Re: misuse and corruption in science
- From: "chris.linthompson@xxxxxxxxx" <chris.linthompson@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 13 Oct 2005 19:46:27 -0700
Richard Dawkins wrote:
> so-called peer review
> A caution to those naive people who imagine that 'peer review' is another
> name for secure knowledge.
> Most 'journals' are in the hands of a very few large corporations. The
> pharmaceutical industry (and others) are vastly profitable.
>
> The average French person consumes 7 times as many tranquillisers as a
> Briton, 3 times the antidepressants of an Italian and 2 time the sleeping
> pills of a German. In recent times, the French medical system was rated the
> best in the world!
>
> Observe the recommendations on the covers of best-sellers:
> writer A praises the work of writer B;
> writer B praises the work of writer C;
> writer C praises the work of writer A.
> Just because it is not in the Daily Sleaze does not mean that it is 100%
> reliable, nor does it mean it is reliably rubbish!
>
> Buy a first-class crap detector.
>
> pharmaceutical industry and academia
>
> "The answer to that question is at once both predictable and shocking:
> For the past two decades, medical research has been quietly corrupted by
> cash from private industry. Most doctors and academic researchers aren't
> corrupt in the sense of intending to defraud the public or harm patients,
> but rather, more insidiously, guilty of allowing the pharmaceutical and
> biotech industries to manipulate medical science through financial
> relationships, in effect tainting the system that is supposed to further the
> understanding of disease and protect patients from ineffective or dangerous
> drugs. More than 60 percent of clinical studies--those involving human
> subjects--are now funded not by the federal government, but by the
> pharmaceutical and biotech industries. That means that the studies published
> in scientific journals like Nature and The New England Journal of
> Medicine--those critical reference points for thousands of clinicians
hm. please cite 3 Nature and 3 NEJM papers in which the main point of
the article was a presentation of clinical trials.
NEJM is more likely to publish your unfortunate cranio-rectal insertion
than results of a clinical trial.
As for Nature- "we dont need no steenkin' trials".
Chris
> deciding what drugs to prescribe patients, as well as for individuals trying
> to educate themselves about conditions and science reporters from the
> popular media who will publicize the findings--are increasingly likely to be
> designed, controlled, and sometimes even ghost-written by marketing
> departments, rather than academic scientists. Companies routinely delay or
> prevent the publication of data that show their drugs are ineffective. The
> majority of studies that found such popular antidepressants as Prozac and
> Zoloft to be no better than placebos, for instance, never saw print in
> medical journals, a fact that is coming to light only now that the Food and
> Drug Administration has launched a reexamination of those drugs."
>
> Even in the linked article we have:
>
> " Novartis, stepped in and provided additional funding for development. In
> 1984, private companies contributed a mere $26 million to university
> research budgets. By 2000, they were ponying up $2.3 billion, an increase of
> 900 percent that provided much needed funds to universities at a time when
> the cost of doing medical research was skyrocketing."
>
> No, that is not 900%, it is more like 9000% (or even 8700%)-trust nobody!!
>
> More:
> the unhealthy relationship between 'science' and funding
> http://www.abelard.org/briefings/science-corruption.asp
.
- References:
- misuse and corruption in science
- From: Richard Dawkins
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