Re: “anecdotal evidence”
There are two types of evidence for effectiveness of treatment in our world:
“Anecdotal evidence”, which is the result of observations by individuals, published or not, or unreviewed data from trials underway.
“Data” are the results of one or more clinical trials, preferably randomized, which have been peer reviewed and published.
Calling the Didier Raoult communication “anecdotal” is correct, that’s the way all clinical scientists use the word. And the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with using anecdotal evidence to treat patients. In 1986 Waafa al-Sadr, then a young AIDS researcher, printed by hand and distributed the results of four young men with AIDS-associated pneumonia who were thought certain to die because they were intubated and on mechanical ventilation. JAMA had published a year before an opinion piece that said it was unethical to intubate AIDS patients because they all died. Dr. al-Sadr’s report described giving them very large IV doses of a steroid followed by successful extubation and (temporary) recovery. This was an anecdote by any description.
In 1987-88, I used this method on 99 critically ill AIDS patients with pneumonia, all survived their pneumonia episode. The randomized controlled trial which worked out the science, the timing, the dosages, and all that wasn’t published until November 1990.
Calling a medical observation an “anecdote” isn’t a criticism, it’s just our shop talk. We treat patients based on anecdotes all the time - in fact, I am using hydroxychloroquine + Kaletra right now, today, for COVID-19 pneumonia.
This argument about language is a tempest in a teapot.
Almost everything Edison did was “antidotal”. Much good comes from ethical Edisonian empiricism. Americans do not realize how as the power of the bureaucratic state with its rules, regulations and sanctions has grown, creativity by its physicians and others has been stifled.