Kommentar zu Bar-Sela et al. Der von Krebspatienten während der Immuntherapie angewendete Cannabiskonsum korreliert mit einem schlechten klinischen Ergebnis. Krebs 2020, 12, 2447: Verwenden von AI, um die Veröffentlichung fragwürdiger Statistiken zu verhindern

Here is the Summary:

Medical cannabis is an evidence-based treatment for chronic pain and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. Immunotherapies like pembrolizumab work by blocking proteins that stop the immune system from working properly. This commentary critically analyzes a small study by Bar-Sela and coworkers, which appeared to show that cannabis made immunotherapies work less well in patients. Scientific papers should describe what they did in the Methods section and then carefully adhere to this in the Results section. However, we found many instances where there were disagreements between the Methods and Results sections in Bar-Sela’s report. It is also riddled with errors in arithmetic, including unconventional rounding. The prior study did not consider the role of tobacco smoking, which may have been more important than cannabis use in their findings. We propose that artificial intelligence could be used by journals to identify mathematical and statistical errors and prevent studies that are not trustworthy from being published.

Disclosure: I’m a co-author on this team.

I’ve seen similar results before–it seems to be very specific to immunotherapies and potentially specifically the PD-L1 class, results I’ve seen with usage along with chemo and other treatments has been neutral to positive.