Within the scientific community, the peer-review process is widely held to be the gold standard of reliability and veracity, offering readers a degree of confidence lesser papers simply can’t muster.

And so last month when The Lancet, one of the world’s most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals, announced a promising COVID-19 treatment had been proven to be not only ineffective, but also a danger to anyone taking it, the ramifications were swift and far-reaching.

Recall that U.S. President Donald Trump had earlier touted the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a potential “game-changer” in the fight against COVID-19. Hopeful early results set off a flurry of in-depth trials and investigations around the world. All that came to a screeching halt once The Lancet declared the drug to be a health hazard. The World Health Organization and numerous other groups immediately halted their hydroxychloroquine research projects. Science had spoken.

Two weeks later, however, the paper was embarrassingly withdrawn because the data could not be verified, and may well be false. Given the stakes involved with a global pandemic, it’s one of the biggest scientific humiliations in recent memory.

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