"Half of all scientific literature may be untrue." - Lancet editor

ilovethesea

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http://www.collective-evolution.com/201 ... -is-false/

Editor In Chief Of World’s Best Known Medical Journal: Half Of All The Literature Is False

In the past few years more professionals have come forward to share a truth that, for many people, proves difficult to swallow. One such authority is Dr. Richard Horton, the current editor-in-chief of the Lancet – considered to be one of the most well respected peer-reviewed medical journals in the world.

Dr. Horton recently published a statement declaring that a lot of published research is in fact unreliable at best, if not completely false.

“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.” (source)

This is quite distrubing, given the fact that all of these studies (which are industry sponsored) are used to develop drugs/vaccines to supposedly help people, train medical staff, educate medical students and more.

It’s common for many to dismiss a lot of great work by experts and researchers at various institutions around the globe which isn’t “peer-reviewed” and doesn’t appear in a “credible” medical journal, but as we can see, “peer-reviewed” doesn’t really mean much anymore. “Credible” medical journals continue to lose their tenability in the eyes of experts and employees of the journals themselves, like Dr. Horton.

He also went on to call himself out in a sense, stating that journal editors aid and abet the worst behaviours, that the amount of bad research is alarming, that data is sculpted to fit a preferred theory. He goes on to observe that important confirmations are often rejected and little is done to correct bad practices. What’s worse, much of what goes on could even be considered borderline misconduct.

Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and longtime Editor in Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ), which is considered to another one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, makes her view of the subject quite plain:

It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine” (source)

I apologize if you have seen it before in my articles, but it is quite the statement, and it comes from someone who also held a position similiar to Dr. Horton.

There is much more than anecdotal evidence to support these claims, however, including documents obtained by Lucija Tomljenovic, PhD, from the Neural Dynamics Research Group in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of British Columbia, which reveal that vaccine manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and health authorities have known about multiple dangers associated with vaccines but chose to withhold them from the public. This is scientific fraud, and their complicity suggests that this practice continues to this day. (source)

This is just one of many examples, and alludes to one point Dr. Horton is referring to, the ommision of data. For the sake of time, I encourage you to do your own research on this subject. I just wanted to provide some food for thought about something that is not often considered when it comes to medical research, and the resulting products and theories which are then sold to us based on that research.

It’s truly a remarkable time to be alive. Over the course of human history, our planet has experienced multiple paradigm shifting realizations, all of which were met with harsh resistence at the time of their revelation. One great example is when we realized the Earth was not flat. Today, we are seeing these kinds of revelatory shifts in thinking happen in multiple spheres, all at one time. It can seem overwhelming for those who are paying attention, especially given the fact that a lot of these ideas go against current belief systems. There will always be resistance to new information which does not fit into the current framework, regardless of how reasonable (or factual) that information might be.
 

Dean

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As a dyed-in-the-wool cynic and pessimist, I have to confess it's a little heartening to see someone like this have the courage to admit reality. Then again, of course, it's also more than a bit disconcerting that one prominently placed science institutionalist confessing to reality, is indeed news.

Institutionalized corruption is far and away the biggest problem facing society and humanity. The corruption of the science institution is the biggest problem, because it most directly threatens humanity. I mean, humans could always rebuild society from the ground-up if it got destroyed by political, economic, and/or cultural/religious institutional corruption. Rebuilding humanity, especially without humans, would be a tad more dicey-- dare I say.
 

burtlancast

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How predictable.

Marcia Angell, Stephen Barrett (of Quackwatch)' darling , was heavily involved in bashing alternative medecine.

In this not-so-old 2005 interview given to Quackwatch, she basically says:

- the FDA is protecting us
- homeopathy doesn't work
- acupuncture doesn't work
- herbal therapy doesn't work
- Aryuveda doesn't work
- Chinese medecine doesn't work
- the DHSEA bill protecting supplements from the FDA regulations should be abolished
- no published study about ANY alternative therapy has shown effectiveness
- Dr Gonzalez, using a modified Gerson therapy, preys on the desperate

Therapeutic touch, homeopathy, magnet therapy, herbal remedies, you name it. That's what they have in common: they have not been adequately tested scientifically..

So I think we have a real reason to be concerned. And since the FDA has no regulatory authority--except after the fact, if they find out that there have been deaths or severe side effects--you are not protected, nor do you necessarily know if people have been harmed because there's no surveillance system, there's no requirement that the FDA be informed, so if the FDA does get wind of serious side effects or death it's only accidentally that somebody thinks to tell them.

Well, there's a certain libertarian right-wing view that there should be no FDA, that people can decide for themselves whether medicines are safe and effective. That's nonsense.

I think there will be. I think DSHEA is going to have to be changed sooner or later, because we're seeing increasing reports of interactions. St. John's Wort for example, interacts with many drugs. … It interferes with drugs for AIDS. It interferes with drugs for cancer. … I think people are beginning to realize that there is a downside to this unregulated market. That maybe they were a little bit too fast on this. So I believe sooner or later, particularly as we see more of these side effects, sooner or later DSHEA will have to be modified in some way. …

Alternative medicine plays into this exaggerated notion that you can prevent disease simply by doing the right thing. And they advertise that if you take ginseng you won't get a cold.

I think that medicine and doctors have too often--and let me say this loud and clear--been too arrogant, too busy and too highly specialized and technologically focused. So I think there's a lot to be said for the complaints on the side of complementary and alternative medicine in that department. Nevertheless you have to say that they're offering all of these touchy-feely things cause that's all they've got. Whereas you can get more if you have appendicitis or a heart attack or cancer from your standard doctor.

I know of no good study that has shown an alternative remedy to work. They've been flawed in some way, the ones that I've read that show that they work

I have never seen a good study that shows that acupuncture works.
It's generally accepted as, it works. And yet it's based on a philosophy so primitive that it's amazing to me that people could imagine that it does. I mean, these meridians of electrical fields and so forth. It's based on a philosophy that goes back to the period of time in which it developed. Which is quite primitive.

You have to ask yourself about these old traditional medical treatments. Ayurveda, Chinese traditional medicine, that started thousands of years ago, what life was like for the people who relied on those therapies. Well, it was nasty, brutish and short. That's what life was like. And yet somehow they're presented now as sort of exotic chic, as traditional chic that because they're old and because they come from a different culture, there must be something to them. …

It's totally implausible; it's like angels dancing on the head of the pin, it has a sort of fussiness, and yet at bottom it's a belief in vitalism, and energy fields, the same thing you see in therapeutic touch and some of the other more implausible mechanisms. And I think that appeals to people. I think in a sense the more implausible it is for some people, the better. It satisfies a craving for spirituality, settles some old scores with conventional medicine, it makes people think that they're rising above themselves.

What do you say to people who believe that acupuncture works?

Well it speaks to the power of the placebo effect, which is extremely powerful when it comes to subjective complaints like pain or nausea, particularly if they're not terribly severe. If you were in agony because your leg was crushed, probably the placebo would not work. But I suspect in most cases, acupuncture works through a placebo effect.

What do you know about Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez and his controversial cancer treatment regimen?

I read the New Yorker story about the Gonzalez therapy and I've read some about what it is. And this is, it seems to me, another instance of preying on desperate people

the alternative medicine gurus get letters from people who say, "I had cancer, my doctor gave me six months to live, and I drank carrot juice and now I'm alive and it's three years later," and maybe he's dead, that always adds to the story. You don't know whether he had cancer in the first place. You don't know what other treatment he was getting. So that's not documented, that's more of a testimonial. And a lot of complementary and alternative medicine is testimonials. Just "I know somebody who knew somebody who said this," without any effort to find out whether it's true.

The anecdote is a little bit different. It can be very well documented, and reputable medical journals--the New England Journal of Medicine occasionally would publish an anecdote if it's very well documented. If we got a study that said I have a patient and, just an anecdote, but he had cancer of the pancreas and I gave him carrot juice the tumor shrank and he's well and it's three years later, and they could document all of those facts, we might publish it. We would ask questions: how many people with cancer of the pancreas did you give carrot juice to? Who didn't get better? We would want a lot of documentation of it, but we might publish it. But we wouldn't publish it as evidence that carrot juice cures cancer of the pancreas. We would publish it as something that had to be looked at in a proper study. You would say this is a hypothesis-generating anecdote. It means this is something worth looking at, let's design a study. Say a small trial of people with cancer of the pancreas, and add carrot juice to the usual regimen in one half of the population, and don't do it in the other half and see how they do. And you would begin to look at something. A lot of accepted treatments come about in exactly this way. Theory, anecdote, and then the proper studies. So that's what an anecdote is good for. It is not proof of an effect at all. It's what it is.

The Gonzalez therapy is being studied now.

I don't think that's fair to patients. I really don't. People shouldn't have to spend what may be their last months taking a hundred and sixty pills and having coffee enemas and, and things that may be unpleasant, uncomfortable and debilitating. You'd have to have some prior probability that was pretty strong for me to think that that was a good way to go, that that was a good study to do. I don't know what the prior evidence was before this study was launched. I'd want to look at that very carefully. …

I think there's something sad about standing back in a way and watching desperate people spend what may be the last months of their life chasing after treatments that may be very unpleasant, very uncomfortable, very onerous on the belief that it might work. I mean nobody's going to do that unless they think it might work. And I think doctors have an obligation to talk honestly, compassionately but honestly with their patients about such wild goose chases. It doesn't seem kind to me. …

If somebody said to me, you have a devastating disease, cancer of the pancreas and you're probably going to survive no more than six months. And if you want, you can spend this six months having two coffee enemas a day and taking 160 pills a day, and I think there's a diet that didn't sound very palatable to me, on which you would probably lose weight, because it wouldn't taste very good, and going through a regimen that would take most of your waking hours--you can do this, there is zero evidence that it works. There is even less plausibility that it works. Or you can live your life with your family and your friends and going to Venice. Which would you rather do? Well it's, it's a no-brainer. But it's never presented to people quite like that. The way it's usually presented is, this might work, it's a chance, we don't know for sure, but it's tilted in that way so that people feel guilty unless they do do this.

Certainly new treatments are now almost always demonstrated in a clinical trial. New drugs by law are demonstrated to be effective before the FDA.

there are practices and theories that are not only wildly implausible, but impossible. One of those is homeopathy. If you dilute a substance to the point that there is not one single molecule left of that substance, it can't have an effect, period. Over and out. It can't. To imagine that it did would mean that you overturned all the laws of physics and chemistry, and that's simply not going to happen.
http://quackfiles.blogspot.be/2005/07/w ... ngell.html

This hack is now giving herself a brand new facelift, using the distrust of the public for her own self-promotion.

How low can one sink ?
 

Dean

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As my cynical mind ruminates...perhaps these two getting out front on the obvious is just sheer subterfuge, cold and calculated. I mean, can they really continue to keep a lid on how greed was the motive for cajoling certain things/ ideas into conventional wisdom, at the flat out expense/detriment to public health. Pre-muddying the waters could potentially hide, or at least mask, a lot of turbulence.
 

burtlancast

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Keep in mind it does work to some degrees, as i've seen Peat quote her on a few occasions when he was trying to make a point about pharma profits.

Also of note, she doesn't like people to use alternative medecine, but by all means, euthanasia seems OK !
http://www.nationalreview.com/human-exc ... ey-j-smith

:roll:
 

tara

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burtlancast said:
Marcia Angell, Stephen Barrett (of Quackwatch)' darling , was heavily involved in bashing alternative medecine.

In this not-so-old 2005 interview given to Quackwatch, ...
...

This hack is now giving herself a brand new facelift, using the distrust of the public for her own self-promotion.
From half-way through her 2 decades in the role she said made her change her view? Seems credible that her opinion could have changed over the last 10 yrs?
 

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