In a video published on June 21 on the YouTube channel of the IHU Méditerranée-Infection, Professor Didier Raoult, director of the university hospital institute, returned to the accusations that he had failed to submit a research project, among the nearly 3,500 scientific studies published during his career, according to the opinion of an Advisory Committee for the Protection of Persons. Criticisms that arouse the professor’s surprise, given the pedigree of his transmitters: ” The last point on which he attacks us and which makes everyone happy is the same point, which you find in FranceSoir, which can be blamed on Minister M. Véran, the director of the ANSM and the Minister of Higher Education and Research. And then probably 99% of people who made at least one post. You will see that none have fully complied with the regulations. »
“Ethics and regulations should not be mixed up”
The opportunity for the teacher to establish a difference between regulations and ethics. The French government, he points out, has established a “ unhealthy proliferation of laws and regulations, which makes it impossible to work at all “, indicating that it is ” laws that change all the time “. However, while there are a multitude of laws and regulations, he believes that ethics is “ an element that is deeply lacking in this country “, evoking for example the fact that a patient is not warned if he ” serves as a guinea pig to bring in money in the context of a pharmaceutical trial: It’s in the Declaration of Helsinki and it’s not currently required in the CPPs. That’s an ethical issue. […] Do not mix ethics and regulations “, he explains. Then addressing the thorny subject of conflicts of interest between the medical community and the pharmaceutical industry, the scientist insists: ” I think very badly of ethics in France ».
See also: Barely cleared of Médiapart’s accusations, Raoult’s IHU attacked again
Why has the IHU been the victim of so much hostility from the media and the government of Emmanuel Macron? To this question, the professor answers categorically: Because the proposals made by the IHU [pour soigner le Covid-19] did not respond to any market, they did not make it possible to earn money ».
Didier Raoult, scientist who has published the most in the history of France
The professor engages in a response to the criticisms that target him: “ I would be very surprised not to have made 3-4% errors in the work I have done “, he acknowledges, before recalling the magnitude of the number of studies published during his career as a scientist: “ Since the beginning of my career, I have made nearly 3,500 publications indexed in international databases. Cited over 142,000 times. “And to emphasize:” To tell you the whole truth, no one has published as many papers in France as I have. It does not exist. »
Didier Raoult then looks at the scientific production of his detractors, putting his finger on the significant gap that separates the volume of their scientific production from his: “ The people who have harassed me for the past few years, we’ll see what they do. Normally, science is judged by peers, that is, people who are on your level. […] People who want to explain to me how science is done are people who have published less than 100 times less than me. It’s not a lot anyway. »
Taking the example of the former Minister of Health Olivier Véran, after reporting that his number of publications amounts to eight, Didier Raoult asserts: “ And they are the ones who are going to explain to me what science is, what infectious diseases are, how we treat angina? FranceSoir found a publication on epilepsies of a prospective work on which there is no mention that he consulted the ethics committee at the time which was the CCPRB. So it’s the same error that he blames me for and that we send to Mediapart and the whole world by saying “Mr. Raoult is unethical, because he interpreted the rules by saying it was number 3 rather than number 2“. But they too did that. The difference is that they found for me 1 (study) out of 3,500 while I found 1 out of 7 ».
The hegemony of scientific discourse at the antipodes of the scientific method
In this video, the director of the IHU also expressed his satisfaction following the results of the legislative elections, pointing to a better balance of powers: “ I am hostile to hegemony, that is to say total domination with a single group, whether you call it the doxa, the single thought, especially in the field of health “, he says. Didier Raoult then continues on the question of ” the hegemony of scientific discourse ” mad. According to him : ” It all got crazy. These certainties that there is nothing else to do but to give new drugs which are very expensive and which do not work have become something unbearable ».
A hegemonic discourse echoed by the press mainstream « who loves simple messages “, he denounces. ” All of that is a problem. I suffered from it, because the press is engulfed in this kind of hegemony that it likes: it loves simple messages. When a government has very simple messages, the press loves it “, he explains. ” It happened to me several times to find myself in front of journalists who explained to me, my core business: science “, he laughs then. And to be satisfied with the presence of an alternative to this press: I am glad that FranceSoir, which is part of the resistant press, explains that the tuberculosis stories are a small plot against me to deal with wild protocols. »
See also: “Wild experimentation” against tuberculosis: end of the game for Mediapart and the detractors of Professor Raoult