Half of All the [Medical] Literature is False

a reply to: InFriNiTee

If half of the medical studies that WE can read online are FALSE, then we can determine that cures for MOST diseases must be hidden in plain sight.

I'm afraid that does not follow at all. Best not give yourself— and others — false hopes.

originally posted by: FamCore
I came across this article discussing Dr. Richard Horton, Editor in Chief of "The Lancet" (which is apparently the "World's Best Known Medical Journal"), and his statement about medical literature being, in many cases, fraudulent yet accepted as pure fact. This is a bold statement and one I'd like to open up a discussion about here on ATS.

Dr. Horton recently published a statement declaring that a lot of published research is in fact unreliable at best, if not completely false.

“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.”

No wonder we see Class-Action lawsuits against all of these medical devices/drugs shortly after their use by the public. Bearing this in mind, I will definitely think twice before trying any new medications/treatments.

This is quite disturbing, given the fact that all of these studies (which are industry sponsored) are used to develop drugs/vaccines to supposedly help people, train medical staff, educate medical students and more. It’s common for many to dismiss a lot of great work by experts and researchers at various institutions around the globe which isn’t “peer-reviewed” and doesn’t appear in a “credible” medical journal, but as we can see, “peer-reviewed” doesn’t really mean much anymore.

Another respected physician, and Editor in Chief of the New England Medical Journal commented on this issue:

Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and longtime Editor in Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ), which is considered to another one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, makes her view of the subject quite plain: “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”

www.collective-evolution.com... (I'm having trouble getting the link to work - I think it is because of the slash symbols - sorry!)

Also, from the Wikipedia page on Dr. Horton:

The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability — not the validity — of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong

For the Wikipedia article on Dr. Horton, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ "Richard_Horton_(editor)" (couldn't get the URL to work within the thread)

Just wow... what do you guys and gals think about all this? The fact that this is being publicly stated by reputable individuals is horrifying. The implications are... well, very frightening.

Interesting, as the Lancet is a very respected journal.

However, I want to point out as a former researcher (in multiple fields) that the medical community is especially prone to these problems, more so than the other sciences.

I can't tell you how many times I have seen in the news a study by some doctors published that says something to the effect "Doing X, Y, and Z reduces your heart attack risk by _____%." Etc. However, when you actually look at the study it is purely correlational often, and we cannot actually ascribe causation.

It is important to note here that there are a lot of doctors who now do research instead of practicing medicine. In medical school, they don't teach a SINGLE course in research methodology, scientific inquiry, etc. Therefore, many of these doctors are not qualified researchers basically. They are trained as medical practitioners, which is a completely different profession.

This problem alone in the medical field could account for a higher proportion of problematic studies.

Note that I am not speaking to all medical studies. I know people who have actual research PHDs in biology, chemistry, physiology, epidemiology, etc, and have extensive research training (statistics, research methods, science, etc). They too are published in the Lancet and other medical journals.

originally posted by: ManBehindTheMask
So why is it, that when people say the medical industry is wrong, because of special interests in money...

They are considered heroes......

But if you place the same argument, despite both are based off of science......and place it on man made global warming....

USING THE SAME ARGUMENT

You are considered a science denier?

you are comparing apples to oranges...you are NOT using the same argument...it's the independent lengthy peer-reviewed scientific study, that uncovers the crap put out by the in-house industrial corporate labs of "big Pharma"

a reply to: thebtheb

The medical industry does not adopt the research right away because of so much inappropriate research in the past. The thing is that now they actually know more because they actually test things as to how they interact with the cells. There is a lot of good info out there, but lots of it applies to certain groups of genetics and that has to be considered. When your ancestors ate nothing but fish, their bodies got really adjusted to eating a lot of fish and they do not make all the enzymes to properly metabolize other things. The more diversity in diet of your ancestors over generations, the more possible alterations the genes can express themselves in properly. We all need to eat foods that we can properly metabolize. If we eat too many things we shouldn't, then we need to see a doctor so he can give us medicine to correct the deficiency. They make a lot of money off of our denial that we have a limited diet.

They actually mentioned something like what I said in the first medical class. Economics of being a doctor is what the professor called it. The idea is to get people to come back over and over so doctors can get rich. They make their money off of us not eating the right foods. Now the foods that the government says are good for us, they are good for some people but not all.

If your body cannot make proper enzymes to completely metabolize things than you should use moderation in the consumption of those things. If you have problems absorbing certain nutrients, you need to research foods that can help to assist in the absorption. But remember, if you can't utilize that nutrient properly, it can cause problems. It should not taste good if you don't need it. Diversity and moderation can keep the doctor away and avoiding foods that your parents would never have eaten is essential if both were healthy and sane. Also remember, they constantly change the genetic traits of foods, the potatoes my great grandfather ate were way different chemically than the stuff we now consume. Three to four generations are needed to work a food into our diet properly by eating a little more each generation. Some foods are chemically similar to foods that do not even look related though. That is the confusing part.

originally posted by: MasterKaman
This is a real revelation / admission since both those Journals are regarded as top class supposed reliability. And the chief editors know what they are saying if anyone in the world does.

But that's not what they are saying really. The Lancet may include a submission on a given theory and the results borne out by the tests that took place. The submission itself may in itself be perfectly valid based on the criteria upon which it was based, and may perform a platform for peer review and further tests.

It's when someone then goes on - oh, I don't know, some internet conspiracy forum let's say - and suggests that the submission proves that cancer can be eliminated with ease but the P that B want to keep us all in the dark to control us......... isn't that the false bit? Of course you'd never find that on ATS, would you?

a reply to: ManBehindTheMask

Scientists and doctors , psychiatrists are put through as much brainwashing as a preacher in a seminary to make them see things in a certain way.

I for one find it amusing seeing some doctors lately with real bad attitudes, they absolutely cannot handle being asked questions by the public regarding suspicious datas spouted as truth.

They think the public are morons and should never question them.

originally posted by: InFriNiTee
I'm finding things that the majority of the medical establishment doesn't have a clue about.

I truly think that the pharma companies know A LOT MORE than they tell people. They don't want these diseases to be cured. After all, they are HIGHLY profitable. A bottle of insulin costs about $.30 to produce, since the equipment to produce it has been "paid off" many years ago. They sell it on the common market without insurance coverage for up to $240.00 a bottle these days! That's exponential profits. No wonder these companies make so much money!

That includes a lot of doctors, universities, scientists etc... I don't buy it because there would be a company that would cure it for profit if they could, a company that is not making insulin, it all balances out.

When two researchers found out that peptic ulcers were caused by a bacteria in the mid 1980s, and a simple one week treatment of antibiotics would cure it, there was a rather big back lash from the 8 billion dollar a year pharmaceutical industry. It took about 10 years for this to be widely known and FDA approved, though one of my best friends had his ulcers cured in 1989, a few years after the discovery. The conspiracy side would say that the pharmaceutical industry already knew, and that is where I separate myself from the evil pharmaceutical industry debate.

The reason is that the pharmaceutical industry can make money from any direction, and to consistently hide cures or deliberately make people sick for profit are only one direction, though evil. In the above example the pharmaceutical industry made out even better since they put their ineffective antacids on the market without a doctors prescription and people bought them.... In the end the pharmaceutical industry found another path for profit and the cure came out. I do not see this differently than if it happen with any other scenario.

originally posted by: InFriNiTee
The reason that people's cholesterol is so bad these days is because they don't get enough of the proper oils in the proper state (fresh).

And that they are fat....

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan

This past summer i had the honor of spending about 10k on a Sleeve Gastrectomy on my 17 year old son. After years of medical consult and dietary consult....and his health/weight not improving....

If I was going to say there was a conspiracy it would be with the food industry that markets carbs as good, but what is really the case with this is there more profit margins with carb foods than other types. The problem is when we look at cases like the Atkins diet that was developed in the 1950s to help high risk hearth disease patients to stabilize their insulin levels there was a number of beneficial side effects such as weight loss, energy increase, lower cholesterol too, plus it just made sense in how it works, which means all this information is out there and has been out there for a good long time. I used the Atkins diet in the 80s and today there might be 100s of similar type programs.

I have talked about me losing 200+ lbs a few years ago. I did that for him. But his results weren't the same as mine.

The problem was i trusted the experts for too long. The experts and their food pyramid, and their suggestion to remove calories by waging war on fat. And i get it: its simple calorie math.

I think the original food groups was started in the late 1800s and didn't change much over the years, but it is said that less than 4% actually follow the pyramid anyways. I personally would just have veggie, lean meats and fats as the most of your intake with carbs sparingly and sugars never when able.

This below is what I would say is typical of America though and it is driven by marketing more than anything else, but this is why America is fat.

It all goes back to Edward Bernays who came up with the idea of corporations being able to manipulate public opinion by having grandiose and important / official sounding organisations report on "research" that was actually funded by the tobacco etc industries who wanted a certain outcome.

A good example of this recently that you might have seen was the "scientific report" that electronic cigarettes, or rather the eliquids used in them "could damage lung tissue".

There was a lot of waffle using practically meaningless verbiage, but the "findings" were that certain flavours are very harmful.

What didn't become apparent unless you actually read the report carefully was that what these people did was to use "cultured lung cells" (so not testing the effect on a functioning human lung), and they actually pickled the cells in the eliquid for 24 hours to come to these findings.

Apart from the fact that no ecig user would use their device continuously for 24 hours, the liquid is vapourised which changes it's chemical composition, and clearly has nothing like the effect on lung cells that actually soaking them in the liquid itself for 24 hours does.

So in other words it's scaremongering hogwash - but who is behind it, who benefits?

Is it tobacco companies (many of whom have bought ecig companies), or government who want to tax them, or academia itself who want the funding to do more "research" - or someone else???

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: anonentity
How the heck, is it considered ethical, to proscribe a medicine, with known long term side effects, The statins will cause Glaucoma in 50% of patients in two years.

So what you are saying is 50% of the people after two years have glaucoma, is that 75% after 4 and 88% after 6? What is your data on this?

This is the tip of the iceberg . The whole time making massive profits , and more work for the medical professions, its a self fulfilling nightmare, and smells of a con job.

Tips of what? We all know that EVERY drug has side effects that are different with everyone. No secret here at all, some people can take aspirin... others can die from it....

So should you take Statins or not...a short period on them will determine this...

No secret agenda here, may be more along the lines of ignorance in people who have to think to breath, but a person should determine what they need or not need, it is your body BTW. I know people who have been taking Lipitor for 20 plus years and it has greatly extended their life,

Statins Side Effects

Theirs clear evidence that statins are not risk free, depending on the literature you read, they are the best thing since sliced bread to being linked to a whole range of disorders. Since the multi billion, has unlimited funds to spin its case, just like dairy. Suspicion would be well justified. Here is one report with good credentials.greenmedinfo.com... Their are many if you look for them.

originally posted by: ManBehindTheMask
So why is it, that when people say the medical industry is wrong, because of special interests in money...

They are considered heroes......

But if you place the same argument, despite both are based off of science......and place it on man made global warming....

USING THE SAME ARGUMENT

You are considered a science denier?

It is not the same argument. From the article "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..." Climate change is not small samplings or tiny effects. The average person can see and measure the effects. People in California just have to walk outside. If it is not climate change there or say the arctic, people need to file police reports for missing lawns and ice shelves.

originally posted by: Power_Semi
It all goes back to Edward Bernays who came up with the idea of corporations being able to manipulate public opinion by having grandiose and important / official sounding organisations report on "research" that was actually funded by the tobacco etc industries who wanted a certain outcome.

A good example of this recently that you might have seen was the "scientific report" that electronic cigarettes, or rather the eliquids used in them "could damage lung tissue".

There was a lot of waffle using practically meaningless verbiage, but the "findings" were that certain flavours are very harmful.

What didn't become apparent unless you actually read the report carefully was that what these people did was to use "cultured lung cells" (so not testing the effect on a functioning human lung), and they actually pickled the cells in the eliquid for 24 hours to come to these findings.

Apart from the fact that no ecig user would use their device continuously for 24 hours, the liquid is vapourised which changes it's chemical composition, and clearly has nothing like the effect on lung cells that actually soaking them in the liquid itself for 24 hours does.

So in other words it's scaremongering hogwash - but who is behind it, who benefits?

Is it tobacco companies (many of whom have bought ecig companies), or government who want to tax them, or academia itself who want the funding to do more "research" - or someone else???

It is the government that wants to tax them more. I pay normal NY 8% sales tax on my e cig hardware and supplies. The government wants to tax them like cigarettes and want to force vape shops to register each and every flavor they sell to be tested and pay $1,000 or more for that registration and testing. Tobacco companies bought convenience store/drug store brands that are for A)new users who move on to real devices B) People that quit 6 weeks after. S o, there is not a ton of money in say buying the Brand 'Blu', people eventually stop biuying it one way or the other.

a reply to: reldra

Now you have the position where all those that are "in" by that I mean the non smokers, pushing the line that smoking is the cause of all are ills, and the dirty smoker must be penalised until he too conforms . The truth of the matter is that, this will take the heat off all the other things that are being consumed, which are just as bad as smoking if not worse.

I cant find any independent literature that gives the mortality rates of smokers, with regards to non smokers . As this would give a definitive answer. The only thing I have found is that the oldest living people, have all been smokers . Which flies in the face of the spin, with regards to the social manipulation.

originally posted by: Astyanax
For those who appreciate a bit of clarity, the issues being described by these eminent editors are not exactly the ones that agitate the minds of those who believe in alternative medicine or distrust mainstream remedies and practitioners.

There is a great gulf between medical research, which is what they're talking about, and medical practice which is what most lay folk are concerned with.

Obviously the two are connected; but the connexion between them is a long chain indeed. In practice, treatments are seen to work, or not to work, and this must surely affect their uptake by medical practitioners. It is true that doctors get a lot of pressure from drug companies, etc, to push new treatments, but really, that's a different problem and needs to be dealt with some other way. The solution to this problem is for medical journals to be more stringent in their acceptance criteria for submitted papers.

But I think practice is affected quite a bit. There is a lot of research to show that statin drugs are dangerous and not needed, and that cholesterol plays far less of a role in heart disease than previously thought. Whether you agree with this or not, my basic point is that no one in the medical community researches this or is concerned about it whatsoever. The protocol has been established, and it can take years, decades to break something that might not have ever been true.

a reply to: FamCore

we all suspected this in medicine - and the last 10 years has borne it out.

I would like to put the blame on society as a whole - not just physicians- as we physicians are part of a society that puts a "get rich quick" mentality over all else. ALL else. The hoodlum business degree'd jerks running our hospital systems care only for money. As a result, physicians struggling to get research funding will do anything to push their research to the forefront. It just has gotten too widespread for anyone's good.

Good topic. It's part of the larger disintegration of America's infrastructure. After all , when the 1% own 40-50% of the entire world's wealth, the 99% start fighting for scraps like rats. And falsifying research is what rats do!

peace.

(ps- I'm a physician at a once proud 'academic' institution that is in financial dire straits - like so many others - thanks to the corporate aristocracy)

If the medical field knew everything, we'd all be immortal. They are always learning new things. 75 years ago, my Dad's bladder cancer and heart condition would have been a death sentence. Now he has a stent in his heart and his bladder was removed, but he hasn't let it slow him down. He was just out working on his lawn today. It's only when the medical community stops looking for a solution/cure that you should be suspicious.

Saying 50% of the medical literature is wrong is a no-brainer. Probably more than 50% of the medical conditions aren't being cured. If they aren't curing someone, they're obviously doing something wrong.

But not all doctors are researchers and some definitely just parrot back what they were wrongly taught in Medical school.

originally posted by: reldra

originally posted by: Power_Semi
It all goes back to Edward Bernays who came up with the idea of corporations being able to manipulate public opinion by having grandiose and important / official sounding organisations report on "research" that was actually funded by the tobacco etc industries who wanted a certain outcome.

A good example of this recently that you might have seen was the "scientific report" that electronic cigarettes, or rather the eliquids used in them "could damage lung tissue".

There was a lot of waffle using practically meaningless verbiage, but the "findings" were that certain flavours are very harmful.

What didn't become apparent unless you actually read the report carefully was that what these people did was to use "cultured lung cells" (so not testing the effect on a functioning human lung), and they actually pickled the cells in the eliquid for 24 hours to come to these findings.

Apart from the fact that no ecig user would use their device continuously for 24 hours, the liquid is vapourised which changes it's chemical composition, and clearly has nothing like the effect on lung cells that actually soaking them in the liquid itself for 24 hours does.

So in other words it's scaremongering hogwash - but who is behind it, who benefits?

Is it tobacco companies (many of whom have bought ecig companies), or government who want to tax them, or academia itself who want the funding to do more "research" - or someone else???

It is the government that wants to tax them more. I pay normal NY 8% sales tax on my e cig hardware and supplies. The government wants to tax them like cigarettes and want to force vape shops to register each and every flavor they sell to be tested and pay $1,000 or more for that registration and testing. Tobacco companies bought convenience store/drug store brands that are for A)new users who move on to real devices B) People that quit 6 weeks after. S o, there is not a ton of money in say buying the Brand 'Blu', people eventually stop biuying it one way or the other.

I agree that the government wants to tax it but there are lots of people in the loop that may also benefit.

The point I made about academic organisations and funding was a nod to the OP and the initial point that half of all medical literature is wrong if not an outright lie.

Really scientists shouldn't be able to be coerced into making false claims and releasing flawed data, but the way it works is that if they jump on board and find what they are told to find then they get funding and it's worth Millions per institution.

Just look at AGW as an example - if you are a scientist and you dare to disagree or say that you think the numbers might not be accurate or that more research needs to be done, then you are derided as a quack by the establishment (ie all of the others who have their fingers in the pie), your funding is cut off and your career is finished.

It's the same everywhere, I know a professor of economics who has faced exactly the same because of the branch of economics she is specialising in.

I'm in the UK and our government loves to tax us to the brink of death so I'm sure that with ecigs tax is one element, but the other might be to create legislation and require the kinds of testing that you're mentioning so that only huge corporations can afford to do it, which gets rid of all of their competition and allows them to take over the entire market - so they control tobacco and ecigs.

I also vape and I do not recognise any of the problems that these reports come up with, especially the ones that vaping doesn't help smokers to quit - that is ludicrous.

But it isn't the people like us who KNOW that they are interested in, it's the other 99% of the population who are uneducated and don't use the product that they want onside so that there will be no objection to taxation, etc.

The problem with the medical industry is that it doesn't adapt to the times. An old friend of mine who perfected a method of automating string-cheese pulling explained it to me with the following metaphor.

There was a guy who really wanted to be a professional singer. He would go around to bars and clubs playing his guitar and his knee-chimes. And he would sing also. But that was the problem, he was bad at singing. People thought his voice was bad, it was scratchy and kind of wet sounding. He groaned a lot and it made people uncomfortable, but he thought it added depth and emotion to his music. One time someone called him a hobo while he was performing. He didn't hear that person, but the person said it and potentially there was some sort of effect on the guy even thought he didn't hear it.

So after many years of hard work performing in clubs and bars the man tried to figure out why he wasn't more popular. He realized that his wet scratchy voice was disgusting and people hated to hear it. He realized he was low on cat food and made a quick trip to the store later that evening.

Several years later he gave up on his dream, and he started making over-sized baby stuff like cribs and bouncers for adult-babies (people who have a fetish about role-playing as babies) and actually made a decent living, he sold mostly on craigslist but those adult baby people pay pretty good money for stuff that is in effect pretty basic furniture, but obviously most furniture companies are going to avoid producing that type of thing because it creeps people out.

originally posted by: FamCore
I came across this article discussing Dr. Richard Horton, Editor in Chief of "The Lancet" (which is apparently the "World's Best Known Medical Journal"), and his statement about medical literature being, in many cases, fraudulent yet accepted as pure fact. This is a bold statement and one I'd like to open up a discussion about here on ATS.

Dr. Horton recently published a statement declaring that a lot of published research is in fact unreliable at best, if not completely false.

“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.”

No wonder we see Class-Action lawsuits against all of these medical devices/drugs shortly after their use by the public. Bearing this in mind, I will definitely think twice before trying any new medications/treatments.

This is quite disturbing, given the fact that all of these studies (which are industry sponsored) are used to develop drugs/vaccines to supposedly help people, train medical staff, educate medical students and more. It’s common for many to dismiss a lot of great work by experts and researchers at various institutions around the globe which isn’t “peer-reviewed” and doesn’t appear in a “credible” medical journal, but as we can see, “peer-reviewed” doesn’t really mean much anymore.

Another respected physician, and Editor in Chief of the New England Medical Journal commented on this issue:

Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and longtime Editor in Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ), which is considered to another one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, makes her view of the subject quite plain: “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”

www.collective-evolution.com... (I'm having trouble getting the link to work - I think it is because of the slash symbols - sorry!)

Also, from the Wikipedia page on Dr. Horton:

The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability — not the validity — of a new finding. Editors and scientists alike insist on the pivotal importance of peer review. We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong

For the Wikipedia article on Dr. Horton, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ "Richard_Horton_(editor)" (couldn't get the URL to work within the thread)

Just wow... what do you guys and gals think about all this? The fact that this is being publicly stated by reputable individuals is horrifying. The implications are... well, very frightening.

Definitely TRUE, IMO, !!!

Nearly unable to walk.....STILL...sftet a year and a half...and state insurance will NOT give me a diagnosis!!!!!! Still can't work...therefore unable to get on unemployment....

In my world.....TSHTF alresdy....!!!!!