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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?

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be indicating the preferred time window for which research to trust. Not too new, not too old. Not the worst algorithm you could choose, and I agree. This is why I stay away from drugs, procedures, and any kind of guidance from the medical profession that is less than 20 years old.

This is exactly how I feel after being prescribed a drug as an adolescent that in fact made my condition worse. It was a very commonly prescribed anti-depressant that was eventually found to increase the risk of suicide in those under 18 years old. I was on the drug during the first decade after its release. It is no longer prescribed to minors.

Well, there is an easy way to see why basically every anti-depressant will somewhat increase the risk of suicide: many people suffering from depression are already thinking of suicide, but has no motivation even for that. Anti-depressants will try to alleviate the latter one so that the person can actually live their life, but unfortunately that occasionally will also make suicidal thoughts into attempts.

That’s why therapy is a must - the “buttons” drugs can press is simply not fine-grained enough in itself to manage depression.

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

#382
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems well intentioned, but I'm not surprised at all about the outcome. I don't think you can expect the institution to implicate themselves like that. You have to realize that preventing legal and financial liabilities is the #1 priority for institutions. Unfortunately this includes when they are wrong. Even if the employees are "good" their lawyers will advise them against providing any details like that and mos…

> I don't think you can expect the institution to implicate themselves like that. Admitting your mistakes is a strength, not a weakness. We should not expect other's to self-censor their shortcomings because if we do, we live in a fake world already. I mean, it happens, but whatever happened to honesty, the greater good, long term goals? Your take short sighted, short term benefits which will bite them in the ass eve…

Not when defending a law suit

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

#383
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems well intentioned, but I'm not surprised at all about the outcome. I don't think you can expect the institution to implicate themselves like that. You have to realize that preventing legal and financial liabilities is the #1 priority for institutions. Unfortunately this includes when they are wrong. Even if the employees are "good" their lawyers will advise them against providing any details like that and mos…

> I don't think you can expect the institution to implicate themselves like that. Admitting your mistakes is a strength, not a weakness. We should not expect other's to self-censor their shortcomings because if we do, we live in a fake world already. I mean, it happens, but whatever happened to honesty, the greater good, long term goals? Your take short sighted, short term benefits which will bite them in the ass eve…

Exactly, if a university can't admit its mistakes it shouldn't exist. Such an attitude is antithetical to learning.

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

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

recipients of grants are heavily restricted They are restricted in trivial ways that are easy for a bureaucracy to mechanically enforce, as is true of employees at every institution. What I meant by accountability is deeper: people are not accountable for the quality or utility of their work, hence the endless tidal wave of corrupt and deceptive research that pours out of government funded 'science' every day. These…

> What I meant by accountability is deeper: people are not accountable for the quality or utility of their work, hence the endless tidal wave of corrupt and deceptive research that pours out of government funded 'science' every day. These researchers probably filled out their expenses paperwork correctly but the final resulting paper was an exercise in circular reasoning, or the data tables were made up, or it was P-…

I haven't, but I'm unclear why it's relevant given that you don't seem to really be disagreeing!

The NSF denies 80% of grant applications because there is a radical oversupply of people who want to be scientists and the NSF has a finite budget. That by itself doesn't create accountability any more than the fact that lots of people want to be movie stars creates accountability for actors. That's not how accountability works.

Accountability means people being held to account for illegitimate acts. If it existed it would look like this: we (the government) gave you money to deliver some genuine research, yet you delivered a paper that simply modelled your own beliefs, cited a retracted paper and cited another paper that actually disagrees with the claimed statement, used a input dataset too tiny to achieve statistical significance, looks suspiciously P-hacked, you then misrepresented your own findings to the press and by extension the government and then to top it all off it doesn't replicate. We will therefore prosecute you for research fraud and failure to meet the terms of your contract.

What actually happens is this: nothing. Journals will happily publish papers with the problems I just listed, universities praise them, the 'scientists' who do this stuff proceed to get lots of citations and the government proceeds to award even more grant money because who are they to argue with citations.

As you admit, fraud is everywhere in science, supposedly due to "high expectations for results". But so what? Lots of people, non scientists included, have high expectations for results placed upon them. The right mechanisms and incentives to stop fraud are not simply having low expectations of scientists, that's absurd and wouldn't be seriously proposed as a solution in any other area of society. It'd be like saying the answer to fraudulent CEOs fiddling the books is to simply stop expecting them to turn a profit, or like the solution to shoplifting is to just stop expecting shoplifters to pay for things.

Expectations on scientists are already rock bottom: large chunks of the research literature doesn't even seem to replicate, other large chunks are not even replicable by design, and nobody seems to care. You can't get much lower expectations than "We don't even care if your claims replicate" and yet this ridiculous suggestion that the solution to fraud is to give fraudsters even more money keeps cropping up on HN and elsewhere. The solution to fraud is tighter contracts to ensure the rules are clear, and systematic prosecutions of people who break them.

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

#386

I believe we are getting to the point where we need to create a broad category of crimes for misleading the public. Form lying as a trusted public figure (elected politician, government employee) all the way to publishing or submitting fraudulent research for publication. Countless lives were lost in the past year because people believed fraudulent studies about COVID treatments. Worse than that, government officials…

Keep dreaming. Who's going to advocate for that on your behalf? A politician? An private or public institution complicit n this behaviour?

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

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is an institution not a group of people as well? People with consciences, moralities and other human emotions? If not, what's the difference to any other organisation such as, in an absolute extreme form, an army or a "terror"group apart from the agenda. Really curious, not trying to construct a strawman!

> is an institution not a group of people as well? People with consciences, moralities and other human emotions? Yes, but the point being made is that in the case of organizations the whole doesn't necessarily have the properties of its constituent parts. > If not, what's the difference to any other organisation such as, in an absolute extreme form, an army or a "terror"group apart from the agenda. Not sure what you…

> the whole doesn't necessarily have the properties of its constituent parts.

This is because the "constituent parts" - members of the organization - are often just terrible human beings that hide behind the concept of an institution to shield themselves from the cognitive dissonance caused by their own unethical actions.

If an institution does something unethical it can always be traced to its employees.

As an example, all the researchers involved in promoting this fake health product ought to be fired and academically blackballed. It really is that simple. That's how we can deal with institutional rot.

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

#388
post #382
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think you can expect the institution to implicate themselves like that. Admitting your mistakes is a strength, not a weakness. We should not expect other's to self-censor their shortcomings because if we do, we live in a fake world already. I mean, it happens, but whatever happened to honesty, the greater good, long term goals? Your take short sighted, short term benefits which will bite them in the ass eve…

Not when defending a law suit

That's a good point, unfortunately. Though it feels like something which especially applies in Common Law.

Going into hoops about some kind of alternative theory, which is tried to make sound plausible (but often seems like a bad joke, insulting to the victim as well) should be less honored than admitting to a crime, showing remorse, and demonstrating you learned from making your mistake.

Showing you admit your deed, showing remorse, and demonstrating you learned from your mistake is important for the victim (and/or their peers), as well as for society in general. We as society should reward such behavior, but indeed more often than not our legal systems fail here. However, at some point the evidence is so overwhelming that the theater as described is only harmful. How can we lower the incentive for such theater?

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

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is not profit but the reverse, the corruption comes from the absence of profit. Universities and grants are this firehose of tax money being sprayed everywhere without even the slightest bit of accountability in how it's used. The government effectively "loses" all of it in accounting terms, but because it's tax it doesn't matter. The buyer is blind and doesn't even bother looking at the papers they'…

>Universities and grants are this firehose of tax money being sprayed everywhere without even the slightest bit of accountability in how it's used. No, grants are not a firehose of tax money with no accountability--not even close. You completely made that up.

Then where is the accountability for the people who take grant money and produce useless or deceptive research papers?

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

#390

I believe we are getting to the point where we need to create a broad category of crimes for misleading the public. Form lying as a trusted public figure (elected politician, government employee) all the way to publishing or submitting fraudulent research for publication. Countless lives were lost in the past year because people believed fraudulent studies about COVID treatments. Worse than that, government officials…

Keep dreaming. Who's going to advocate for that on your behalf? A politician? An private or public institution complicit n this behaviour?

Agreed. Instead of looking for institutional solutions, we can demonstrate the need for critical thinking and skepticism as individuals. This is a can-do solution we can start with now. The above poster's plea of, "there ought to be a law" removes the agency of the individual.

There are also serious problems with appointing fact checkers as impartial arbiters of objective truths. It is an untenable scheme. A naked appeal to authoritarianism.

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