Re: Marketing malpractices


PeterB wrote:
cathyb wrote:
PeterB wrote:
cathyb wrote:
PeterB wrote:
cathyb wrote:
PeterB wrote:
cathyb wrote:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1806084,00.html

"Drug companies are accused today of endangering public health through
widescale marketing malpractices, ranging from covertly attempting to
persuade consumers that they are ill to bribing doctors and
misrepresenting the results of safety and efficacy tests on their
products".

"The British company AstraZeneca, for instance, has been criticised by
regulatory bodies: it allegedly organised an event to promote its drug
Crestor which included tickets for a musical, and provided flights and
hotels for doctors to attend a conference on bipolar disorder on the
French Riviera. AstraZeneca says all employees must now pass an exam on
its code of conduct.

GlaxoSmithKline, Britain's largest drug manufacturer, is under
investigation by German and Italian authorities for alleged corruption
of doctors - at least 1,600 in Germany and more than 4,000 in Italy,
where the illegal gifts were said to amount to ?228m (£156m) from
1999 to 2002. GSK says it has since established marketing codes. New
staff have to pass a test on the code of practice. The report points
out that in 2004, 87 employees were dismissed or agreed to leave the
company voluntarily as a result of breaches of the codes, and that
sanctions such as written warnings were imposed in 109 cases."

I suppose it's a start, but it pisses me off that companies can get
away with this stuff, even in countries where, sensibly, advertising
prescription drugs to consumers directly isn't allowed.

Why, Rosalind? You get away with promoting vaccine without benefit of
safety studies every day, by citing studies on diseases not under
discussion, using religious guilt to pander and coerce, and misquoting
simple chart data by a factor of 100, all in support of your sponsors.
As our number one promoter of vaccine on mha, I find this bit of "leaf
turning" to be shamelessly transparent. Maybe you should cover up with
one, instead.

You never miss an opportunity to make a fool of yourself, do you Petey?

You never miss an opportunity to kiss your sponsor's behinds, do you,
Rosalind?

BTW, your inability to post without bringing up an error in number I
made and admitted a year ago looks sillier and sillier; particularly in
the face of your constantly posting rubbish that proves you have no
idea what you're talking about.

Of course you admitted it. You can't very well deny a gross distortion
of the facts once confronted.

Oh, yes Petey.

You do it all the time.

Nope, haven't needed to.

Vitamin C, for instance, contrary to your assertion, does not turn
hydrogen into oxygen...

Of course it doesn't.

My word. Petey finally admitted he was wrong.

No, I'm pointing out you can't use the words "turns into" to paraphrase
my comments without being wrong yourself. Dimwit.

The words "turn into" were never used by me,
only by you. And I referenced the word "convert" in an online
dictionary to prove its alternate usage, which Wikipedia also
supported.

No, you halfwit. You never once provided a defintion of "converted"
that couldn't be replaced with "turned into".

You can *replace* it with "Zeus lives," for all I care. That doesn't
mean I said it.

Because they're
synonymous.

You want them to be. That doesn't make it so.

It was simply one of your more embarrasssing attempts to
avoid admitting you didn't know what you were talking about.

From one who can't quote data off a little chart without getting it
wrong by 1000%, that's amusing.

You're just upset because your dimwitted mistakes are truly
errors that continue getting air time. But you deserve it, Rosalind.
Book editors (wink wink) need to be kept on their toes. Let's hope you
aren't editing for any of the writers on the website managed by Peter
Bowditch. You might start a global panic about how many werewolves are
on the prowl. Funny website, though.

Lordy. Petey says nothing again.

Rosalind supports Barrett, who runs "quackwatch." Quackwatch is run by
quacks. Hence, Rosalind is a quack. Is that why she supports vaccine
in a newsgroup devoted to alternatives? Why, yes, I think that's it.


, and your lengthy defence of that position merely
served to demonstrate that you don't understand the basic chemistry of
vitamin C, or indeed chemistry, full stop.

I don't defend what doesn't need defending. Being the dimwit you are,
of course, it's amusing to see you do your salsa dance trying to prove
there is something there that isn't. Kissing those rear ends sure
keeps you busy, doesn't it?

And again.

Rosalind knows it's true.


Your assertion that when looking at confidence intervals, the lower end
of the interval has "more confidence" than the higher merely served to
show that you don't understand statistics and are incapable of
understanding a paper in which they are employed.

Semantic BS. No matter what the CI attributed to an interval,

A confidence interval applied to a confidence interval?

you
don't know which endpoint data is right.

No, Petey. In a given study, you do know the data.

I said "endpoint data." Accurately measuring the event in question is
not a given.

The confidence
interval is applied to give an spread within which (at a given level of
confidence) the true value for a much larger or whole population or
sample lies. The idea is to look for the *true value*.

Which doesn't change the fact that vaccine-induced immunity is lower
than antibody titres suggest, something we've known for more than half
a century. And this need not be evaluated in the study cited for us to
know what many other studies have proven.

That's exactly why we use a
more conservative (lower) number. For instance, we can know that
15,000 people a year die of heart attack, but studies might suggest an
actual number closer to 20,000. In any responsible publication, the
higher figure will be presented with a qualifier. That wouldn't be
necessary with the lower number.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with your misreading of statistics.

So you say. Even if the 91% figure was correct, however, it just means
those children had antibodies after being vaccinated. That doesn't
substitute for RCTs proving either vaccine safety or long-term
efficacy. What about it? Where are you RCTs proving what vaccine is
actually doing in the human body over the long term?

Oh, Petey. The use of confidence intevals has been explained to you ad
nauseam, and you still don't understand. Why must you embarrass
yourself like this? Why must you provide irrelevant and ridiculous
examples? If you don't understand how to read a paper involving
statistics, simply don't comment on them. For your sake and ours.

From one who misquotes data from a simple chart by a variance of 1000%,
that's pretty amusing.

To repeat, 'Your assertion that when looking at confidence intervals,
the lower end of the interval has "more confidence" than the higher
merely served to show that you don't understand statistics and are
incapable of understanding a paper in which they are employed.'

Obviously, "more confidence" was not a repudiation of the interval,
which itself estimates variability of the outcome. "More confidence"
meant "greater reliability from the standpoint of real world estimates,
since in the absence of RCTs proving either vaccine safety or long-term
effectiveness, we just don't know how reliable vaccine is in the human
population. And this study proves it.


And your apparent belief that someone criticising pharmaceutical
companies is in their pay merely serves to demonstrate that you are not
only paranoid, but a stupid wanker to boot.

You're little games are not impressing anyone, Rosalind.

Noted that PeteyB had nothing to say on the topic, but decided to
indulge in a pile of lies and ad hominem crap.

Oh, it's a good article. The fact you posted it doesn't mean you're
not here promoting vaccine on behalf of your sponsors. Phoney is as
phoney does....

Oh, I see Petey still has nothing to say on the topic, but has decided
yet again to indulge in a pile of lies and ad hominem crap.

All of your distortions are on record, Rosalind. And it's not an ad
hominem unless you aren't part of the equation. And you know you are,
you little rascal you.

Good lord, Petey has produced an entire post in which he has simply
slobbered a few ad hominem arguments and repeated tired and discredited
arguments and proved that he neither understands statistics nor the
word "convert". Oh, and twisting to try and pretend that when he
plagiarised whale.to, the references used to back a claim that immunity
varies dramatically from antibody titres and yet didn't mention
antibody titres were relevant.

Is that why Rosalind declined to respond to any of my salient points
above, preferring instead to simply blab, as usual?

Its getting to be something of a habit with him.

Calling you a Dimwit is getting to be a habit too. An appropriate one.


Now, he's never going to understand the statistics in a 100 years if he
doesn't by now, nor admit his error in understanding when he claimed
that the lower end of a confidence interval has, er, more confidence...

Rosalind's premise is that because reliability of an interval value
cannot itself be measured, all endpoint data is therefore equal.

Petey, you just made a fool of yourself.

Is
that true? Of course not. It's the reason scientists use low-end
estimates, rather than high-end estimates, which would require a
qualifier.

Petey, you just made a fool of yourself.

Please go back to school.

But Rosalind is a book editor (wink wink) so she has time
to argue these points with some guy on a newsgroup on behalf of her
sponsors, whose names you will never see in print.

Ad hominem nonsense, mixed up with a lie or two.


(oh and that the negative standard deviation is more reliable!), and
he's surely never going to admit the obvious--that in plagiarising from
the cess pit that is whale.to he simply didn't check the references
included--but here I can make his day.

Make my day, kid.

Say, Petey, you were utterly wrong when you claimed that vitamin C
converts hydrogen into oxygen and your lengthy defence of that position
merely served to demonstrate that you don't understand the basic
chemistry of vitamin C, or indeed chemistry, full stop.

Rosalind rejected Merriam Webster's alternate usage of the word: "to
alter for more effective utilization." When referred to Wikipedia for a
similar reference and usage, she then claimed that both sources were
wrong. Is that funny, or what?

What's funny is that Petey is simply lying. Again. I never said that
either Merriam Webster or Wikipedia were wrong. I simply pointed out
that Petey didn't understand what he was reading there.

The usage "to alter for more effective utilization", for instance, does
not make any more sense of Petey's claim that hydrogen is "altered for
more effective utilization" into oxygen. It just doesn't happen.

In fact, as I said at the time:

"You are kidding? You still don't get it?

The definition of conversion you gave from Merriam Webster was:

2. to alter for more effective utilization

Now try and understand it Petey. Since you don't appear to, here is an
explanation in little words, just for you:

This would apply to such things as turning a petrol car into a hybrid,
or a barn or church into a house. An outhouse into a study. It's an
explanation of the meaning of the word convert.

And here's the thing Petey. It still involves one thing being
converted--or turned!--into another.

Now, then. You claimed that hydrogen is turned--or converted--into
oxygen by vitamin C, and I'm afraid explaining the meaning of the word
"convert" doesn't make your explanation any less stupid"

Petey disappeared after that spanking.

Please do show, Petey, where I claimed that either Merriam Webster or
Wikipedia (rather than you) were wrong.

The poor girl can't read a dictionary,
but she can preach about hellfire and torment for those rejecting
vaccination. Now she claims to be a book editor. The only thing we
know for sure is that she promotes vaccine on a newsgroup devoted to
alternative medicine. What is that telling you?

There. Now of course it says exactly the same thing as when I used
"turns into" instead of "converts", and it doesn't make Petey's
position any less stupid, but if that's what his supplement-making
sponsors want, he's made them happy.

Poor girl. Dictionaries are just no fun. Facts either. Cue her to
attack me for making fun of the idea she is a book editor. I mean, why
bother to make claims you know you can't prove? Right Rosalind?

Strange that when Petey can't refute a point he just comes up with crap
like this. To distract, no doubt, from the fact that he claimed that
hydrogen is turned into oxygen by vitamin C and that he doesn't
understand statistics. Or numbers. Or words. Bless.

What an arse.


PeterB

.

Relevant Pages

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    ... "Drug companies are accused today of endangering public health through ... Why, Rosalind? ... As our number one promoter of vaccine on mha, I find this bit of "leaf ... You never miss an opportunity to make a fool of yourself, do you Petey? ...
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  • Re: Marketing malpractices
    ... Why, Rosalind? ... As our number one promoter of vaccine on mha, I find this bit of "leaf ... You never miss an opportunity to make a fool of yourself, do you Petey? ... The usage "to alter for more effective utilization", for instance, does ...
    (misc.health.alternative)
  • Re: Marketing malpractices
    ... "Drug companies are accused today of endangering public health through ... Why, Rosalind? ... As our number one promoter of vaccine on mha, I find this bit of "leaf ... You never miss an opportunity to make a fool of yourself, do you Petey? ...
    (misc.health.alternative)
  • Re: Marketing malpractices
    ... "Drug companies are accused today of endangering public health through ... Why, Rosalind? ... As our number one promoter of vaccine on mha, I find this bit of "leaf ... You never miss an opportunity to make a fool of yourself, do you Petey? ...
    (misc.health.alternative)