I'm not saying the scrutiny isn't warranted

given that this is what you might consider a high-leverage situation. It's just that for people who may not be familiar it seems like the logical explanation is that there is a cover up, when the reality is that this is fairly commonplace. It should also be noted that contrary to what the open letter states, Lancet only has data sharing requirements for clinical trials. They encourage data sharing for other types of studies, but do not require it.

I also think there are a variety of ways this could be handled outside of publicly releasing the data. For example, allowing an independent statistician access to the data and code would likely be sufficient.