Amarin Corp Plc (AMRN)

[Birdbrain Ideas]

If I recall right, Amarin might have failed to adequately dismiss the fake mineral oil controversy for what it was, an attempt by short sellers to salvage positions that were blown up by the announcement of the Reduce It results. I might be wrong about this, but I think Amarin told the UK folks that "Oh yeah, well it's possible that the mineral oil at worst might have been responsible for a 4 percent error in the results" or something to that effect. That was the company line when the controversy first was promoted by that fake "health consortium" and others with biased interests in 2018 before additional studies showed that mineral oil really had virtually no effect.

The problem with opening the door even slightly to the possibility that mineral oil corrupted the results is that the folks in UK and elsewhere will assume that Amarin itself is too biased to tell the truth. So if they hear 4 percent, they surely double it to 8 or 10 percent, meaning the Reduce It results would be as low as 15 percent reduction of chance of heart attack or stroke. That would still be great, but if you lower it to that, then the UK might question whether a 15 percent reduction is worth the cost and encouraging people to take so many more fat pills a day.

In his last lecture on the subject, Dr. Bhatt called the mineral oil controversy silly. And he's openly spoken of the short sellers interest that drives it. Amarin should do the same and take a hard-line approach against refuting it rather than offering up a mealy-mouthed vague repudiation that allows the UK and others to imagine that the fake mineral oil debacle has a basis in fact.