Battling Bad Science. A pretty eye opening lecture by Ben Goldacre

A search through the forums reveals that a few of you already know about Ben Goldacre but before today when I stumbled across this video I had never heard of him.
I found the video immediately very engaging and I've got to say that it actually made me reconsider my attitudes to a few things, a pretty rare achievement for a 15 minute video.

The lecture concerns public and media and even medical processionals misconceptions and misreporting of scientific issues and more interestingly the statistical tricks that pharmaceutical companies use to make their products appear less dangerous and more effective then they really are.

The one bit of information that really sticks out for me is about Reboxetin a drug that apparently has 100% positive trial results but where 76% of the trial results have never been published and discarded, meaning that the data is actually meaningless.

Im not anti pharmaceuticals at all but I really thought this was a great and informative lecture and I hope you will also get something out of it



I'm sure many of you knew a lot of these things before of course but I share it for those who don't

Really nice lecture indeed. Most important, it comes from a practicing doctor, who is able to deliver it in humouristic way.
Everytime I try explain to someone how big-pharma works I ask simple question. What would happen to their profit, if they actually manage to get rid of some illness?

Most of people have this notion, that pharmaceutical companies have this humanitarian mission, to help mankind and make world better and safer place.
WRONG.
They want to make profit.

Curing=no profit

I think medicine and science as a whole would be alot more advanced if scientists were more concerned with collaborating and bettering humanity than who could get the most notoriety or cashing in the biggest.