80% of current drug applications in China failed to meet analysis requirements
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Re: 80% of current drug applications in China failed to meet analysis requirements
#2In chinese culture, losing one's "face" is one of the worst things that can happen to a person. I'm wondering whether the fact that 80% of data has been fabricated is a result of that. As in, "I have to make my findings significant to not lose my face", or, "Presenting negative findings to my superior will make me lose my face". Maybe someone more familiar with this culture could elaborate.
Re: 80% of current drug applications in China failed to meet analysis requirements
#3Radio Free Asia (RFA) is a private, nonprofit international broadcasting agency of the United States government[2] that broadcasts and publishes online news, information, and commentary to listeners in East Asia while "advancing the goals of U.S. foreign policy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia
The source cited is Radio Free Asia not the report itself. Radio Free Asia does not link to any additional sources.
That is not to say that the story is inaccurate, but rather that the claims are not well substantiated and that the source is not apolitical.
Re: 80% of current drug applications in China failed to meet analysis requirements
#4It mentions 1622 current clinical trials. Of those, how many would be expected to be approved in a rational system?
I wonder if the huge %age is due to a lot of low-quality applications mixed in with the serious ones. If the barrier to apply is sufficiently low, you would expect a Sturgeon's law dynamic.
Re: 80% of current drug applications in China failed to meet analysis requirements
#5Considering past occurrences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal and general behaviour in online market places (my last experience was that the product was advertised to be shipped from Germany (expect fast delivery), but arrived a month later from China) then it should not come as very big surprise (I am not saying that this is normal or acceptable, but that it is not very surprising).
My question is that what is the cause of this general fraudulent behaviour? Does it have some historical roots? Does it come from lack of actual functioning oversight?
Another anecdotal case: try asking for directions in China. Even when person does not know the correct directions, they do not mind to direct you, and when confronted, they refuse to admit that they do not know. Is this mindset result of constant fear of repressions, or it runs deeper into the history of the society (say it is also present in Taiwan?).
I am not accusing anybody in anything, I just would like to understand.
Re: 80% of current drug applications in China failed to meet analysis requirements
#6Science is having an astounding crisis -- I don't think there's been anything like it in history before.
If this is true about Chinese clinical data? More generally, if there is any simple tag that covers fraud at this scale? Other people working under that tag will experience deleterious effects for years to come.
The only way I see out of this is a rigorous, self-imposed body of standards. Even then I'm not sure that this will be sufficient.
Think of all those people, all of that money, all of the hundreds of thousands of hours of research. For nothing. Actually, it's worse than nothing because it's been flooding the system with fake data.
Re: 80% of current drug applications in China failed to meet analysis requirements
#7Radio Free Asia (RFA) is a private, nonprofit international broadcasting agency of the United States government[2] that broadcasts and publishes online news, information, and commentary to listeners in East Asia while "advancing the goals of U.S. foreign policy." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia The source cited is Radio Free Asia not the report itself. Radio Free Asia does not link to any additional sou…
This is good catch, but considering the history of such programs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Europe/Radio_Libert...), it is that they publish rather information that has been suspended by local governments than something that has been made up.
Of course you should be cautious with what they publish, but this applies to every published information.
Re: 80% of current drug applications in China failed to meet analysis requirements
#8In chinese culture, losing one's "face" is one of the worst things that can happen to a person. I'm wondering whether the fact that 80% of data has been fabricated is a result of that. As in, "I have to make my findings significant to not lose my face", or, "Presenting negative findings to my superior will make me lose my face". Maybe someone more familiar with this culture could elaborate.
Very interesting analysis. If this is accurate, they should get rid of that attitude, pronto, as they have the highest potential of being on the scientific forefront(or at least that of medical science).
Re: 80% of current drug applications in China failed to meet analysis requirements
#9Science is having an astounding crisis -- I don't think there's been anything like it in history before. If this is true about Chinese clinical data? More generally, if there is any simple tag that covers fraud at this scale? Other people working under that tag will experience deleterious effects for years to come. The only way I see out of this is a rigorous, self-imposed body of standards. Even then I'm not sure th…
It's not only about fake data, it's also, maybe even most importantly, the low quality data. Publications with low data quality decrease the signal-to-noise ratio, leading to a slower scientific progress. Purely from a scientific standpoint: If you identify fake data, you just take them out of your model training set. But identifying low quality data is much harder.
Re: 80% of current drug applications in China failed to meet analysis requirements
#10Science is having an astounding crisis -- I don't think there's been anything like it in history before. If this is true about Chinese clinical data? More generally, if there is any simple tag that covers fraud at this scale? Other people working under that tag will experience deleterious effects for years to come. The only way I see out of this is a rigorous, self-imposed body of standards. Even then I'm not sure th…
It's not only about fake data, it's also, maybe even most importantly, the low quality data. Publications with low data quality decrease the signal-to-noise ratio, leading to a slower scientific progress. Purely from a scientific standpoint: If you identify fake data, you just take them out of your model training set. But identifying low quality data is much harder.
Agreed. Poor quality data is worse.
A couple of years ago, as this story started to break, I would mention it to scientist friends. "Don't worry," they'd say, "We always have the meta analysis to fall back on."
I don't hear that anymore.
ADD: A critical issue here, which you touch on tangentially, is the mix of motivation and milieu. If I'm making stuff up -- bad data -- other people can identify it and delete it. But if my goal is to appear to be doing good science instead of actually doing it, then it can become extremely problematic both to identify and remedy what I've done.
A lot of "normal" science is done around the margins, with not-so-incredible hypotheses and pedestrian-looking data. Bad science with really poor data fits seamlessly into that model without having any distinguishing characteristics.