Surgisphere: governments and WHO changed Covid-19 policy based on suspect data from tiny US company
Surgisphere, whose employees appear to include a sci-fi writer and adult content model, provided database behind Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine hydroxychloroquine studies
Was the Surgisphere case a one-off, or does it highlight the bigger
If you search for scientific research articles with COVID-19 in the title, you’ll see more than 17,000 articles published since the start of 2020[i], but this vital research is being undermined by
The Surgisphere Scandal: A Case Study in Research Misconduct
The Surgisphere Scandal - Based on an article by Catherine Offord in The Scientist Magazine, this seminar is a case study in research misconduct. This session will dissect the case of an obscure U.S. company with a hastily constructed website that drove international health policy and brought major clinical trials to a halt within the span of a few weeks. The case centers on a paper published in The Lancet that suggested hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug, was associated with an increased risk of death in patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
The Doctor Behind the Disputed Covid Data (Published 2020)
Dr. Sapan Desai, who supplied the data for two prominent and later retracted studies, is said to have a history of cutting corners and misrepresenting information in pursuit of his ambitions.
Unreliable data: how doubt snowballed over Covid-19 drug research that swept the world
A vast database from a little-known company called Surgisphere has influenced rapid policy shifts as the world seeks treatments for Covid-19. But as researchers began to examine it more closely, they became increasingly concerned
Retraction—Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis
After publication of our Lancet Article,1 several concerns were raised with respect to the veracity of the data and analyses conducted by Surgisphere Corporation and its founder and our co-author, Sapan Desai, in our publication. We launched an independent third-party peer review of Surgisphere with the consent of Sapan Desai to evaluate the origination of the database elements, to confirm the completeness of the database, and to replicate the analyses presented in the paper.