[throwaway9482]

So if I’m reading this right, the authors retracted the study because they weren’t able to get more details about the anonymous data they used, as the org who provided the anonymous data refuses to share more details about it on account of patient confidentiality agreements

Edit: I think I found the statement from the org who has the sensitive data ... https://surgisphere.com/2020/05/29/response-to-widespread-re...

It includes:

> We also take data privacy very seriously. Our registry is an aggregation of customers who use our QuartzClinical data platform. Our strong privacy standards are a major reason that hospitals trust Surgisphere and we have been able to collect data from over 1,200 institutions across 46 countries. While our data use agreements with these institutions prevents us from sharing patient level data or customer names, we are able to complete appropriate analyses and share aggregate findings to the wider scientific community.

And...

> We believe that an independent academic audit that validates those three functions as it relates to our papers in the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet will bring further transparency to our work, further highlight the quality of our work, and also continue to deserve the confidence of our work by our colleagues.

>

> This process will follow strict boundaries as it relates to our data use agreements, among other considerations. We are pursuing such an independent audit with all due haste while ensuring compliance with various legal and regulatory concerns. [my emphasis]

[bmarquez]

> The Surgisphere registry is an aggregation of the deidentified electronic health records of customers of QuartzClinical, Surgisphere’s machine learning program and data analytics platform. Surgisphere directly integrates with the EHRs of our hospital customers to provide them actionable data insights to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

I would be concerned if I was a patient whose doctor used Surgisphere. It sounds like Surgisphere has full access to electronic health data, and it's not clear if patients clearly consented to this...otherwise they'd be able to release more detailed information.

They say it's "deidentified", but if you have a list of age, gender, medical conditions, location, and medications taken (etc) how hard would it be to "reidentify" someone?

[hirundo]

> these institutions prevents us from sharing patient level data ...

They are prevented from sharing the data, not just with the public, but with three of the authors of the paper! That's pretty tight security. I wonder if any of the other authors have seen it.

[elliekelly]

One of the authors of the paper is the founder/CEO of Surgisphere so presumably he has permission to see the "data" (assuming it exists) and has convinced his co-authors to take his word for it.

[lbeltrame]

There were also glaring issues with the statistics, as outlined in Andrew Gelman's blog[1].

[1] https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/05/25/this-contr... (one of the many posts there)

[jka]

The Guardian published an article yesterday with their initial investigative findings about Surgisphere:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgi...

[boredumb]

Science!