Scientific output on coronavirus and WHO’s Solidarity Project: a science-based choice?
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Abstract
In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Solidarity Program probably the largest global initiative to encourage and support research in four promising drugs and therapies (Remdesivir, Hydroxychloroquine, β interferon and the combination Lopinavir / Ritonavir) to reduce the mortality of COVID-19. Considering the potential impact of this project to restrain the current pandemic, the present study aims to investigate whether it was designed upon a scientific basis. For this proposal, we collected all documents on coronavirus indexed in Scopus database by using a search strategy based in MESH terms. Among the studied groups of documents, we looked in more detail the Coronavirus group in order to find documents related to WHO’ s drugs or to other drugs and therapies extracted from another source. The main findings indicate that the number of documents related to WHO’s drugs are higher than in the other groups and this subset of documents involves a larger number of institutions and countries. Hence, the results shown in this study illustrate that decisions by an international body, as WHO, may be science-based and not be merely bureaucratic decisions.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.16.20232488: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources We used the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) browser (30) to define the search strategy. MeSHsuggested: (MeSH, RRID:SCR_004750)Data on agreements were downloaded in a Microsoft Excel format and all agreements dealing with drugs and therapies were identified as following. Microsoft Excelsuggested: (Microsoft Excel, RRID:SCR_016137)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques …SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.16.20232488: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources We used the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) browser (30) to define the search strategy. MeSHsuggested: (MeSH, RRID:SCR_004750)Data on agreements were downloaded in a Microsoft Excel format and all agreements dealing with drugs and therapies were identified as following. Microsoft Excelsuggested: (Microsoft Excel, RRID:SCR_016137)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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