methods, search strategies, inclusion criteria, quality assessment of the included studies nor the certainty of the evidence of the pooled estimates. Prospective registration of systematic reviews with or without meta-analysis protocols is a key feature for providing transparency in the review process and ensuring protection against reporting biases, by revealing differences between the methods or outcomes reported in the published review and those planned in the registered protocol."