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Nearly 400 medical devices, procedures and practices found ineffective in study

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Re: Nearly 400 medical devices, procedures and practices found ineffective in study

#101
post #74
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, current medical research is not really science, more of a sort of office politics with added prestige and financial incentive. Actually you can read all the papers you want, you have no guarantee that what's on paper is what happened. Academic and industrial misconduct and epidemiological ignorance are so prevalent in the field that it's more akin to a religious cult. No, unfortunately I'm not being pessimistic…

> you have no guarantee that what's on paper is what happened.... Can't speak for others, but we were deathly afraid of submitting anything dependent on papers that we had not verified ourselves to 100% satisfaction. This actually held us up a lot, but it was safer than taking a chance that you would get it by those people at the FDA. Now of course, we were making software, and when you deal with computer science res…

During my MSc, I was implementing, validating, and comparing multiple numerical methods for a certain field of Aeroacoustics. Most (peer-reviewed!) papers had errors, some glaring, some subtle. The cynic in me thought those were done on purpose so that results were harder to reproduce.

There was one specific signal change (a + to a - in an equation) that took me almost a month of hitting my head against a wall to figure out...

Re: Nearly 400 medical devices, procedures and practices found ineffective in study

#102
post #74
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, current medical research is not really science, more of a sort of office politics with added prestige and financial incentive. Actually you can read all the papers you want, you have no guarantee that what's on paper is what happened. Academic and industrial misconduct and epidemiological ignorance are so prevalent in the field that it's more akin to a religious cult. No, unfortunately I'm not being pessimistic…

> you have no guarantee that what's on paper is what happened.... Can't speak for others, but we were deathly afraid of submitting anything dependent on papers that we had not verified ourselves to 100% satisfaction. This actually held us up a lot, but it was safer than taking a chance that you would get it by those people at the FDA. Now of course, we were making software, and when you deal with computer science res…

Yeah, people need to learn that just because it's published doesn't mean it correct. The problem worsens when people just link papers they don't understand when arguing online.

Re: Nearly 400 medical devices, procedures and practices found ineffective in study

#103
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-vax comes from anti-intellectualism, just like your opinion does. Two sides of the same coin. It has nothing to do with "trust in agencies" and everything to do with intellectualism. We live in a society where academics, data, evidence, etc are all maligned. How can you trust in an agency if you aren't willing to trust anyone at all? The cancer is not trust in agencies, it's your culture of anti-intellectualism…

Anti-vax stuff aside, the attitude of >Trust experts or die. is not a scientific attitude, it is borderline scientism and an appeal to authority. Remember when the tobacco industry paid medical experts such as ENT Doctors to endorse smoking? [0] The idea that "the rubes" don't have to or shouldn't be allowed to see the data behind FDA decisions and should just trust the experts blindly is completely condescending and…

>is not a scientific attitude

True, but asking non-scientists to have a scientists attitude is ridiculous.

This "everyone is a scientist" idea creates the "everyone is a skeptic" situation, except, when a rube is a skeptic, they're not intellectually skeptical, they're using "skeptic" to mean "bias confirmation".

If you're not a scientist (PhD and publishing) then you don't need a "scientific" attitude.

For the other 99%, you don't need a scientific attitude.

If you are diagnosed with cancer and that diagnosis is confirmed by a second doctor, do you need to demand access to your labs so you can review them personally "with a medical attitude"?

No. Frankly, the only way to have a "scientific attitude" is to spend 4-8 years praciticing in academia. If you don't do that, you can't have the attitude.

You can only pretend. Play makebelieve. Be a pretend scientist. And, almost assuredly, ignore real scientists in the process. After all, due to Illusory Superiority (Dunning-Kruger) you will think yourself just as qualified as the experts. So you will overrule them.

Trust experts or die AKA interdependence in a civilization.

Re: Nearly 400 medical devices, procedures and practices found ineffective in study

#104
post #35
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-vax comes from anti-intellectualism, just like your opinion does. Two sides of the same coin. It has nothing to do with "trust in agencies" and everything to do with intellectualism. We live in a society where academics, data, evidence, etc are all maligned. How can you trust in an agency if you aren't willing to trust anyone at all? The cancer is not trust in agencies, it's your culture of anti-intellectualism…

Good way to convince people... Call them stupid ;)

Why does the truth have to be packaged for believably?

I'm not asking you to change your mind, I'm stating reality.

Re: Nearly 400 medical devices, procedures and practices found ineffective in study

#105
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsense. The anti vaxxers place far more trust on someone who is known to have falsified data, and committed egregious malpractice. The anti vaxxers lack of trust in the media has almost nothing to do with what the media may or may not have done to lose trust. The actual difference is that one side does not have a good explanation for what causes autism, and as a result admits that they don’t have the answer…

You dont need that falsified data to come to the conclusion vaccinations in the US are a problem. Remove it from the picture. Compare the US vaccination schedule to any other develop country. Compare our infant mortality rate. Aside from the differences in the vaccination schedules what is the US doing different from other developed nations. Keeping in mind infants do little but eat food, sleep and see a doctor. So i…

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Re: Nearly 400 medical devices, procedures and practices found ineffective in study

#106
post #76

Everyone yelling about how the FDA is corrupt or should only screen for safety are completely ignorant of history and basic facts. Medicine is not like trying out a new coding framework - in some cases, like cancer: i) There is no ability to "try it out for your self" - you are either all in or not ii) There are extreme risks to taking the drug (most cancer drugs are actually somewhat to extreme toxic...just less tox…

Thank you for this. So often we rip on government agencies from our perch on...Hacker News, when we really have no idea what's going on. We do work with the Government in a different context, and I've found nothing but professionalism and deep expertise. In fact the people I've met in the agencies we're working with are some of the smartest I've encountered in my entire career.

You clearly have never dealt with people from local jurisdictions, such as from the local city government or county governments, and even up to the state.

I hate to say it, but every one of these folks I have encountered falls into two categories: 1. Recent college graduates who don't know much if anything, 2. People who have worked a government job for a long time but have little intellectual capacity to understand complex subjects.

Re: Nearly 400 medical devices, procedures and practices found ineffective in study

#107

I found this one from the table of reversals to be interesting: Article: Efficacy of infant simulator programmes to prevent teenage pregnancy: a school-based cluster randomised controlled trial in Western Australia Summary: The infant simulator is an example of persuasion technology or captology, where the use is intended to prevent teenage pregnancy.26 Their use is widespread in developed countries27 and is expandin…

That would only explain part of the effect. It wouldn't explain why the number of abortions went up by 50%.

Re: Nearly 400 medical devices, procedures and practices found ineffective in study

#108
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this. So often we rip on government agencies from our perch on...Hacker News, when we really have no idea what's going on. We do work with the Government in a different context, and I've found nothing but professionalism and deep expertise. In fact the people I've met in the agencies we're working with are some of the smartest I've encountered in my entire career.

You clearly have never dealt with people from local jurisdictions, such as from the local city government or county governments, and even up to the state. I hate to say it, but every one of these folks I have encountered falls into two categories: 1. Recent college graduates who don't know much if anything, 2. People who have worked a government job for a long time but have little intellectual capacity to understand…

I deal with people in local, city, county, and state governments all the time.

Haven't met many recent college graduates, as they don't usually have the experience to land a government job. Have met a few old-timers. But otherwise almost all of them were efficient, helpful, and good at their jobs. In the specialized departments, they definitely had the intellectual capacity to understand complex subjects and could have earned significantly more money in private practice if they wanted to waste their lives in a rat race.

Re: Nearly 400 medical devices, procedures and practices found ineffective in study

#109
post #51
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to cancer drugs, while generally no one can be prescribed medication that has not passed clinical trials, in the case of terminal patients who could potentially be saved by a drug currently in trials, there is a system for allowing them access to the medication. It's called "Expanded Access" (also known as "Compassionate Use") https://www.fda.gov/news-events/public-health-focus/expanded... The other reas…

> If you spent a billion dollars and a decade on a project, you will consider the data you collected to be a trade secret and would protect it with everything you can, because you have to now take this drug to market and make up the billion you spent making this drug. You would also be heavily incentivized to make sure the numbers show that your drug is effective, with very limited side effects..

You can try to fudge your data but the FDA is the most rigorous science based regulator in America and possibly the world.

And, the FDA monitoring of drugs requires more than Phase 1-3 clinical trials (which cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce some of the most rigorous science in human history), but they also do post-release data analysis (so called Phase 4), and have even recently pulled drugs which are not meeting the Phase 2 and 3 standards for safety and efficacy over existing treatments (not efficacy over placebo, the results must show efficacy also over existing drugs).

Not to mention, the FDA fines of pharma corporations are some of the largest fines in American history.

So with the FDA you have

* A regulator using science forcing big business to spend 10 years creating scientific evidence that their product is safe and effective. No other industry on the planet has these requirements.

* A regulator using market data to actively govern products and pull products which aren't safe and effect (pretty normal)

* A regulator assessing multi-billion dollar fines pretty regularly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_pharmaceutical...

You might find this surprising but pharmaceuticals is a money losing industry in the long term. Most of these companies are looking pretty bad, they're spinning off any division which could potentially be profitable (biologics, medical devices maybe) but your average business of finding new drugs? It's not profitable, the regulation is so intense and the work is so hard and competition which ignores intellectual property is so damaging that it's very likely most major pharma companies will go bankrupt in the coming decades.

When you compare how much science the FDA makes drug companies do to any other industry, food, finance, supplements, makeup, cars, houses, anything at all... nothing else compares. A forensic audit is nothing compared to a Phase 3 clinical trial. Far less goes into proving a car is safe than a drug. Etc.

The FDA is doing incredible scientific work with an extremely thin budget.

Re: Nearly 400 medical devices, procedures and practices found ineffective in study

#110

Everyone yelling about how the FDA is corrupt or should only screen for safety are completely ignorant of history and basic facts. Medicine is not like trying out a new coding framework - in some cases, like cancer: i) There is no ability to "try it out for your self" - you are either all in or not ii) There are extreme risks to taking the drug (most cancer drugs are actually somewhat to extreme toxic...just less tox…

> are completely ignorant of history and basic facts

Sam Peltzman's "Regulation of Pharmaceutical Innovation" does an evaluation of this based on statistics, and concludes that the efficacy requirements are a net negative.

It's not about the FDA scientists being incompetent. It's about the increase in cost is so large that far fewer new treatments are even attempted. Conditions that affect a smaller number of people are simply not worth finding a treatment for.

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