As much as 90% of the published medical information is flawed according to John Ioannidis, one of the true experts on credibility of medical research [1], and former BMJ editor-in-chief, Richard Smith, has claimed that “most of what is published in journals is just plain wrong or nonsense.” The poor quality of medical research is not a new criticism [2]; however, concern has been expressed within a broad field of specialties in parallel with reports that studies are fraught with problems including poor reproducibility [3].
@btresist I have been from the cradle cutting my teeth on realities in medicine from an extremely good clinician. You can not read studies and think you know anything correct about practical medicine. Most of it is wrong.
They are welcome to their opinions, but where is the data?
Give me an example. If most papers are wrong and you have been “from the cradle cutting my teeth on realities in medicine” it should be easy to find at least one.
Here is a more basic science medical journal where most of the articles are available to the public. Again, can you find a paper that is wrong? PLOS Medicine
I’m not trying to embarrass you, if your opinion is based solely on some editorial that’s fine. But if you have some inside knowledge I’d like to see it. Frankly, I’m getting a bit tired of folks who (IMO) don’t have much expertise in science but feel confident in attacking the credibility of scientists. It is easy to attack what one doesn’t understand.
The anti-vaxxers are using the wrong research reports.
There is an endless parade of the wrong results based on stats.
There are drug side effects throughout testing that are not necessarily bad profiles. In use that often is not the case the drugs are dangerous. Happens routinely. Most medical care is pharma.
Remember there are doctors on both sides of each bet.
You are the one who does not understand.
You want to read what you perceive as complex sophisticated research and analysis. It is wrong 90% of the time. You can not face that. It is not just an opinion.
You are a believer.
So are the doctors who support the anti-vaxxers.
Each prescription for a drug that has not been on the market for very long is a doctor taking a bet on a drug that in all likelihood will be pulled from the market(must correct this by the time a drug gets to market it is only 30% that end up pulled in first ten years) as having more side effects than the studies had indicated. Meanwhile, 90% do not get past Phase 3 testing. Phase 3 testing is now a lot of people.
These drugs go through endless studies. Statistically modeled out to avoid harmful side effects. Only allowed into the process if safe enough.
Reading the subheadline below that does not mean the research is not done. It is done in full. These are doctors and researchers pushing.
Prescription drugs kill some 200,000 Americans every year. Will that number go up, now that most clinical trials are conducted overseas—on sick Russians, homeless Poles, and slum-dwelling Chinese—in places where regulation is virtually nonexistent, the F.D.A. doesn’t reach, and “mistakes” can end up in pauper’s graves? The authors investigate the globalization of the pharmaceutical industry, and the U.S. Government’s failure to rein in a lethal profit machine.
Aaah, John Iaonnidis…he’s received a lot of traction touting this canard. He’s also been fact checked…
I’ve oftentimes wondered how come, if so much published research is wrong, he believes the studies that he uses to back up this claim.
@Leap1 …what exactly is your own background in science and research. As in what you’ve personally done. I know you tout family and upbringing (oftentimes not in an entirely favourable light, I’d say) but I know from experience that that doesn’t automatically provide insight into the nuances of any topic…I’m from a family of coal miners and I certainly don’t have special insight into energy policy and whatnot.
From Palmquist and Voss:
“…the average turnout rate seems to decrease linearly as African Americans become a larger proportion of the population. This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias. If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinct’s racial mix, which is one description of bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatter plot(resulting only when changes in one race’s turnout ratesomehow compensated for changes in the other’s across the graph).”
From Gay:
“…the average turnout rate seems to increase linearly as African Americans become a larger proportion of the population. This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias. If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinct’s racial mix, which is one way to think about bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatter plot. A linear form would only result if the changes in one race’s turnout were compensated by changes in the turnout of the other race across the graph.”
And there were multiple papers. More plagiarism was found in four of her published papers. Then more examples were found in mid-December and more at the beginning of January.
I’m pretty sure there are far more papers that support vaccinations than there are against. Does that make you want to reconsider your claim that most medical studies are wrong?
That’s why it is called “testing”, or more accurately a phase 3 “trial”.
Perhaps my memory is bad, but haven’t you previously been found to copy verbatim stuff from the WattsUpWithThat blog without attribution? Stuff like this can unintentionally happen when writing a lot of stuff.
Would also note that the way you do make attributions is inconsistent and sometimes ambiguous. It is unclear for example that the below statement from your post are your own words or (as it turns out to be) from the link above it.
“Days after Claudine Gay’s disastrous testimony on Capitol Hill last month, hundreds of Harvard University faculty members rallied behind their president with a clear message to those calling for her ouster…”
Some with an ax to grind might not be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Tortured logic, for sure. I’m willing to suggest that just about THE most popular research report among anti vaxxers bar none is Andrew Wakefield’s FRAUDULENT case series published in the Lancet and now retracted (along with Wakefield’s license to practice medicine). I certainly can’t think of a study with a non fraudulently arrived at wrong conclusion that comes even close.
I realize you have only edited your husband’s work. You have none of your own work in research.
But when editing you generally carefully read what is written. Usually.
You missed this bit in the link.
and former BMJ editor-in-chief, Richard Smith, has claimed that “most of what is published in journals is just plain wrong or nonsense.”
Seems you have a vested interest in your husband’s work. That should not logically extend to just anyone’s research as a topic of validity. That is not the scientific method.
But they do not have to be anti or pro, the side effects are often undercounted. That is a different issue but it is the topic of wrong research papers.
You can not be two-dimensional in a three-dimensional conversation.
Are you sure about that? Not editing, BTW but proof reading. There’s a really big difference here too.
The thing about scientific publications in the Real World and in this day and age is that, more often than not, they’re collaborative efforts. Oftentimes multicentered. Certainly, I’ve never been first author but co-author on a handful of both my husband and my daughter’s papers…along with dental specific publications.
A new twist on “You don’t know what you’re talking about”, right? Nice try but still a monumental display of unscientific thinking
Can you provide one example that supports this claim?
Since you are not a scientist and have not published scientific papers nor reviewed scientific papers, why should we believe what you have to say about scientific papers?
That’s Smith’s claim. Where is Smith’s proof?
One thing people have to keep in mind is that the stuff published in scientific journals are not generally for consumption by the general public. They are written for other experts in the field who have spent years in graduate school learning about the subject matter as well critical reasoning skills.
I frankly don’t need the Richard Smiths of the world telling me what is good research. I can figure that out for myself. What I want from reviewers and editors is to weed out or fix the really bad stuff and thereby make it easier to find the good stuff. I still would like to see the marginal stuff. There have been times where I thought a paper was mediocre with respect to the analysis, statistics, or conclusions, but that the raw data presented was useful to my on own work. I’m glad the data saw the light of day.
So in my opinion, Richard Smith is blowing a lot of hot air. He was editor in chief, so he could have done something about it beyond just complaining.
But we have just established that there are different levels of plagiarism depending on context. You feel plagiarism matters more in academic papers than in social media.
I’m saying context also matters within academia. If the central conclusion that one is taking credit for in one’s paper is copied from someone else, that is a serious offense. If one paragraph in the introduction of a 100 page thesis was accidentally plagiarized, well that’s unfortunate and careless, but is forgivable.
I honestly don’t know the details of the claims against Harvard’s former president. But I don’t think there should be a knee-jerk condemnation. Context matters.
Additionally, there’s also the oft used (but frequently forgotten) phrase “Publication is not Validation”…and this is where the non scientist oftentimes gets misled. Research…especially the biomedical sciences…doesn’t really resemble grade school science class where students learn the rudiments of conducting experiments by repeating the steps taken to validate existing known laws…Boyle’s Law, for instance …finishing up with a QED. Quite the reverse, in fact, as submitting a paper for publication when it’s a novel hypothesis is more like submitting your work for the scrutiny of a bunch of forensic accountants who’re looking specifically to find out if/where you might be wrong…and if there is, in fact, an alternative/better explanation for the observed phenomena (the rationale for the Scientific Method in evaluating the “evidence of our own eyes”)
Years ago, and a bit before journals and publications were viewed as a source of edutainment, the BMJ had a series of articles that were eventually condensed into book form by Trish Greenhalgh…one of my fave contributors to the journal back then. The book was called How To Read a Paper and it became a very popular publication. I bought the first edition…I see it’s now in the fifth. Here’s a series of links to sample snippets of some of the chapters (full text behind paywall) This issue of wrongness in science is addressed in the penultimate article (Getting your bearings)
The papers can be in support. The problem is there are more side effects than first supposed. That makes earlier claims done on larger statistical models outdated or wrong. The public had been reassured back when.
Frequent side effects of the vaccine include muscle pain, fever, arm soreness, headaches, and fatigue [4]. Although there was no listing of menstrual cycle changes and related reproductive health symptoms, there has been some speculation about the effects of the vaccine on women’s reproductive health. Primary health workers have received multiple complaints in daily practice from premenopausal women soon after receiving the vaccine. Such complaints included irregular menstrual cycles, miscarriages, changes in sexual interest, and v&ginal bleeding. Also, breastfeeding mothers reported decreased milk production [4,5].