Mistake in Cardiac Arrest & Stroke data

Clalit Health Fund: "We supplied incorrect data, please ignore"

Hebrew version גירסה בעברית

About a month ago we posted data from Clalit Health Fund which showed a 348% increase in Cardiac Arrest rate, 35% increase in Stroke rate.

A follow-up request was sent in order to further investigate the findings, and in the response Clalit wrote:

During our current work on preparing additional data for your follow-up request and due to rechecks, we found that there has been a mistake while retrieving data for your previous request.

Therefore, all data given to you on July 6, 2023 is incorrect, should be ignored and must not be used.

We will be publishing the new data soon.

Why did this mistake happen? Our guess is that the original response was a straightforward, casual query of the database. Our post, which reached over 5000 views and made it to doctors’ social media groups, may have influenced Clalit to dive deeper into their databases before sending their next response. We appreciate the time and effort that our colleagues put into this common work.

This mishap brings up an interesting question:

Should partial or inordinate data be published?

Our simple answer is Yes.

This blog does not claim to perform full scientific research. Every post is verified only to a certain degree, and is always open to review, discussion and corrections.

The dillema of publishing preliminary, unverified information vs. the risk of publishing incorrect information is not an easy one, yet we ask ourselves: Assuming we gained a piece of information which may be of interest to the public, do we have a right not to publish it?

Assuming that there will not be any proper research in the areas covered by this blog in the near future, our best option is to publish the data we receive as is, and add the necessary disclaimers.

Our About page says:

We publish official facts and data, and we trust the reader to review those with critical thought. Consider this as if a colleague approaches you at lunch, saying ‘Can you take a look at this?’

We truly hope that full, proper research will be conducted at some point.