key: cord-0688157-gj3otwzj
authors: Gale, Robert Peter
title: Conquest of COVID‐19. Publish it to Death?
date: 2020-06-01
journal: Br J Haematol
DOI: 10.1111/bjh.16905
sha: 27f70c15eb4ae732ab6968b9b609c6334d9a5c74
doc_id: 688157
cord_uid: gj3otwzj

Some diseases can be cured by medical interventions, others not. When not, are there other approaches to control or cure? One possibility is to try to publish a disease to death, a therapy strategy first proposed by my late colleague Prof. David Golde from UCLA (see below). Here I consider whether this strategy is working in the fight against severe acute respiratory syndrome‐cornavirsu‐2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) pandemic and the associated coronavirus infectious disease‐2019 (COVID‐19).

other approaches to control or cure? One possibility is to try to publish a disease to death, a therapy strategy first proposed by my late colleague Prof. David Golde from UCLA (see below). Here I consider whether this strategy is working in the fight against severe acute respiratory syndrome-cornavirsu-2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic and the associated coronavirus infectious disease-2019 (COVID-19).

To test this hypothesis I queried PubMed on 16 May, 2020 for citations using the search terms SARS-CoV-2 and/or COVID-19. There were 12,959 hits since January, 2020 or roughly 162 citations per day. I confirmed this by comparing this number with a similar PubMed search I did on 14 May, 2020. The difference of 484 citations is consistent with a recent publication rate of 220 per day. The grim fact is that this number equates to numbers of deaths from COVID-19 in the UK in that time. This is only for citations covered by PubMed. The figures from the World Health Organization which tracks every manuscript on the virus and its disease submitted in their journals irrespective of publication would be much greater [1] How to explain this burst of publications? Can many high-quality studies be done so quickly? Unlikely. In fact, of 1556 studies of COVID-19 listed in Clinicaltrails.gov, [1] only 249 (16%) were phase-3 trials and fewer than 100 included more than 100 subjects. Given

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved the baseline estimate 85 percent of clinical research is not useful or wrong we may be pushing this estimate to 90 or 95 percent this year. [2, 3] One explanation of this publications deluge is the opportunity the pandemic offers authors and journals. Some journals (but not BJH) have lowered their criteria for acceptance. Their options: help with online schooling, cook dinner, vacuum (Dyson V7 highly recommended) or hide in your (newly designated) home office and complete a long-delayed typescript. The choice between publish or perish has never been starker.

I also considered that many if not most of this surge of publications are from Chinese authors. Figure 1 shows data on numbers of publication by geographic region and country. My next step was to evaluate the quality of these guidelines using criteria of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (Figure 2 ; [12] ). Readers will not be surprised the four guidelines received a C for Strength of Recommendation (Poor evidence) and a III for Quality of Evidence (Evidence from opinions of respected authorities… without clinical trials data). Nevertheless, recommendations in these guidelines, although not evidence-based, seem sensible and may be useful. The risk is that they will be awarded the imprimature of delivering quality health care in the absence of anything better. importantly, what is not) and we can be better prepared for the next coronavirus pandemic.

Waste in Covid-19 research

Why most clinical research is not useful

Working 9 to 5, not the way to make an academic living: observational analysis of manuscript and peer review submission over time

Accepted Article This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Special considerations in the management of adult patients with acute leukaemias and myeloid neoplasms in the COVID-19 Era: Recommendations by an International Expert Panel

Quality and strength of evidence of the Infectious Diseases Society of America clinical practice guidelines

Validity of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality clinical practice guidelines: how quickly do guidelines become outdated?

Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn't

What is "quality of evidence" and why is it important to clinicians?

Annals Clinical Decision Making: Weighing Evidence to Inform Clinical Decisions

Is there expert consensus on expert consensus?

COVID-19, HCT and wine

RPG acknowledges support from the National Institute of Health