This post is an excellent opportunity to write about the ISI system, what I promised a friend for a very long time. But it's also an opportunity to review how well history rhymes (or bad). A few years ago, about two, I saw it at a furniture store, probably Kika, a book in German about Ignaz Semmelweis. It was in German, so in German-speaking countries, probably in Austria, it had not sold. That's what I do, I take the books that don't sell to furniture stores. I wanted to buy it, but it couldn't be done. I held it in my hand with murderous thoughts, right in front of the cameras. When I went the second time to ask for it, it was no more, they had put other books or I didn't know where to look for it anymore. I regret it even now. That I haven't read a German book in a while, in addition, the story of Ignaz Semmelweis is very painful and actually shows how science works, especially medical science, but not only. The Hungarian doctor Semmelweis (1818-1865) made an extraordinary discovery in an era when germs and how they cause disease were unknown (although ideas about their existence date from the Middle Ages, from the time of the black death). The first microscopes had highlighted some tiny organisms that scuttled in the water, but still infectious diseases were produced by…miasms, according to official science.
What is Semmelweis doing?? Observe as in hospitals, maternal mortality was of 3 times more frequent than in the case of birth with midwives. Puerperal fever was the cause of death for these women, and by washing hands with a special solution (trivial now, based on chlorine), developed by him, its incidence has been reduced to less than 1%. Ignaz also wrote a book about it. And published. But what does it matter? He was ridiculed by the medical elite of the time. He had a nervous breakdown and ended up in an insane asylum, where after 14 days he died as a result of gangrene caused by the beatings administered by the guards.
It seems beyond tragic? The irony of fate, to die of what you practically could have prevented! What the world looked like before antibiotics? What did an infection mean then?? The make-ups for horror movies now are ridiculous compared to the reality back then.
That's how it goes if you try to do good, if you come up with new ideas. Suicide or madness. I don't know which is worse. But the most painful thing is that there are influential people who ridicule a doctor who just says it is possible, what he learned in college, but also from everyday practice, reduce the frequency of serious effects of a viral infection by managing inflammation. I mean, don't come up with discoveries, but to apply what you learned in school. What is Dr. Groșan doing?, maybe with other substances with similar effects, some doctors in Africa probably do, India or other countries without claims, where it seems that the effects of covid are not as painful as here. It's not just that there are more young people there, it's warmer etc. Community care is much stronger there, beyond other factors. The midwives in the story, that is... And not so many personalities who tell the doctors and pharmacists what to do in the smallest details in the case of a rising cold virus. This in the conditions in which yesterday I heard Andrei Baciu that he did not know that there were substances that could combat the cytokine storm.
"To the attention of colleagues from the press, an investigative tip:
How do you know a doctor is really a researcher and not an impostor walking around on TV claiming to have a miracle cure?
Very simple. Must have scientific publications in their CV, that is, items with a few mandatory features:
1. Original idea and research protocol
2. Studies under strictly controlled conditions
3. Verified conclusions
4. Opinions of other reputable doctors, in a process called "peer review" that certifies the scientific quality of the material.
I looked out of curiosity to see what the scientific activity of Mrs. Flavia Groșan is, for example.
We found only one article from 2011, published in the Oxford Journal of Microbial Chemotherapy. It's not her study, but of a doctor from abroad. Which she attended, along with several dozen other medical personnel, of which many Romanians.
In it, doctors gave two antibiotics to patients with pneumonia and watched the effects. Mrs. Groșan probably had a few patients enrolled and sent the data to the researchers abroad who wrote the article.
https://academic.oup.com/…/66/suppl_3/iii19/669346…
That's her scientific work in a globally reputable publication that I could find. She is mentioned under "and others who helped us" in one article. I have no doubt, however, that he has other articles published in Romania, because here we have a lot of niche medical journals, with usually little real scientific impact.
But as a reputable scientist who matters… well, we can say quite simply that Mrs. Groșan did not surpass Bihor in a significant way.
Deci, dear colleagues from the press, a bridge: If you want to know how much money one of the doctors on TV makes in the scientific world, search for his name in Google Scholar. It's the search engine variant that indexes the scientific articles that really matter. PubMed or ResearchGate are also useful.
I leave you the pleasure of discovering there also the scientific works of Adina Alberts, for example. Hint: it will be very hard…)
With pleasure."
