Isn't this an issue with the reviews rather than the publication attempts? Wouldn't the normal (if there is such a thing) approach between people be to credit a reviewer with the quality of their reviews or lack thereof? Basically, who signed off on it?
How many medical studies are faked or flawed?
101–110 of 257 posts
Re: How many medical studies are faked or flawed?
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have to say that I find foxes beautiful. Then again, I'm not a farmer nor do I keep chickens. I'm a city boy.
The animals we're mostly concerned about at our farm are horses and cats. I don't think there is anything left in North America that can trouble a horse, unless you count mosquito-transmitted infectious diseases. I hear foxes are not dangerous to cats but I believe we've lost some to coyotes. Mostly we've had people around, either tenants or neighbors, who keep chickens so we don't have to. I'll say the eggs from a s…
> I believe we've lost some to coyotes
Am I out of place if I say I also like coyotes? (Remember: city boy, so nothing is at stake for me here. I also like wolves!)
And yeah, Japanese folklore has taught me that it's best to avoid kitsune. Though they sometimes turn into magical women who help you?
Re: How many medical studies are faked or flawed?
#103While we're on the subject, how many studies period are faked or flawed to the point of being useless? It seems to me that the scientific community's reaction to the replication crisis has been to ignore it.
My internal filter is:
Sociology/Psych/Economics are almost all junk. Their conclusions may or may not be correct.
Medical studies are mostly junk. There's way too much financial incentive to show marginal improvement. Theraflu and anti-depressents come to mind. Both show a small effect in studies and launched billion dollar businesses.
Hard science stuff tends to be pretty good. Mostly just outright fraud and they usually end up getting caught.
Re: How many medical studies are faked or flawed?
#104[deleted]
Re: How many medical studies are faked or flawed?
#105I'm not nearly qualified to make this argument, but has anyone ever suggested that we collectively do away with the principle that one must publish original research in order to receive a PhD? Maybe in something like entomology, there are enough undescribed beetle species out there to supply myriads of dissertations, but in other fields it seems like you are just incentivizing trivial, useless, or fraudulent research.
Re: How many medical studies are faked or flawed?
#106"For more than 150 trials, Carlisle got access to anonymized individual participant data (IPD). By studying the IPD spreadsheets, he judged that 44% of these trials contained at least some flawed data: impossible statistics, incorrect calculations or duplicated numbers or figures, for instance. And in 26% of the papers had problems that were so widespread that the trial was impossible to trust, he judged — either bec…
> Carlisle got access to anonymized individual participant data (IPD)
I'm not in the industry so my question might have an obvious answer to those of you who are: How would one go about getting IPD if you wanted to run your own analysis of trial data or other data-driven research?
Re: How many medical studies are faked or flawed?
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need "big pharma" for this. Researchers at universities also do these kinds of things because it helps them advance their careers.
> Researchers at universities also do these kinds of things because it helps them advance their careers. This is a huge problem and in my opinion is mostly due to bad incentive structures and bad statistical/methodological education. I'm sure there are plenty of cases where there is intentional or at least known malpractice, but I would argue that most bad research is done in good faith. When I was working on a PhD i…
It’s so interesting to hear you say that. I became disillusioned with causal methods for observational data for similar reasons. You can’t often model your way to interesting inferences without an experiment.
Re: How many medical studies are faked or flawed?
#108Those are two wildly different things. Most things are flawed. Deliberately fabricating results is anathema to advancing science.
How do you discern between a study that is flawed and one that is faked? For instance, you could use some methodology that you know to be flawed, and allow that flawed methodology to bias your result in a pre-determined direction. If you're ever caught, you just claim it was an honest error, but it functions exactly the same as if you generated the data wholesale.
My interpretation is that "flawed" study usually have honest data but wrong interpretation/analysis or wrong data gathering design so to make the conclusion essentially worthless. "Faked" study just fucking lie and may just provide rigged data to support a flawless conclusion.
Re: How many medical studies are faked or flawed?
#109"For more than 150 trials, Carlisle got access to anonymized individual participant data (IPD). By studying the IPD spreadsheets, he judged that 44% of these trials contained at least some flawed data: impossible statistics, incorrect calculations or duplicated numbers or figures, for instance. And in 26% of the papers had problems that were so widespread that the trial was impossible to trust, he judged — either bec…
As someone who works in Data Science at FAANG - if you look hard enough - there is something questionably wrong in every step of the data funnel. And that's when I believe people do have a somewhat best effort to maximize profits. There are plenty of people that only care about career progression and think they can get away with lying and cheating their way to the top. They wouldn't believe that if it didn't work som…
Really curious how a profitable industry like medical research ranks against less profitible.
Re: How many medical studies are faked or flawed?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot who stay purely in Academia do it as well, presumably for the prestige.
I would think a successful study is way better for your academic career than a failed study.
Which is why you fake your data into looking successful, and you don’t even go through the effort of publishing the failed studies (leading to its own additional problems in understanding what’s true and what we know)