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Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

blogs.bmj.com

121–130 of 491 posts

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#121
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>failing to believe science Believing in science means believing in falsification and sceptism. This was published during the ongoing replication crisis in medicine where we're finding that more than half of cancer studies don't replicate [1]. This replication crisis hasn't been put on hold and all science is now deemed irrefutable or you are VACCINE HESISTANT and DANGEROUS. I'm mostly confident in the COVID vaccines…

don't replicate != fraudulent I'm mostly confident in the COVID vaccines <- Is this "mostly" qualifier not the dangerous front end of misinformation and vaccine hesitancy?

I've got both vaccines especially early for my age group (clinical vulnerability) and I've been lobbying my vaccinated peers to at least get one dose, so apparently not.

I say "mostly confident" because we have literally zero data of effects after 3 years and can only make inferences, and it's foolish to feign knowledge you do not have to avoid being called "hesitant", but my lack of confidence does not make me hesitate to recommend the vaccine. I also lack knowledge of long term effects of COVID itself which may in fact be worse than the long term effects of any vaccine given COVID does most of what the vaccines do plus extra nasty stuff.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sadly amused by all this. The complaint I hear about privately done research is it's all tainted by the profit motive, and so research should be funded by the government, as then it'll be pure and untainted by selfish motives. Of course, government funded motives are just as tainted by selfish motives, if not more. Even worse, the people who make the funding decisions aren't spending their own money, so they have…

> At least with privately funded research, the people providing the money aren't going to fund bullshit fake research. Citation needed, first of all, but governments are at minimum accountable to voters. Private money is in no way accountable.

Another way to look at it is voting is not the same as choice.

If you wanted a mcburger but 51% voted for mcnuggets, you got mcnuggets.

If you knew in advance that 75% were going to vote for mcnuggets, you likely wouldn't even bother to vote. You knew you had no choice at all.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#124
post #98
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you be sued for asking questions?

IANAL but my gut tells me no, unless you're in a place like Russia, North Korea, China, most of the Middle East, parts of Africa and Latin America, and some parts of the former Soviet Bloc. In western nations, you might get arrested for asking questions if it upsets the powers that be and they deem you a nuisance.

In UK you have a chance to end up with a "hate crime" if you don't follow the official line of (no)thinking(with a low change of being arrested). Pretty crazy stuff going on lately(past few years).

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sadly amused by all this. The complaint I hear about privately done research is it's all tainted by the profit motive, and so research should be funded by the government, as then it'll be pure and untainted by selfish motives. Of course, government funded motives are just as tainted by selfish motives, if not more. Even worse, the people who make the funding decisions aren't spending their own money, so they have…

> At least with privately funded research, the people providing the money aren't going to fund bullshit fake research. Citation needed, first of all, but governments are at minimum accountable to voters. Private money is in no way accountable.

> but governments are at minimum accountable to voters.

Governments are at a minimum accountable to the people willing to use force against the government if they are sufficiently displeased. They may also be accountable to voters qua voters, depending on whether they have voting at all, and, if they do, what options are presented to voters and how fairly voted are counted, all of which are axes on which governments vary considerably, with many falling into ranges resulting in little or now accountability to voters.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I contacted and spoke at length with the Austrian Kosumantenschutz. https://www.arbeiterkammer.at/beratung/konsumentenschutz/ind... The product is clearly and at minimum a case of false advertising as there is nothing approaching a computer chip inside. However and though sympathetic the KS/AK said they couldn't do anything and couldn't refer me to anybody who could. I found this rather surprising.

Try to contact the other two. You can reach Peter Kolba here https://www.verbraucherschutzverein.at/Kontakt/ or on Twitter even https://twitter.com/KolbaPeter . He won the case against Volkswagen so if anyone can help you then him. The University of Salzburg also has a "Ethikkommission" https://www.plus.ac.at/service/uni-administration/gesamtuniv... and "Kommission zur Sicherung guter wissenschaftlicher Praxis" https…

Thankyou for the tip. I'Ll look into it tomorrow.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#128
post #34

Wouldn't this be the default scientific position? Or to take some of the hyperbole out of the statement, rephrase as: "is it time to assume that health research hypotheses are incorrect until a preponderance of data and reproducible studies prove otherwise?"

There's a pretty big difference between an "incorrect" hypothesis and "fraud."

Exactly. It's one thing to, say, do a study that arrives at wrong conclusions because of insufficient controls or subtle mistakes in statistics. Quite another to simply invent patients or make up numbers.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#129
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. The amount of people that take one poorly measured data point and use that as a north star seems more troubling to me - than a society with low trust. I'm not convinced a low-trust society is inherently bad. I am convinced that a society that has high trust in garbage data is bad.

I know this is a forum for nerds, but I struggle to understand how anyone could seriously believe that being surrounded by people who are either psychopathic or paranoid is probably A-OK, as long as they are all competent statisticians.

You're a psychopath or paranoid if you don't blindly trust data - without putting some effort into seeing what the quality of the data is and how much evidence supports it???

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I contacted and spoke at length with the Austrian Kosumantenschutz. https://www.arbeiterkammer.at/beratung/konsumentenschutz/ind... The product is clearly and at minimum a case of false advertising as there is nothing approaching a computer chip inside. However and though sympathetic the KS/AK said they couldn't do anything and couldn't refer me to anybody who could. I found this rather surprising.

Try to contact the other two. You can reach Peter Kolba here https://www.verbraucherschutzverein.at/Kontakt/ or on Twitter even https://twitter.com/KolbaPeter . He won the case against Volkswagen so if anyone can help you then him. The University of Salzburg also has a "Ethikkommission" https://www.plus.ac.at/service/uni-administration/gesamtuniv... and "Kommission zur Sicherung guter wissenschaftlicher Praxis" https…

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