'We deeply apologise to you, the editors, and the journal readership for any embarrassment or inconvenience that this may have caused,' the authors stated.
The hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) study was based on data from an American company called Surgisphere, which appears to have been grossly misrepresenting its credentials.
A number of alarming realizations spurred the investigation, such as a significant increase in suicidal thoughts among children to whom the drugs were administered.
'The goal was always to use what the existing literature offered to get some little bit of lunacy or depravity to be acceptable at the highest levels of intellectual respectability within the field.'