Twitter Suppresses Published Results of a Peer Reviewed Study

by

Citing the results of a peer reviewed study in a scientific journal locks up your account on Twitter. Nextbigfuture received a notice that twitter was locking the Nextbigfuture twitter account. The reason was that Nextbigfuture had an article that cited the results of a peer-reviewed study.

Published: January 15, 2022
DOI: 10.7759/cureus.21272
Cite this article as: Kerr L, Cadegiani F A, Baldi F, et al. (January 15, 2022) Ivermectin Prophylaxis Used for COVID-19: A Citywide, Prospective, Observational Study of 223,128 Subjects Using Propensity Score Matching. Cureus 14(1): e21272. doi:10.7759/cureus.21272

Cureus, also known as the Cureus Journal of Medical Science, is an open access general medical journal and is among the growing number of journals using prepublication and post publication peer review. It is also the first academic journal which provides authors with step-by-step templates for them to use to write their papers. The journal’s founders are John R. Adler (Stanford University), who serves as one of two editors-in-chief, and Alexander Muacevic (University of Munich) who serves as the second editor-in-chief.

History and publication process
Cureus was originally started as PeerEMed in 2009, and was re-launched under its current name in December 2012 Under its system, after an article is published, anyone can review it, but the reviews of experts will be given a higher score. Its peer-review process involves asking experts to review a given article in a few days, which results in its peer reviews taking much less time than those of most other journals d

Citation of the results of the study of 223,128 in a peer reviewed study is not false.
It is providing information and context for people to make informed decisions.

Here is Twitters rules and policies.

What is in violation of this policy?

In order for content related to COVID-19 to considered violative under this policy, it must:

advance a claim of fact, expressed in definitive terms;
be demonstrably false or misleading, based on widely available, authoritative sources; and
be likely to impact public safety or cause serious harm

Tweet Removal

We may require customers to delete Tweets that are found to violate this policy and are severely harmful. We may also temporarily lock you out of your account before you can Tweet or share information again. These tweets will accrue 2 strikes in accordance with our strike policy stated below. We will require the deletion of Tweets that contain, for example:

False claims about COVID-19 that invoke a deliberate conspiracy by malicious and/or powerful forces, such as:
The pandemic is a hoax, or part of a deliberate attempt at population control, or that 5G wireless technology is causing COVID-19.
COVID-19 is not a real disease.
Immunizations are part of a global surveillance, population control or depopulation effort.
Vaccines (in general) are dangerous and the adverse effects that have been covered up by governments/the medical industry.
Vulnerable groups (such as pregnant women, the elderly, or children) are being experimented on.
That COVID-19 vaccines are causing magnetic reactions in individuals who have been vaccinated.
That vaccines approved by health agencies (such as Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine in the United States) did not actually receive full approval/authorization, and therefore that the vaccines are untested, “experimental” or somehow unsafe.

Claims that specific groups or people (or other demographically-identifiable identity) are more or less prone to be infected or to develop adverse symptoms on the basis of their membership in that group;
False or misleading claims about potentially harmful and unapproved treatments or preventative measures, for example, that chlorine dioxide or Povidone-iodine can be used as a prophylactic or in the treatment of COVID-19.
False or misleading information about official regulations, restrictions, or exemptions pertaining to health advisories.
Any efforts to promote, advertise, facilitate the sale of, or provide instructions on how to create fraudulent vaccination cards (or other digital records) or “exemption cards.”
False information about widely accepted testing methodologies, such as that PCR tests are unable to detect the virus.
False claims that suggest that vaccines contain deadly and severely harmful ingredients.
False affiliation – Accounts which misrepresent their affiliation, or share content that falsely represents its affiliation to a medical practitioner, public health official or agency, research institution, or that falsely suggests expertise on COVID-19 issues.

SOURCES – Twitter
Written by Brian wang, Nextbigfuture.com

71 thoughts on “Twitter Suppresses Published Results of a Peer Reviewed Study”

  1. 20 years ago I watched a press conference live on CNN at noon. Later that same evening I watched CNN report on this press conference. What CNN reported that evening did not match at all with what the person said in the press conference. It was then I realized media bias is real.

  2. Citation of the results of the study of 223,128 in a peer reviewed study is not false.

    How do you explain this Brian?

  3. Why does every study done by people not funded by ivermectin manufacturers always end up like this:

    March 30, 2022
    DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2115869

    We conducted a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, adaptive platform trial…

    Conclusions
    Treatment with ivermectin did not result in a lower incidence of medical admission to a hospital due to progression of Covid-19 or of prolonged emergency department observation among outpatients with an early diagnosis of Covid-19.W

  4. You forgot this part:

    Article corrected: March 24, 2022
    DOI: 10.7759/cureus.c61

    It has come to the attention of the journal that several authors failed to disclose all relevant conflicts of interest when submitting this article. As a result, Cureus is issuing the following erratum and updating the relevant conflict of interest disclosures to ensure these conflicts of interest are properly described as recommended by the ICMJ:

    Lucy Kerr: Paid consultant for both Vitamedic, an ivermectin manufacturer, and MĂ©dicos Pela Vida (MPV), an organization that promotes ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19.

    Flavio A. Cadegiani: Paid consultant ($1,600.00 USD) for Vitamedic, an ivermectin manufacturer. Dr. Cadegiani is a founding member of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), an organization that promotes ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19.

    Pierre Kory: President and Chief Medical Officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), an organization that promotes ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19. Dr. Kory reports receiving payments from FLCCC. In February of 2022,

    Jennifer A. Hibberd: Co-founder of the Canadian Covid Care Alliance and World Council for Health, both of which discourage vaccination and encourage ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19.

    Juan J. Chamie-Quintero: Contributor

  5. Thanks to the Twitter ban I has learned about NextBigFuture blog; bookmarking it now. Many thanks to those who actually follow Twitter to let the rest of us know what it bans so that we could read that 🙂

  9. In general, I have the feeling that when people in science claim that there is a conspiracy against them they just do not see that their work is not strong enough, The problem is that when you work on something long enough and it becomes a significant part of your life you tend to assume that it is equally significant for the general public and it might not be the case. As I stated elsewhere here on NBF conspiracies tend to assume that the scientific community is a sort of brotherhood that follows a common goal. It is not.
    Scientists compete for funding and academic positions as well as positions in private labs. If there is something new and exciting people will jump on it if it looks real because it will give them an edge against those who did not understand its value. So it is simply not true that there is some big conspiracy to keep a certain knowledge hidden.
    Think about the scientific community as the community of plumbers in a certain area, if there is an amazing piece of technology that allows cutting the costs of a job by 50% how likely is it that all the plumbers would pretend it does not exist? It is very likely that they all will adopt the new tech putting out of business the ones that do not. On the other hand, if something looks fishy to experts in the field with decades of experience it is likely not very good.
    Bear in mind that scientific publications are a global phenomenon, so it is even more unlikely to have the kind of conspiracies some media claim.

  12. That's how peer review is supposed to work, and still does in some areas not captured by activists.

    In fields captured by activists, manuscripts are sent to reviewers who are known to be sympathetic to the hypothesis (if the review committee likes the manuscript) or sent to known hostile reviewers (in case they don't). Providing a critical review on a manuscript favored by the review committee leadership, even if 100% factual, can result in receiving far fewer or no more manuscripts to review.

  13. The COVID19 spike protein binds to bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and boosts proinflammatory activity and cytokine responses in the blood and peripheral blood cells. These very same activated mononuclear cells then invade the of the vasculature walls inducing widespread damage which in turn causes coagulation and fibrotic cascade.
    In addition to the evidence of direct viral infection of endothelial cells, post-mortem histology also disclosed the presence of endothelial inflammation.
    What Ivermectin does is inhibit this LPS-induced production of inflammatory cytokines, cutting the cascade off at the very beginning, disallowing the activation of mononuclear cells, thereby preventing their invasion of the endothelium.
    Taken with Zinc it also opens up cellular windows to pass through said zinc into the cells which disrupts viral replication.

    It has been known since at least 2008, if not sooner, that Ivermectin helps prevent runaway inflammation caused by LPS induced inflammatory cytokines. One of the earliest known issues with Covid19 was the cytokine storm. Which is why doctors who have been using Ivermectin to treat all sorts of inflammatory diseases in the 3rd world suggested using it. Apparently Ivermectin only works in countries that don't have money.

  14. Twitter is losing users and business due to their current practices of silencing debate. Its not about making other people comfortable. Its about manufacturing and maintaining the desired narrative.

  16. Are there studies (peer reviewed) on metrics for ranking peer review quality on a scientific base (and commonly accepted factors)?

  17. Of course, this happened when FB was only censoring consensus objectionable content.

    I feel like this is a core distinction. There's no getting around the fact that when 99% of people think something is poppycock or evil, it shouldn't be said. Even if true, it will have consequences for you, at work or elsewhere. Facebook removing that is actually doing you a solid, reducing the odds that it will be used against you later.

    But when something is believed by ~40% of the population? In my book, that's the definition of being within the norms for discussion. Even if completely wrong. Shutting it down will just be felt as oppression.

  18. If twitter could point to their panel of expert scientists that reviewed the article or journal, complete with a public report and detailed guidelines about their entirely consistent criteria, I'd be interested in this brave new future of twitter inc as the arbiter of truth. But somehow I don't think that is how it works.

  19. Are people on "twitter" the reason for this behavior or are rules for the group "twitter" the cause for people on "twitter" behaving like that? With declining 'IQ' (intelligence quotient and information quality) because of wrong decisions before for creating useful rules for judging usefulness (and political correctness) of contents, where's this "twitter" system aiming towards then?
    Conclusion: pretty much non-scientific, because they are not experts for the content to look at?

  20. This is not a "peer-reviewed" study in the generally-accepted use of that term. The underlying data has not been made available for any peers to actually review. In the comments Sherry Carp notes "Flavio A. Cadegiani and Pierre Kory are both founding members and MATH+ and I-MASK+ developers, otherwise known as the Ivermectin Protocol, developed by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, FLCCC Alliance. Seems to me, there is no greater conflict of interest, with a clear bias". This source is to "medical journal" as Tucker Carlson is to "news".

  21. People are realising that when somebody is "fact checked" by social media platforms there is a more than even chance that he is right rather than wrong. The other day the British Medical Journal was fact checked by face book. The fact checkers are spiritual descendents of the guys who condemned Galileo.

  22. If you're unsure what you did wrong, you must examine everything you say to eliminate anything that might trigger the censors. That's a component of imposing self-censorship, not a bug.

  23. Furthermore, Cureus defines "peer revision" in a very different way than what is considered peer revision by the scientific community.
    It is like saying that a manufacturer states that their cars do one thousand miles per gallon, but they use a different definition of mile…

  24. The standard peer review process consists in sending the manuscript to a journal. The editor of the journal chooses a panel of reviewers that examines the paper, verifies that it makes sense and in general they try to demolish the paper.
    The reviewers usually ask for further experiments to strengthen and clarify the author's claims and only when they are satisfied the paper is accepted. The peer-reviewing process takes months and a paper could undergo multiple rounds of revision (depends on the journal policy). Although they claim their papers are peer-reviewed, since the papers published on Cureus can be reviewed AFTER the publication Cureus does not follow the normal process that would allow filtering out works that do not reach a rigorous scientific standard, and it is not appropriate to consider Cureus peer-reviewed. Cureus is not considered rigorous and does not have an impact factor (it is one of the metrics used to evaluate the strength of the journal and of the papers published on it). I am not even considering the matter of the ivermectin paper, but as a rule of thumb, if scientists have data good enough to publish on nature/science/cell/lancet they will do so. If their work is weaker they will choose lower journals, if the work is very poor, not necessarily false, but with weak data and issues, they will resort to journals that might rush the peer revision process.

  27. Facebook was very useful for keeping in touch with relatives, when I was forced to move back in '08 for job reasons.

    It also brought me back in contact with a few people I'd met at now defunct forums such as DuPont's Intellectual Capitol.

    Of course, this happened when FB was only censoring consensus objectionable content. And not a lot of that. Perhaps because they hadn't achieved anything like monopoly status, and had to be worried about pissing off customers, so they were only removing things that almost everybody would agree should be removed.

    Eventually they felt secure, and started censoring stuff a long ways from consensus objectionable. Fairly mainstream political opinions. Discussions about buying and selling animals or guns. Medical information the government would rather not be distributed.

    I finally migrated off FB when they reached into a private FB forum I was a member of, and started threatening to shut it down if we didn't self-censor. And wouldn't even tell us what they found objectionable! No, we were supposed to guess what they objected to.

    This sort of behavior is classic monopoly behavior, the sort of thing companies only get up to when they think they don't need their customers to like them anymore, because there are no real alternatives.

  28. I had been reading & occasionally replying in Quora. I'm about ready to give up on them since an answer I gave was deleted.
    The question I replied to was "how many planets could there be in a solar system?"
    I replied that this series of blog posts is the best answer to that question.
    https://planetplanet.net/the-ultimate-solar-system/
    As far as I could tell Quora moderators objected just to me pointing outside their website for the answer.

  29. Tried Twitter, ugh, just ugh.

    Facebook, on the other hand, is a bit different, depending on how you use it and how seriously you take it.

    In the words of a great man: "Life is like a sewer, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it."
     
    I value Facebook, to a degree, as it has gotten me back in touch with people who were once central to my life and that I had lost contact with. Even if we only share a few vacation pics or anecdotes, it's comforting to know where they are and that they are doing well. My friends and family account is a nice plus in my life . . . and, of course, I don't post anything that would hurt anyone, let alone me, if it were posted in the local newspaper. It would be weird to see some of it in the newspaper, but it wouldn't offend or damage anyone. (Except maybe incompetent Bond villain Putin, Pooh-bear-for-life Xi, and Joffrey Jong-un, but everyone hates them.)
     
    I also maintain an account relating to me as an author and which therefore must be open to the public. Again, I find it to be a good thing, with both casual readers and true fans being extremely civil.
     
    On the other hand, I'm not a politician and don't post about my views in that regard. There is no way to avoid some ugly in any medium if you are going to do that. I'd go so far as to say that public officials, unless they find some magical way to make everyone happy, should probably avoid Facebook and other social media or keep it private and limited to family and friends.

  31. Twitter's job is to sell ads and/or sell user data so others can sell ads.

    Why are you surprised they don't care about facts?

    If a tweet makes too many people too uncomfortable, it gets banned. Because uncomfortable stuff reduces how much time people spend on Twitter.

    The same is true of all of our information systems. If the information doesn't match what the target reader wants, it doesn't get published. Because publishing it would reduce ad revenue.

  32. Yes, good observations. Overall, all signs point to this study being questionable, but it is not so faulty that it should have been unilaterally removed by Twitter.

  33. The filter was written by a mindless Twitter minion.

    This is the weakness of AI, in the end the algorithm, no matter how well constructed, is trained to imitate the behavior of a specific group of people. So, when Zuck or Jack says, "oh it's an issue with the algorithm, nothing intentional", they're avoiding the issue that the algorithm was trained to produce the result based on human decisions.

  34. That's what happens when you go against the dominant narrative/religion today. The "pro-science" crowd blindly dismisses you without even thinking. Step 1 foot out of line on *any* of their beliefs and they will censor you.

  35. I think there is some regulation saying that for a vaccine to be approved, there must not be an effective (existing) alternative treatment.

    No, that isn't how it works. But I can see how you might get there, because it's a little similar.

    For something to be approved, there can't be a better existing treatment. And even then you can subdivide better – they like to have multiple options for specific use cases when one treatment might be contraindicated due to interactions or something. So something with lower overall effectiveness can be approved if it has a different side effect profile, for instance.

    Note how the J&J vaccine was approved despite known weaker effectiveness from the beginning – it only took one dose, which meant it was better at something, and that was enough. And when we were supply constrained, just having a different supply chain was probably also enough. But the bar gets ever higher the more alternatives exist.

  36. I think there is some regulation saying that for a vaccine to be approved, there must not be an effective (existing) alternative treatment. So, the first thing big pharma did was to make sure Ivermectin and other known (cheap) antiviral drugs were banned completely in the west. However, the expensive antiviral drugs with active patents are still allowed. They have great lobbyism capabilities and resources…
    Big Tech is in on this and supplies the informational censorship.

    I read somewhere that big pharma makes about $1000 / second from the vaccines. I don't know the correctness of that figure but there is a massive economic incentive do keep this show running until it hits the proverbial concrete wall.

  38. well, nothing new for me. coming from ex communist country, we have rich experience with such approaches 🙂

  40. I write here in the commentary occasionally about covid or climate change… and can only say welcome to the club. I am a M.Sc. in Nanotechnology with a focus on renewable energy and a publication in, for example, Adv. Fct. Mat. I also have a degree in business administration. Once tried to argue at https://skepticalscience.com/ about the scientific approach to climate change science… Guess what happened after three posts….

  41. Better read what I warned about back in 1982

    https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2702791&cid=39217853

    Section 230 was a monstrously bad idea from day one. The solution should never have been to protect attributable content from liability under ordinary criminal and civil statutes — regardless of technology.

    No Internet "platform" should ever have escaped Common Carrier status if it wanted immunity for criminal activity conducted on the platform. If you don't know what "common carrier" means, then you need to discover — not just what it is, but why you never learned what it is. It's the "why" in which the devil dwells.

  42. This kind of idiocy comes from the abuse of communication channels by all kind of narrative peddlers. And of course, it also shows what side Twitter is on.

    Having a bot look for the wrong words and censor them is one of the worst possible solutions, because it gives credence to the conspiracy believers that the system is really after them.

  43. The bizarre thing is that this kind of censorship by the gatekeeper media organizations just make the alternative views more credible. One thing is for sure, the officially sanctioned media sources are not telling us the truth… about pretty much anything. It's a running joke in conspiracy minded circles that people are running out of conspiracy theories that haven't turned out to be true.

  44. Welcome to America v2.0.
    The slippery slope was so sudden you hardly even noticed, right?
    Just wait until they reach the point where it becomes impossible to service the debt. Then it really becomes interesting.
    It's a very good thing that we have so many loyal allies who love us.
    That was a joke. Did you get it?

  51. Sorry to hear you got canceled for appearing to defy the narrative. The policy of "truth is not welcome here," is pretty sad.

  55. The simple fact is that conspiracies happen occasionally. The difficulty is in identifying which conspiracy theories aren't false, particularly when the whole field is likely being deliberately spammed with false theories to hide any real conspiracies that might not be perfectly concealed.

    It was my impression after the 2020 election that about 95% of the election fraud theories could easily have been deliberate chaff to conceal anything true that might have been in there.

    But, history is made of real conspiracies.

  56. when it happens to you, right?

    Look, just be a good drone will ya? Get double jabbed, double boosted, micro-chipped and Ukrainian flag like a good little. Never question authority. They know what's good for you.

  57. Whether reference to the article deserved to have Twitter suspend NBF is one thing (I agree it was unfair), but I can’t say I’m impressed by the “peer reviewed” aspect of the article referenced. As one of those commented, the authors declared no conflict of interest, yet are themselves leaders of an alliance to drive the use of Ivermectin, so are hardly impartial. It’s great to have open source places to publish and seek peer review, but those reviewing, need to be recognised experts in a relevant field and not biased.

  58. Questioning a doctrine is not spreading misinformation. How many times have we found that a "fact" that was commonly accepted as truth turned out to be wrong? Posting peer reviewed papers is a responsible way to disseminate information and foster discussion in the search for truth.

    Twitters behavior only provides ammo for conspiracy theorists.

  60. The censors don't care about whether the content is incorrect. They care about whether it's off narrative.

    And the human eyes in this case aren't paid enough to exercise good judgement. They have quotas to fill.

  62. Which is saying something, too, because I know people who've had Twitter accounts locked for stupid reasons. My friens got her account locked for venting and saying "Men are trash" after a bad breakup. Dumb. It's A) just venting and B) not entirely incorrect. Lots of humans are trash. xD

  63. Thats true. I work for the net, I should realize that. >_>

    I guess my concern is that that kind of platform would be used for things like trafficking. Oh wait wait… like TWITTER. Etcetera. Yeah you're right, then HAHA. And every other site that's been used for that.

  64. I expect there's a simple filter which flags content, but then it does get looked at before the account is locked. Too much risk of accidentally locking the 'wrong' account, otherwise.

  66. " There would need to be some kind of control in place to prevent the sharing of content which nobody should be watching "

    I don't think we do need such a thing, any more than we need controls in place to prevent people from having phone conversations which nobody should be having.

    Unwanted content is a problem on platforms that push content on people unasked. But a peer to peer system for communications doesn't need to have provisions for pushing unwanted content.

  67. Likely a filter which looks for strings of characters or words, patterns. Things like "covid" and "<whatever therapy isn't mainstream>" along with any phrases that indicate positivity of such treatments. I should say "painted as harmful" rather than "mainstream".

    [EDIT]
    Er, sorry, I just said what you said LOL. <333

  68. As long is there is a platform that is not decentralized, it will be censored for control. Which is just my opinion, of course. How a decentralized information platform could be built is one thing, but how to upkeep it is something completely different. There would need to be some kind of control in place to prevent the sharing of content which nobody should be watching (that doesn't require description).

    Beyond that, though, I'd love to see that become a thing. But what government would allow it?

  69. What caused this? A mindless filter or a mindless Twitter minion? My money is on the filter because it is easy and cheap.

  70. It's a censorship regime. The idea that they're suppressing 'misinformation' is just an excuse. They don't need a good reason to censor, because censorship makes sure that people don't hear that they had a bad reason.

    We really need to get away from "platforms" that create choke points that can be exploited for censorship. And fast, because the net is closing.

  71. I wondered if that would happen. >_<

    But I like that you tweeted about Twitter's suppression of your tweet LOL. Yaaay!

Comments are closed.