Wrongfully Accused

Today I read an article concerning the truthfulness of comments, and the success of restoring one’s reputation once it has been besmirched. If one’s reputation has been wrongly tarnished by a newspaper, then the newspaper might eventually issue a retraction. This “mea culpa” could  be buried on page 59, whereas the original untruths could have been on page 2. … Fair?  No, not in the least as the original damage to the person’s reputation  is what often mainly sticks in the reader’s head. Of course, the person whose good names was smeared can bring suit against the newspaper, and sometimes the newspaper will have to pay big bucks for the slanderous comments. e.g. the student from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky)

However, what if the slander was not directed at a person? Is there a way to correct the damage that had been done? Realistically, no. Take for example, the drug, Hydroxychloroquine (HQ).

An investigation has found that among the hundreds of COVID-19 research papers that have been withdrawn, a retracted study linking the drug hydroxychloroquine to increased mortality was the most cited paper.

With 1,360 citations at the time of data extraction, researchers in the field were still referring to the paper “Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis” long after it was retracted.

So as I see it, Hydroxychloroquine was in appropriately maligned. In large part this was because Donald Trump spoke glowingly of it, and from then on basically the liberal press maligned it. A subsequent paper came out which continued to malign HQ. This paper was retracted, but its memory lived on!

How many lives could have been saved if HQ was used to treat Covid?

How many lives could have been saved if the initial, subsequently retracted paper that falsely accused HQ, was rejected in the first place?

6/5/

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