As a medical lay person but former HIV activist with a little more background in epidemiology and public health than your average bear, I’m struck here by whatlooks like a systemic problem.

We rely on the peer review publication process to weed out obviously bad studies like this one. I know peer review isn’t perfect, but I think it’s pretty obvious that this one never would have passed a rigorous process.

Yet it’s been cited in meta analyses anyway.

Which leads me to ask, how common is this?

If the paper had been submitted for peer review and refereed in a timely fashion, would we even be having this debate?

If it wasn’t submitted for review, that’s a problem. If it was and the review hasn’t been completed yet but people are citing the study anyway, isn’t that potentially a bigger problem?

It would seem to speak to systemic failure on a broader stage than just this one issue.