[aMorePerfectUnion]

Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis, Chief of Stanford University’s Prevention Research Center, claims THE MAJORITY OF MEDICAL RESEARCH IS WRONG. Interesting article.

[corkoman]

Most of what John Ioannidis claims is wrong. What a dope.

[hinckley buzzard]

Please be advised that "sharon begley" has no scientific training nor medical credential whatsoever. She is the equivalent of a Macdonalds burger-flipper with a comfy billet at Newsweak.

[Yet_Again]

I’m not sure that it’s safe to say “the majority” of medical research is wrong, but there is a strong push to publish or perish at most academic medical centers. This drives people to put together and publish studies which many times are small, underpowered, or dedicated to disproving a previous study just to get their names in print. Academia has made it so that publishing is even a requirement to graduate from a medical residency.

Add to this the fact that at least some percentage of physicians at these centers are dyed-in-the-wool liberals who do not hesitate to incorporate things like cost-per-life-year-saved into their studies when making recommendations and you have a receipe for a lot of bad science.

My personal policy is to reject any single study that goes against what I know to be true about human physiology and treat patients on an individual basis as I see to their personal well being without trying to play Obamacare cop.

But I’m old school like that.

[Psycho_Bunny]

"Interesting article"?

Hardly. Nothing published by Newsweek can be trusted. Perhaps the the author makes true statements...I don't know....guilt by association.

[JohnThune2012]

does this mean I just wasted $87,298.42 on Flintstone Vitamins since I was 6 years old?

[IrishCatholic]

Well, actually reading the article at the link, I can see how money does determine a lot of what research finds.

Thanks, it was an interesting article.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

On a related note:

Most scientific papers are probably wrong

[bluejay]

What a convenient article! We could save gazillions by having bureaucrats rationally and intelligently decide which tests and pills are useful and which are not. And you thought ObamaCare would not save money.

Sorry for the sarcasm.

[FreeReign]

Beware of Obama and his death panels trying to rewrite medical procedures.

Yesterday there was a story about breast cancer and its treatment with costly lymph node removal surgery. ABC News breathlessly reported that such surgery was no longer needed.

Now we see Newsweak pushing Dr. Ioannidis and his claim that "Most Published Research Findings Are False".

[WaterBoard]

Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis, Chief of Stanford University’s Prevention Research Center, claims THE MAJORITY OF MEDICAL RESEARCH IS WRONG FRAUDULENT

Most research is fraudulent and unscientific.

1) Big pharma and medical device manufacturers fund most of the research and surprise, surprise, guess what the outcomes of that research is? 2) FDA officials who approve these drugs and medical devices for market are often hired by the very companies they were paid to regulate.

a) "Industry-funded research often favors patent-holders, study finds." Specifically, the American Journal of Psychiatry study authors said, "In 90% of the studies, the reported overall outcome was in favor of the sponsor's drug... On the basis of these contrasting findings in head-to-head trials, it appears that whichever company sponsors the trial produces the better antipsychotic drug."

b) n a more recent study, Canadian doctor Joel Lexchin and colleagues did a comprehensive meta-analysis of what is currently known about the alleged tendency of drug company sponsorship to produce biased research results. They concluded that there is a systematic bias to the outcome of published research funded by the pharmaceutical industry. When research is funded by the pharmaceutical industry, it is significantly more likely to favour the industry's products than when the funding is industry-independent. The results apply across a wide range of disease states, drugs and drug classes, over at least two decades and regardless of the type of research being assessed.

[freedomfiter2]

Most medical research is payed for by the government. Would you really expect it to succeed?

[freeandfreezing]

In the long run much of what humans think they know in the sciences is proven to be wrong. That’s the nature of progress.

[PeterPrinciple]

The use of statistics is when this all started going worng.

[libertarian27]

This is a fun passage

Even when a claim is disproved, it hangs around like a deadbeat renter you can’t evict. Years after the claim that vitamin E prevents heart disease had been overturned, half the scientific papers mentioning it cast it as true, Ioannidis found in 2007.

Reminds me of Glowbal Warming

[catnipman]

It’s a Newsweak/DailyBeast article, automatically assumed to be untrue, though perhaps containing a truthful statement here or there, but the parts I checked out were definitely out and out lies.

This article should have been titled: “Everything About Medicine in This Article is Wrong”.

Statins are bad news all around, but I read the abstract of the Cochrane Collaboration article that was mentioned, and I quote its conclusion:

“Although reductions in all-cause mortality, composite endpoints and revascularisations were found with no excess of adverse events, there was evidence of selective reporting of outcomes, failure to report adverse events and inclusion of people with cardiovascular disease. Only limited evidence showed that primary prevention with statins may be cost effective and improve patient quality of life. Caution should be taken in prescribing statins for primary prevention among people at low cardiovascular risk.”

This is not even close to Begley’s claim that the report states that “there’s no good evidence that statins (drugs like Lipitor and Crestor) help people with no history of heart disease.”

Likewise, I read the IOM’s “Dietary Reference Intakes for Calcium and Vitamin D”. There’s not one mention in the report as Begley claims that the “Institute of Medicine concluded that having a blood test for vitamin D is pointless: almost everyone has enough D for bone health”

The report actually concludes:

“Scientific evidence indicates that calcium and vitamin
D play key roles in bone health. The current evidence, however, does not support other benefits for vitamin D or calcium intake. More targeted research should continue. Higher levels have not been shown to confer greater benefits, and in fact, they have been linked to other health problems, challenging the concept that “more is better.”

I suppose Newsweak/DailyBeast is simply spewing forth false medical propaganda to help the neo-Marxists start denying people health care under the guise that “Almost Everything You Hear About Medicine Is Wrong”, and therefore what the neo-Marxists will be saying must be right.

[TruthConquers]

Science has been contaminated with politics.

This was brought home to me a long time ago.

See, it was an article in ScienceNews about if cutting boards of wood were really that bad compared to plastic cutting boards. Because the researcher found that there had been NO STUDY DONE BEFORE the gov decided that restaurants should ONLY use plastic.

I mean really, no study had been done BEFORE THE WHOLE NATION WAS FORCED TO USE PLASTIC BOARDS.

Guess what he found? That wood was actually BETTER AND SAFER. Wood even had anitmicrobial properties. This was back in 2000.

I will NEVER forget that all kinds of recommendations can come out and there will be NO science behind it, more often than you will EVER be told.

[metmom]

ping

[editor-surveyor]

Its about time that this is being made known.

Medicine has sold out to the bottom line. Cures for every degenerative disease have been known for millenia, and are disregarded in favor of kills that make big pharma and big med rich.

Enough!

[Daffynition]

BTTT