Trust, but verify
When Russian President Vladimir Putin personally announced in August that Russia had approved the world’s first covid-19 vaccine, many reacted with skepticism and concern. Russian scientists hadn’t conducted Phase 3 trials, normally used before deploying a vaccine. Could the vaccine be trusted?
The vaccine’s name, Sputnik V—harking back to a Soviet triumph against the West in the Cold War—suggested the Kremlin viewed the project not as a purely scientific public health endeavor, but as one with enormous geopolitical potential.
Many remained suspicious. Even most Russians said they would not take the shot.
This month, though, the prestigious scientific journal The Lancet published an article that seemed to confirm the Russian claims, concluding that Sputnik V appeared “safe and effective.”
The results of studies by Russian or Chinese scientists might turn out to be completely accurate, and we hope they are. Right now the world needs as many effective vaccines as we can get. But data emerging from tightly controlled authoritarian regimes deserves far more skepticism than we have seen so far.
The Lancet’s seal of approval has given a huge boost to the Russian vaccine effort, which is already selling millions of doses in dozens of countries around the world, a massive soft-power boost to Russia’s geopolitical clout.
Carlos del Rio, a leading researcher at Emory University who participated in development of the Moderna vaccine, told me that we should take Russian and Chinese results “with two grains of salt.” Del Rio, like other scientists, says he would like to see more data, adding that he’s sure The Lancet reviewed more material as part of the peer-review process. But the questions run deeper than data analysis.
Peer review requires scientists to examine data provided by researchers and put it through rigorous paces. But how do we know the data provided are legitimate?
When it comes to the veracity of data, the system relies mostly on trust. But there’s a history of peer-reviewed journals that have been cheated before by people falsifying or manipulating data. Scientists have long worried about the problem of faked or massaged data.
That doesn’t even take into account the immense pressure that can be brought to bear by authoritarian regimes aiming to expand their global influence.
Tellingly, Russians remain skeptical of the vaccine even as much of the rest of the world seems to welcome it.
It’s worth remembering that Putin has gone to extraordinary and sinister lengths to achieve his political aims in the past. Should we worry that several doctors working in Russia’s early response to the pandemic, who had criticized the system, have reportedly “jumped” out of windows to their deaths—a fate also experienced by journalists and other critics of the system?
We have also seen the Chinese Communist Party apply considerable effort to suppressing news about the pandemic and stonewall further investigation of the virus’s origins by international teams.
If ever there was a time to exercise skepticism about the research emerging from such regimes, rather than allowing the warmth of a scientific journal to evaporate all questions, it is now.
Del Rio predicts that Russia will never subject its vaccine to the approval process from U.S. or E.U. regulators. As for the Chinese vaccines, he’s even more skeptical about those.
Skeptical or not, the world desperately needs billions of doses of vaccine to push back the virus. As the Russian and Chinese vaccines are rolled out, independent Phase 4 studies should double-check the reliability of earlier research, following up on those who have received doses and comparing their outcomes to those who have not or who have received other vaccines.
As someone once urged during the Cold War: Trust, but verify.