Read on Twitter
I've been pretty bothered by the vitriol with which this paper is being received, and wanted to make a couple of points about how I read evidence like this: https://twitter.com/fperrywilson/status/1360944814271979523
Assume good faith. For example it's possible that, as many have asserted, the authors here are negligent or stupid, but it's also possible that they were confident that patients were assigned to wards more or less randomly maybe they even checked that assumption with EDA.
In that case it's probably defensible to not use something like a multilevel model here because there may be no information at the cluster level.
The point is that clinicians at a research hospital probably know what cluster randomization is, so if they didn't analyze their data with those methods, that may have been a choice based on the knowledge of their experiment rather than some undergrad level blunder.
This isn't to say just believe everyone, but maybe write them a polite email to ask why they made certain decisions, or offer help to make different decisions.
Pay attention to translation. It's brave and generous of people to write academic work in second languages, because people like me get to read it. If this is the case you should be more generous in how you interpret things.
For example, on pubpeer one of the authors is equating "RCT" with a placebo controlled trial. This is probably a language issue and not that she doesn't know the difference.
https://pubpeer.com/publications/DAF3DFA9C4DE6D1B7047E91B1766F0#11
https://pubpeer.com/publications/DAF3DFA9C4DE6D1B7047E91B1766F0#11
Before saying "you are obviously contradicting something you wrote many times in the paper" try publishing something in your second language and seeing how clear and nuanced it is.
This isn't a game. Vitamin D is a safe therapy that may save lives. Throughout the pandemic we've recommended safe things which may help without hesitation. This study has flaws, but it's still better than most papers behind masks or six foot gaps. https://vitamin-d-covid.shotwell.ca/#supplementation-studies
So I would just contemplate how you'll feel if these results turn out to be valid. If you're a skeptic who's spent a lot of time convincing people to not adopt this safe practice which may save their life, how will you feel if you're wrong?
