Korean Job Discussion Forums

[some waygug-in]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/dangerous-spin-doctors-7-_b_747325.html

A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found over 40 percent of the best designed, peer-reviewed scientific papers published in the world's top medical journals misrepresented the actual findings of the research.(i) The "spin doctors" writing the papers found a way to show treatments worked, when in fact, they didn't.

Doctors and health care consumers rely on published scientific studies to guide their decisions about which treatments work and which don't. We expect academic medical researchers to determine what needs to be studied, and to objectively report their data. We rely on government regulators to prevent harmful medications from being approved, or to quickly remove harmful medications or treatments from the market.

What most physicians and consumers don't recognize is that science is now for sale; published data often misrepresents the truth, academic medical research has become corrupted by pharmaceutical money and special interests, and government regulators more often protect industry than the public. Increasingly, academic medical researchers are for hire, and research, once a pure activity of inquiry, is now a tool for promoting products.

Science has always been considered an objective endeavor that removes bias and is inherently true and reliable. While we may acknowledge that some science is inferior in design or execution, and that there are a few corrupt scientists, we mostly believe what is published in the world's top medical journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association and New England Journal of Medicine can be counted on to guide our medical decisions. We still have trust in the scientific method. That trust may be misguided.

[JMO]

Good article. there are many problems in the process caused by the amount of money at stake.

I'd resist the tempation to throw the baby out with the bathwater though. Its still by far the best method we have.

Here is a good piece from 'science based medicine' on the topic. It illustrates how complex this subject is and how fraught with bias it can be.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=7811

[Fox]

I find the attacks on modern peer review that have been on this forum recently fairly convincing. I think the academic community could take some steps to improve the situation somewhat, but I also think that Kuros previous suggestion that we change how we think about the scientific method is a good one. As much as the scientific method is in my estimation an effective, rational way of examining the world, it's almost impossible for modern scientists to utilize it in its purest form; they have far too much to gain by "cheating" so to speak, both in terms of career advancement and in terms of ensuring the quite substantial funding required for many fields of modern research. We need to accept that and be appropriately suspicious.

[recessiontime]

I have personally spoken to scientists that have complained about the opposite as well. That competitors get others to scrutinize their papers very harshly to stall them from getting published first so that the competitors can rip off their ideas and publish first.

I got the impression that they were very disillusioned about the process. I was pretty surprised myself but after I thought about it, it made a lot of sense unfortunately.

[mises]

Steven Keen on academic research:

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2010/10/26/australian-research-funding/

[Space Bar]

Placebo fraud rocks the very foundation of modern medical science; thousands of clinical trials invalidated

Thursday, October 28, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger