> Title of the paper could (with a tongue firmly in cheek) be called, "Weak evidence for effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine but our sample was likely too small for it to pass a T-test"

It would be irresponsible to choose an experimental design (like significance level) and then use wishy-washy language ("weak evidence") to work around it when the study criteria aren't met.

This would be more akin to the headline from the press release for the study from the university PR office.

In the US the phrase "tongue-in-cheek" means "kidding."

> In the US the phrase "tongue-in-cheek" means "kidding."

I took that to mean they obviously weren't suggesting something so conversational as the actual title, but the takeaway is the same and shouldn't be a conclusion taken from the OP comment.

Or better "We did a study with too few examples and did not get meaningful data"

This is the kind of study where it would be beneficial for it to be ignore. The correct headline is no headline at all.

Well, given the time constraints, and the fact that the previous paper was had a much weaker setup yet claimed efficacy, I think this paper is a good idea. Incidentally, it's not the only such paper; a chinese analysis from the early days came to a comparable conclusion.

Even based just on this evidence, the case for HCQ looks very, very weak. The only positive report was riddled with caveats that could easily explain a false-positive, and other reports see next to no effect.

Note that it's perhaps not so interesting whether it has some effect; for this to really matter, it needs to be somewhat significant effect (in the real-world impact sense, not the statistically measurable sense). And even a small sample can reliably detect large effects; several studies have now not found such an effect; ergo: it doesn't exist.

If HCQ has any benefit whatsoever as applied once very sick, the benefit is likely too small to matter much in terms of mortality. And it's unlikely to be relevant whether it works beforehand; there's no way to make enough to give it to everyone which is what you'd need to do if you wanted to significantly impact the pandemic if HCQ were prophylactic.

It seems very unlikely at this point that HCQ is going to matter much in the course of the pandemic.

Wow, I would love titles like this.

I agree. I wonder if we could try to move click-baity articles under truth in advertising legislation of some sort.

edit: clarified it a little

It is not evidence (weak or otherwise) for the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine. Your version is misleading.

It is weak evidence for the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine. e.g. if you ran this as a Bayesian analysis you would find that these results should shift your beliefs towards it being more likely that hydroxychloroquine reduces deaths + ICU visits.

However you are correct that the medical community has decided to be conservative to reduce the likelihood people make decisions based on weak evidence. That may be the correct decision from a overall social welfare perspective. In that framework all we can say is "this experiment did not generate enough evidence to reject the null hypothesis".