The Lancet: little arrangements between peers?
After being put in the hot seat in the Lancet Gate affair, has the famous medical journal “arranged” a graph to raise the alarm about excess mortality caused by heat?
A post by Patrick Moore, PhD in ecology and co-founder of Greenpeace, denounces the deception on Twitter[1]. Did The Lancet deliberately use a graphic trick to visually inflate heat-related mortality? An infographic corrected by Dr Björn Lomborg sets the record straight: in Europe’s major cities, cold causes ten times more deaths than heat!
In an article analysing deaths attributed to heat and cold in 854 European urban areas (“Excess mortality attributed to heat and cold: a health impact assessment study in 854 cities in Europe”[2]), The Lancet publishes a graph supposed to illustrate the respective weight of these two causes of death by country. But is it an illustration that is representative of reality?
By varying the scale on the horizontal axis between deaths attributed to cold (graduated in units of 50 additional deaths per 100,000 inhabitants) and those attributed to heat (graduated in units of 10 additional deaths per 100,000 inhabitants), ten deaths attributed to heat visually carry the same weight as 50 deaths attributed to cold. The Lancet graph (on the left of the image), corrected by Dr Björn Lomborg, restores the scale between the two causes of death (on the right of the image) and clearly reveals the deception. Is a graph not meant to convey, at first glance, the proportions highlighted by the study it illustrates?
This is not the first time that the British medical journal, though regarded as a global reference by health decision-makers, has been caught red-handed publishing scientifically questionable, or even erroneous, information.
The Lancet had also published the study denouncing the ineffectiveness and dangerousness of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid‑19… and then retracted it
It will be recalled that in May 2020 The Lancet published and then withdrew a study suggesting that hydroxychloroquine increased mortality and cardiac arrhythmias in Covid‑19 patients[3]. Doubt had been cast on the study, whose suspect data could not be verified. It was the authors who requested the retraction of the publication following the scandal. The journal did not, however, publish any denial of the claims about the dangerousness of a remedy used for 65 years in the treatment of malaria… Yet this study had served as justification for the WHO to strongly advise against the use of this molecule in the treatment of Covid‑19 and to halt its own research on the subject. In France, it led to the repeal of its authorisation for use against SARS‑CoV‑2 and to the suspension of clinical trials[4].
Nor is it the first time that the Danish environmentalist Björn Lomborg, head of the think tank Copenhägen Consensus, has spotted an error published by The Lancet in an article on the health dangers of global warming. He had already written to the Lancet’s editor in September 2021 to point out a data analysis error announcing a 50% increase in heat-related deaths among the over-65s in twenty years… a study that did not take into account the more than 40% increase in the population of this age group over the same period![5] The aim of this article (also published in other scientific journals), entitled “Call for emergency action to limit global temperature increases, restore biodiversity, and protect health”[6], was to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming, particularly for health and life expectancy.
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The Lancet has thus repeatedly published questionable information supporting an opinion at the expense of scientific rigour. Yet its articles are validated by a peer-review committee, which makes the medical journal a global reference in research. This is particularly worrying, given that it has the power to influence political decisions, as the Lancet Gate scandal demonstrated.
KAro for BAM!
[1] https://twitter.com/EcoSenseNow/status/1683126977669255168?s=20
[2] Excess mortality attributed to heat and cold: a health impact assessment study in 854 cities in Europe
[3] RETRACTED: Chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine for COVID‑19: why might they be hazardous? - The Lancet
[4] “The Lancet” annonce le retrait de son étude sur l’hydroxychloroquine
[5] https://twitter.com/BjornLomborg/status/1435985936895127555?s=20
[6] Call for emergency action to limit global temperature increases, restore biodiversity, and protect health - The Lancet