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

blogs.bmj.com

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

#181

Post by Animats »

rubatuga wrote: post #147
Animats wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the famous story of the doctor who figured out, in the 1980s, how to cure stomach ulcers.[1] Stomach ulcers are usually a bacterial disease, and antibiotics work. The microbiologists in Brussels loved it, and by March of 1983 I was incredibly confident. During that year Robin and I wrote the full paper. But everything was rejected. Whenever we presented our stuff to gastroenterologists, we got the same campai…

Sounds like ivermectin is going through something similar. This off-patent, cheap, and safe drug is able to significantly reduce COVID-19 symptoms [0], and is extremely likely to be a potent prophylactic and treatment for COVID-19 [1], to the extent that the third wave in North America wouldn't have happened if it was used. The inventor, Satoshi Omura, won a Nobel Prize for inventing the drug in 2015, and tried to co…

Here's a list of ivermectin trials on COVID-19.[1] It does seem to have some effect, cutting recovery time in mild cases by 20% or so. But that's not anything close to "would eliminate the third wave".

This study [2] from the early days of the epidemic indicated that the patients receiving ivermectin needed invasive ventilation much earlier. Which is not a good result.

[1] https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/ant...

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34215210/

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

#182

Post by wolverine876 »

The headline is more than a bit sensationalist. I never know what to make of BMJ, which sometimes seems sensationalist: Can anyone in the industry or profession characterize who they are, what they do, and what their reputation is?

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

#183

Post by mhh__ »

WalterBright wrote: post #159
mhh__ wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has happened before i.e. Hendrik Schon, however these incidents are more to do with humanity as a species than their employers.

Nothing is 100%. I'm talking about incentives here, and people do things almost entirely on selfish impulses. Money is a powerful motivator, and people are strongly motivated to not spend their own money on bullshit. That motivation is absent when government funds things - but other motivations remain.

Sure, I just think its an interesting story considering he might have been nominated for the Nobel Prize in physics for totally fraudulent work

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

#184

Post by sjwalter »

sjwalter wrote: post #180

"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." Richard Horton, current editor of The Lancet: https…

This is also especially ironic considering The Lancet published a totally fabricated study that supposedly demonstrated how dangerous a Trump-touted Covid treatment was.

https://www.the-scientist.com/features/the-surgisphere-scand...

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

#185

Post by peteretep »

White_Wolf wrote: post #124
Ajay-p wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Are you confused that a “question” can be a hate crime? Seems pretty straight-forward to me?

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

#186

Post by sjwalter »

wolverine876 wrote: post #155
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #80

I knew there were issues with various kinds of research. Things like p-hacking, "touching up" data, and so on. But the lead example is pretty wild: > As he described in a webinar last week, Ian Roberts, professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, began to have doubts about the honest reporting of trials after a colleague asked if he knew that his systematic review showing the mannit…

It's one example, chosen and presented by someone with something to prove, and which fails to provide any evidence (such as the names of the studies or lead author).

[flagged]

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

#187

Post by _jal »

WalterBright wrote: post #119
buitreVirtual wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, companies pay universities to conduct fake research that "shows" that their products work.

That's a good point. But if the companies are paying for research in how to build better products, they aren't going to pay for bullshit research.

They pay for bullshit research all the time. It comes from the advertising budget instead of the development budget.

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

#189

Post by i_left_work »

From my experience, most of it is. I just left a high paying position working in the healthcare space as a data scientist, because it became clear this was known and there was no intention to improve the situation. Instead, the focus was on selling and making a quick exit.

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

#190

Post by version_five »

WalterBright wrote: post #67
ta988 wrote: post #22

When you want to do a proper work, your grants and papers get rejected because they are not innovatove enough or don't go far enough. So it is not a surprise that people that lied in their applications about what they can realistically do also lie when it comes to reporting results. Unfortunately there is no way out. I stopped counting how many reviewers of my grants disagreed on what was proposed, one saying that it…

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…

I think there are two separate versions of "private research" that people below are responding to. In one, a company has a problem and they pay researchers to work on it. The key metric is solving the problem or making progress on in depending on the time scale- good orgs have different scales (usually from 3 months to 5 years at most) that they are investing in. In this case, there is little room for fraud or deception, but it goes up with time scale because of how you frame early results. (I work doing applied research for companies, and they want and will only pay for something they can use to improve their business. Actually a lot of my time is spent helping make a clear connection between how research findings will move the needle on business objectives). I think it is this kind of research you, the parent, are referring to.

There is also "sponsored" research as others have pointed out, that is more of a bought study that a business hopes they can use for marketing. These have a big conflict.

I agree that government is probably the worst system in most cases. It's the same kind of "picking winners" that doesnt work in corporate funding. I'm from Canada where our tech industry basically runs on subsidies, and very little escapes the bubble of trying to get more government funding and actually becomes self sustaining.

Personally, I have seen there is a legit appetite for corporate funded research that advances the company's goals. As an academic, I would rather seek out companies for funding, knowing that I'm working in something that someone wants, and not trying to optimize for government priorities. I'm coming at this from a hard science perspective. I imagine the dynamics are very different for drug trials or other efficacy type studies, which are maybe more relevant to this discussion.

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