Speaking of scientific studies, The plantation media is starting to question themselves and their relationship to the real quacks.New York Times?!
"He’s what’s known as a meta-researcher, and he’s become one of the world’s foremost experts on the credibility of medical research. He and his team have shown, again and again, and in many different ways, that much of what biomedical researchers conclude in published studies — conclusions that doctors keep in mind when they prescribe antibiotics or blood-pressure medication, or when they advise us to consume more fiber or less meat, or when they recommend surgery for heart disease or back pain — is misleading, exaggerated and often flat-out wrong. He charges that as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed. His work has been widely accepted by the medical community; it has been published in the field’s top journals, where it is heavily cited; and he is a big draw at conferences."
90% flawed!!!!!!!!! DV Atlantic Monthly!?
Rats jumping of the ships?.....
"Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors—to a striking extent—still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challenging his peers by exposing their bad science."
"Of course, medical-science “never minds” are hardly secret. And they sometimes make headlines, as when in recent years large studies or growing consensuses of researchers concluded that mammograms, colonoscopies, and PSA tests are far less useful cancer-detection tools than we had been told; or when widely prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil were revealed to be no more effective than a placebo for most cases of depression; or when we learned that staying out of the sun entirely can actually increase cancer risks; or when we were told that the advice to drink lots of water during intense exercise was potentially fatal; or when, last April, we were informed that taking fish oil, exercising, and doing puzzles doesn’t really help fend off Alzheimer’s disease, as long claimed. Peer-reviewed studies have come to opposite conclusions on whether using cell phones can cause brain cancer, whether sleeping more than eight hours a night is healthful or dangerous, whether taking aspirin every day is more likely to save your life or cut it short, and whether routine angioplasty works better than pills to unclog heart arteries."
1 comment:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130730104
How To Win Doctors And Influence Prescriptions
"To get a doctor to write more prescriptions, Webb of PhRMA asks the doctor to become a speaker for their products.
Earlier this week the investigative news organization ProPublica published a searchable database of doctors who have taken money from seven drug companies in the past two years. The database features over 17,000 doctors, many of whom are paid substantial sums of money to act as speakers for drug companies. But because only these seven drug companies have publicly reported the payments they give to physicians, those doctors represent only a small fraction of the doctors who actually speak for pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. Most estimates place the number of physician speakers somewhere in excess of 100,000."
Post a Comment