I think the point of the article is that if some government DID spend the money to properly research this, it would take time, as in MANY years. I remember many decades ago that Vitamin E was thought to be a great supplement to reduce coronary heart disease etc. It was then studied by following 10,000 people for 4.5 years [1] and it was determined that the hint of benefit seen in observational studies turned out to be false hope. So with much time and money, it could be found that there is benefit in ivermectin. But the current state is that the FDA [2] and CDC [2] recommend AGAINST ivermectin use for treatment or prevention of SARS-COV2 infection / Covid-19.

Like the article says: science is slow, pandemics are fast.

[1] https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminE-HealthProfessiona... [2] https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-shoul... [3] https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2021/pdf/CDC_HAN_449.pdf

> it would take time, as in MANY years

So just like the time required to create the COVID vaccines that are "safe" and "effective"?

Snark aside, I'm exhausted hearing how hard it is to do some things, but other's are "science" and don't warrant further exploration.

Not to mention the Merck therapeutic that just got emergency use auth that study was done on < 1000 people I think lol

Because in order to end a debate and quantify what "proper research" is, you have to have rules for the debate and establish in advance what proof is enough.

In the eyes of the world governments, the debate is already over. There isn't clear evidence that it works. There's also a straightforward answer already. Whether you believe this is because they're subservient to Big Pharma or because they actually are looking at the science, they're certainly acting as if they've seen all the data they need to see.

In the eyes of the ivermectin proponents, they just need to do the right study. The debate won't be over until it shows the answer they're looking for.

Nobody is saying, "If I see this evidence, I'll believe it; if I see that evidence, I'll believe the opposite." This is basic grade-school-simplified-scientific-method science. You're supposed to define a hypothesis, design an experiment, and then stick to what the experiment shows. But here, some have already finished their experiment, and others just want to keep running experiments.

(And no, it's not a cheap preventive treatment. Ivermectin tablets cost a couple of dollars per tablet. That adds up to be far more expensive than the vaccines. It would be a cheap reactive treatment, but even assuming it works, if you're not using it as a preventive treatment, you're letting people get awfully sick and spread the disease around, it's just that they can get out of the hospital reliably. That's not a solution.)

Exactly. The odds that any new research will find ivermectine effective are very low.

If the odds were higher, the government could grant monopoly rights to a willing pharma company. In fact they did this with another very old treatment for gout – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colchicine One company was granted monopoly, they did studies, confirmed that cochicine is effective, gathered more information about safety. It also lead to significant price increase (2000%).

I don't think any serious pharma company would be willing to accept such an offer for ivermectine.

I think that we already have enough data showing that this is most likely ineffective treatment that it is hard to justify spending more money on this.

Furthermore, people who are not convinced, will find a reason to doubt the new study as well.

Keep an eye out for TOGETHER[1], I-TECH[2], PRINCIPLE[3] and ACTIV-6[4] results (with TOGETHER already having dropped IVM for futility)

[1] https://www.togethertrial.com/

[2] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04920942

[3] https://www.principletrial.org/

[4] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04885530

If the government funds it, that will make it suspicious in the eyes of many people.

There are already a number of high quality studies, and they are interpreted through people's own lens of preconception. The article points out a real problem in medical literature, but the public perception problem is much worse. Medical literature is at least trying to reach a truthful consensus.

Can you explain what "truthful consensus" means in this situation?

The article does not give me any hope that medical literature is "trying" anything.

Most researchers are interested in the truth. There are incentives for people to be lazy and fast, which leads to bad science, but most of the time they would rather be right. They'll even defend bad results, but out of self protection rather than outright intent to mislead.

So there are plenty of problems, but of an entirely different character from the outright propaganda by non-scientists practicing ideological confirmation bias.