Thanks.
I think this is a good example of where the “peer review” model for academic review fails.
The “peers” accept the same low standard for statistical analysis that they use—nobody wants to “blow the whistle” on the practice since it could blow-back on them.
Some journals have a more rigorous peer review process than others. Some have shockingly low standards, you are correct! I’m left shaking my head sometimes. Something slips past the reviewers at the good ones, too, sometimes. None are infallible.
Then there are the media reports claiming a well-done study showed something it never showed at all. These are frequent.
Like that Wayne Root story claiming a Lancet study showed the vaccines lowered overall immunity, suppressed your immune system. He based that claim on a letter to the editor of a low-ranking journal by a Japanese doctor with an axe to grind.
The Japanese doctor cited the Lancet (highly ranked, but not infallible) study as his source for that claim. But when you look at the Lancet study, nowhere does it ever say that. It does show is the efficacy of the vaccines have waned over time and are now worthless, or practically worthless, against the new Omicron strains. Perhaps it was a translation error or a language problem on the part of the Japanese doctor. He did the same with other articles be cited in his letter.
Then Tucker picked up the story from Root (or another parrot) and ran with it, calling the letter to the editor an “article”(!). Letters to the editor don’t go through a peer review process. Not that it would have done much good at that journal with low standards, anyway. I like Tucker and wish he’d get better research staff. It was an easy thing to catch. Heck, little old me caught it.
As so this stuff gets spread around ...