My first ever twitter thread is going to be on a subject on which I am truly an expert: why my mom is the greatest. Also, it& #39;s going to be about remdesivir. (1/12)
First, my mom is a badass doc and single mom (literally how?) to my sister and me. When I was little, we would play catch with a koosh ball while she was on conference calls rewriting schizophrenia practice guidelines (2/12)
Side bar, that was confusing for a lot my teachers as she& #39;d write absent notes on the backs of recycled practice guideline drafts. You can imagine... (3/12)
Second, in her career she has *literally* changed the world for the better. You guys know http://clinicaltrials.gov"> http://clinicaltrials.gov  ? Yeah, she ran it for over a decade. (4/12)
You know the classic med school lecture on publication bias? An investigator does 20 trials on drug A, and only publishes the one trial that shows drug A works. Yeah, http://clinicaltrials.gov"> http://clinicaltrials.gov  FIGHTS that by being a required registry of all trials before they start. (5/13)
As my mom would say, this means we know "the denominator". And that is ESSENTIAL to practicing evidence based medicine. (6/13)
But there& #39;s MORE. While my mom was there, she did quite a bit to increase transparency of clinical trials, which is literally life saving work. (7/13)
One rule she wrote? Investigators running a clinical trial need to register IN ADVANCE what their outcome is going to be. Essentially, you have to declare what goal posts you are moving. (8/13 )
And if you change your primary outcome (also known as "moving the goal posts " also known as manipulating data to look good), there will be a PERMANENT, SEARCHABLE record of it. (9/13 )

(Kind of like if you change your twitter thread numbering midway)
And this is how we get to remdesivir. The drug that (is probably not) the miracle cure for COVID-19. Recently, news broke that the trial investigators changed their outcome measure mid trial, which casts legit doubt on their findings. (10/13 ) https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/01/government-researchers-changed-metric-measure-coronavirus-drug-remdesivir-during-clinical-trial/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/...
Why do we know this happened? BECAUSE MY MOM WROTE THE DAMN RULE (11/13)
So for mother& #39;s day, yeah we sent flowers. But I wanted to do more. Aside from studying statistics (her eternal request of all physicians), I thought I could help spread the word of her incredible impact on the world of medicine. (12/ 13)
So please, teach someone about clinical trials dot gov. It& #39;s an amazing resource that you benefit from, even if you don& #39;t know it. And my amazing, genius, glorious mom built. that. shit. END THREAD. (13/13)
P.S. give my mom (new to twitter) a follow: @DeborahZarin , I love you. Happy Mother& #39;s Day. I hope I& #39;m 54% the Dr. Zarin that you are.
You can follow @MargotZarinPass.
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