By: Robert Oliva
There is a cancer eating at the core of medical research.
You’ve most likely heard of medical reports touting the effectiveness of a diet plan, a new drug, a supplement, or medical procedure. You may have even decided on a course of action based on these findings, only to find out later that they have been refuted by new studies.
Strikingly, the odds are that the studies that influenced your decision, and possibly the decision of your doctor, were wrong.
We are bombarded by medical research studies that don’t stand the test of time and potentially cause serious negative health outcomes.
Perhaps, because of this, you’ve become jaded about the newest health findings. I don’t wish to dissuade you from how you feel. In fact, this article will show you how untrustworthy medical research is and what you must do to protect yourself and loved ones.
The Case Against Medical Research
Medical research is fraught with incompetence, careerism, and fraud. In the April 15, 2015 edition of Lancet, the UKs leading medical journal, editor-in-chief Richard Horton stated: “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.”
He ominously went on to say “… science has taken a turn toward darkness.”
As early as 1996, voices were being raised against the scandal of medical research. Douglas G. Altman, head of Medical Statistics Laboratory in the UK, asked the following question in the British Medical Journal (BMJ):
“What… should we think about researchers who use the wrong techniques (either willfully or in ignorance), use the right techniques wrongly, misinterpret their results, report their results selectively, cite the literature selectively, and draw unjustified conclusions?”
His answer:
“We should be appalled. Yet numerous studies of the medical literature… have shown that all of the above phenomena are common. This is surely a scandal.”
In 2005 Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis, currently a professor in disease prevention at Stanford University, published the most widely accessed article in the history of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) entitled Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. In the report, he stated:
“Ther
e is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false.”
And that “…in modern research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims.”
Ioannidis’ research model indicated that up to 80 percent of non-randomized research studies (the most common kind of study) are wrong, along with twenty-five percent of randomized trials (the supposed gold standard of research). Incredulously, these studies are published in top peer reviewed medical journals.
These numbers indicate that much of what our physicians prescribe to us is wrong. Our doctors use research to inform their medical decisions – decisions like what drug to prescribe, what surgery to elect, and what health strategy to adopt. They are making crucial treatment decisions for depression, Alzheimer’s, type 2 Diabetes, cancer, obesity, etc. based on bad, incomplete or hidden medical research. Remember Vioxx, Hormone Replacement Therapy, anti-arrhythmia drugs, high carbohydrate diets? The lives of hundreds of thousands of people were damaged or ended prematurely.
What’s Wrong with Medical Research?
There are serious deficiencies in medical research that have an onerous impact on our well-being.
Research Bias – Ioannidis defines bias as “the combination of various design, data, analysis, and presentation factors that tend to produce research findings when they should not be produced.” Many researchers enter their study with a specific finding in mind and, not surprisingly, they find it.
Journalist David H. Freedman in Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science quotes Ioannidis:
“At every step in the process, there is room to distort results, a way to make a stronger claim or to select what is going to be concluded,” and there is an “intellectual conflict of interest that pressures researchers to find whatever it is that is most likely to get them funded.”
Bias can happen in numerous ways, such as how the research is designed, how the samples are selected, and how subjects are pressured, or though errors in data collection and measurement or publication bias. All of this leads to erroneous results and potentially disastrous medical advice.
Publication Bias – various industries, governments, and regulatory agencies may severely distort the truth by omission. Nearly half of all research studies never see the light of day. According to Live Science:
“Oftentimes, medical journals or pharmaceutical companies that sponsor research will report only “positive” results, leaving out the non-findings or negative findings where a new drug or procedure may have proved more harmful than helpful.” In other words, the truth is hidden.
An example of this occurred with nearly 100,000 people dying from taking “safe” prescription anti-arrhythmic drugs in the 1980s. Or more recently, when none of the negative studies of the anti-depressant reboxitene were published.
This leaves us and our doctors in the dark about the efficacy and safety of drugs and medical procedures. We are systematically being misled!
See Dr. Ben Goldacre’s Ted Talk to learn more.
Conflicts of Interest – many studies, especially drug studies, “…have the added corruptive force of financial conflict of interest.” The more embedded the financial and other interests in the outcome of a study, the more likely the findings are going to be false. Ioannidis’ own research found that conflicts of interest “are common in biomedical research and typically they are inadequately and sparsely reported.”
Conflicts of interest are not limited to financial matters:
“Many otherwise seemingly independent, university-based studies may be conducted for no other reason than to give physicians and researchers qualifications for promotion or tenure.”
Research findings can be distorted by: small sample size, poor choice of methodology, and erroneous statistical analysis, all of which are widespread in medical research.
What Can We Do to Protect Ourselves?
Given the distorted, corrupt and unreliable state of much of medical research how can we know what to do?
Short of ignoring research altogether, there are ways we can protect ourselves.
In his book Wrong, David Freedman lists some practical measures we can take to evaluate the reliability of medical research.
You can tell that a research study is probably wrong if:
- It’s simplistic, universal and definitive. It touts a cure for cancer, obesity, and aging.
- It’s supported by a single study, small studies or animal studies. One small study of mice proving a cure for dementia.
- It claims to be groundbreaking. The truth about heart disease has finally been discovered.
- It is being pushed by people or organizations that will benefit financially.
- It’s geared toward preventing a recent trauma or occurrence from happening in the future. A quick fix to solve serious and complex problems.
- I would add that association does not prove causation. Unless a study is a randomized control trial (RCT) it can not prove that one thing causes another, such as red meat causing heart disease.
Read Doctoring Data by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick for an in-depth study of flawed medical research.
Conclusion
There are efforts being made within science to rectify the problem with medical research. But much remains unreliable and downright wrong. We cannot afford to be fooled by flawed studies. Arm yourself with knowledge. Review the scientific reliability of a course of action. Discuss it with your physician. This can help in wading through the biased and damaging studies given the light of day in scientific journals and media. Take responsibility. Your life may depend on it.
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This should be an article/commentary … NOT a comment! Much appreciated BlackH3art !!!
I have been researching vaccines and disease for 10 years. Very soon into my research, I came to the realization that the majority of scientific studies are pure BS. But don’t take my word for it, you can ask the former editor of the most highly respected New England Journal of Medicine:
“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.” (Dr. Marcia Angell, NY Review of Books, January 15, 2009, “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption)
Is there a more well know repository for peer reviewed studies? What about The Lancet? Surely the most prestigious journal in the UK could not possibly agree with those crazy Americans, right? In 2015, Dr. Richard Hanson, editor-in-chief of The Lancet was even more vehement in his condemnation of scientific literature:
“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…”
“The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of ‘significance’ pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale…Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent…” (Dr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief, The Lancet, in The Lancet, 11 April, 2015, Vol 385, “Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma?”)
It’s funny because I use to argue with the most well know gatekeepers of the vaccine paradigm who would always cite this study or that study showing vaccine safety and efficacy or they would point out the lack of scientific studies that show any kind of harm being done from vaccines. I quickly learned to pick apart their garbage studies, and learned about “war-rooming” the science.
This is a strategy used by vaccine manufactures, to silence any doctor, scientist, researcher, investigative journalist, politician, whistleblower, or study that is a detrimental to the vaccine narrative. Pharma bought gatekeepers complain to the publishing journals about negative vaccine studies citing trivial reasons why it should be pulled. After so many complaints, the studies are retracted. Pharma bought health agencies quickly put out garbage studies that refute the retracted studies and astro-turf bloggers pretending to be independent, begin character attacks on the persons speaking out or producing the study. Money is used to bribe health officials, AMA, and politicians to start phony investigations, and often the person has their funding pulled, their career destroyed, or they mysteriously die. What effectively is happening is that the studies promoting vaccine safety which are falsified or done improperly remain in the literature and the true science is silenced.
So if the scientific literature is garbage, how do we actually find the truth? What I have found is that the only way to learn the truth about vaccines is by studying the history. And the history shows terrible hypotheses, poorly designed experiments, manipulated statistics, and an industry built upon Dogma, pseudoscience, and greed. An industry that knew how to use its vast wealth to influence governments and scare people into accepting a product that they knew wasn’t safe and did not work. They developed the most perfect business model in the history of business. They had a product that was cheap to make, did not require properly designed long term safety or efficacy studies, was mandated by governments, and which they cannot not be held liable for. And as a bonus, it created even more opportunity to sell their other products to their now sicker customers . Of course, not factored into this business model is the horrendous damage that they continue to cause.
I have been fighting research fraud since the early 90s .I have a letter of regret from the former US Surgeon General ,Dr.Jocelyn Elders posted on my website http://www.cancerfraud badbiotech.com along with others. Even though I had peer support from M.D.Anderson Cancer Center, the University of Waterloo committed NIH scholarship fraud in association with Yale. They blocked what may be the basis for modern cancer research to commit fraud for personal private gain . And due to Canadian businessmen ( associated with former PM Brian Mulroney ) who are alleged to contributed to the Clinton re election campaign, may be the evidence to indict former Pres.Bill Clinton for obstruction of justice for interfering in a DOJ criminal investigation of the matter .The Governor General of Canada, Dr.David Johnston thru his former Presidency of the University of Waterloo may be guilty of human rights abuse under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms .The problem exists because of the center of Excellence scheme that privatizes taxpayer funded research , which I opposed . Science can no longer be honest because the governors of universities believe they are above the law and use crony connections .I am asking the public for help to expose this and bring criminals to justice to benefit the public health and safety .Thank you .E.A.Greenhalgh
Using various species of animals as models for humans is fraught with error and scientific instability. Humans are not large rats. We are not quadrupeds. We are different biologically, psychologically and histologically, with a different rate and route of metabolism. Results gleaned from animals cannot be extrapolated to humans, other species of animals or even among individual animals of the same species. Safety and efficacy of drugs and procedures intended for humans cannot be proven through animals, as is proven time and time again with the myriad cases of human damage and deaths. There is a constant flow of new drugs into the market, many of which are later withdrawn due to deleterious (side) effects. Humans are always the real guinea pigs. Most gullible people trust that the medical research community would never risk prescribing an unproven, toxic remedy that would undermine their health or prove fatal. It’s time we progress in the healing arts and become conscious of what prevents disease and promotes radiant health. We are in drastic need of a paradigm shift — away from the bio-medical/chemical/pharmaceutical industrial complex.
For the last 150 years, vivisection (animal experiments, often involving horrendous torture) have been the dodgy excuse for marketing these new drugs and procedures. The people in charge knew it was phony, and the public was only too happy to accept it, as long as they thought it would help them. Well, it keeps coming around to bite us on our arrogant, selfish butts. I guess that falls under the heading of KARMA.