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Editors of World’s Most Prestigious Medical Journals: “Much of the Scientific Literature, Perhaps HALF, May Simply Be Untrue"...
Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine are the two most prestigious medical journals in the world.
It is therefore striking that their chief editors have both publicly written that corruption is undermining science.
The editor in chief of Lancet, Richard Horton, wrote last month:
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. As one participant put it, “poor methods get results”. The Academy of Medical Sciences, Medical Research Council, and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council have now put their reputational weight behind an investigation into these questionable research practices. The apparent endemicity [i.e. pervasiveness within the scientific culture] of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of “significance” pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale. We reject important confirmations. Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent, endpoints that foster reductive metrics, such as high-impact publication. National assessment procedures, such as the Research Excellence Framework, incentivise bad practices. And individual scientists, including their most senior leaders, do little to alter a research culture that occasionally veers close to misconduct.
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Part of the problem is that no-one is incentivised to be right.
Similarly, the editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Marcia Angell, wrote in 2009:
It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.
In her must-read essay, Dr. Angell skewers drug companies, university medical departments, and medical groups which set the criteria for diagnosis and treatment as being rotten with corruption and conflicts of interest.
And we’ve previously documented that the government sometimes uses raw power to cover up corruption in the medical and scientific fields.
Postscript: Corruption is not limited to the medical or scientific fields. Instead, corruption has become systemic throughout every profession ... and is so pervasive that it is destroying the very fabric of America.
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ok, i get it. why?
why? because why is a crooked letter?
no. it is because there is a financial advantage
and incentive to it. a payoff. ok, where does the
payoff come from? what is behind the payoff? what gives
the payoff strength, legs or liquidity? law and/or
fungibility resulting in fluidity or flow.
so, who controls the mind, science and the rest?
the masters of "flow". i call it the "flow" crisis
of the 21 century, graspingly.
But, I'm sure none of this has crept in to the climate change scientific studies.........
climate change is generally considered to be a liberal cause, but they all take money from the same corporations. through funding goverment is able to direct research in the direction which is most accomodating to the encumbents, but what happens is that after a generation of stacking the deck with researchers in order to disprove cause A these same scientists find something new, cause B. in this case climate change is cause B, the unintended consequence. now its time to fund studies that disprove the current climate change theories, and i am pretty sure that in ten years you won't hear a word about it. in the meantime the older scientists retire and die off. then the new scientists, hired to make a sham out of B, discover C and the whole thing starts again. in the case of autism caused by mercury based perservatives and over zealous vaccination, there really was no new research, and the old research looked pretty medieval. (cold mothers, separation complex, stuff) now there is almost no scientific mention of the connection between vaccines and autism. this was really a glorious day in the government world of fast tracking away pretty damning evidence which implied HUGE liabilities on corporate and government resources. it wont always be this easy, when something comes up which has very little research already done, its much easier to control the consensus scientific opinion. the epilogue is that after a period of time they actuall release the old information, apologize to a few dead labcoats. its like repatrioting land to american citizens of japanese descent who had their land stolen at the start of W2. it says somewhere that litiigants as well as defendants have a right to a speedy trial.
Power corrupts. Financing corrupts. A great American delusion is that American scientists/judges/military/media/bureaucracy are exceptionally different. To continue to receive funding requires producing desired results.
Morality is a delusion to control the gullible. There is no honor among the government funded, only the need to be funded. Government destroyed the moral fabric of the nation.
If you read any scientific study, ask cui bono?
If a thousand government funded scientists say a lie, it's still a lie. To think is to doubt. To trust is to be controlled. The American wet dream should be called a nightmare.
Nooooooooo! Money influences science negatively? Whatttt? Can't be true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EOpmew5rh0
its 101 minutes but you all should find the time to listen....important and explains
TED talk on exactly this subject. This isn't news by any means.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_battling_bad_science?language=en
"Most deaths in the US are preventable and related to nutrition."
"We already have all the information we need to eradicate atherosclerotic disease whichi is a food-borne illness." - Dr. Michael Kadoch, Am. Journal of Cardiology
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/physicians-may-be-missing-their-most-imp...
So here the science has advanced but is not applied. Only 27% of medical schools offer even a single nutrtion course. Why? Is there money to be made in health maintnanence? In curing curing disease? Or is the money in treating it--in pills and procedures?
Further, the pharma and food industries spend many 10s of millions sponsoring "research" to muddy the waters.
And then we have this:
"The USDA Dietary Guidelines Committee has been made of up individuals funded by McDonald’s, Coca Cola, the Sugar Association, the American Meat Institute, candy bar companies, and the egg and dairy boards." http://nutritionfacts.org/video/dietary-guidelines-advisory-committee-co...
Too often the case that when money talks, science walks.
Not surprising the Kaiser, an organization that profits from health. is the only major health care instituion aggressively in promoting a whole food, plant based diet. It's almost like economics works here and there.
So what you are saying is that with the right nutrition we would live forever. Nutrition is like economics, put 100 of them in a room and you'll get 100 different programs. Many will tell you eggs and dairy are great, while others especially of the PETA pursuasion will call them death foods. There are those that claim grains are fantastic others say it's the worst thing that could happen to mankind. Recently one expert sung the praises of frozen vegatables while others say fresh only. Then there's the battle between the organic crowd and the non organic crowd. Some experts say get 20 minutes of sun every day for the natural Vitamin D others say slather on the sunscreen on all parts of your body that can't be covered or just plain stay out of the sun. Just as there is all branches of science we have those who want to force, whether private citizens or government, their will on other people or do it for profit like the myriad of diet gurus out there who's science to back their claims many times is eventually proven bogus.
+1 Caveat Emptor. Can be corrupted, too, this last bastion of Liberty and Liberalism
Ever diligent GW, thank you for your continued work.
Interestingly, these major publications you've highlighted, which steer (herd) Westerners exactly where big pharma/academia want them, seldom possess the real gems. Natural medicine used for thousands of years from Auryvedic, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Native American Indian cultures and many more have many "modern" clinical studies confirming what healers have always known. Some are buried in the NIH database (such as this example) and many compiled on websites that focus on health instead of the sickness industry like Green Med Info, The internet has opened up the real medicine cabinet for anyone who wants to look.
Thanks DT,
Turmeric does rock, indeed!
My current area of natural health interest is fermented foods. See, e.g., http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/guts-and-grease-the-diet-of-na...
Mom, the first Nurse Practioner in the nation, put me on Turmeric after a failed neck surgery for neck, sholder, arm and hand pain (bone compression in the neck is fucking up my hands and arms big time). Turmeric actually eased the pain until I ran out.
Searching for it but haven't found it in local stores. Where is it sold?
It is a very famous spice in markets all over the world.
All the mail order Health Supplement companies, and Health Stores in small cities or town.
I think it is good for your liver if you drink alcohol.
DT and GW- Glad to see you linking the Eades and Weston A. Price. Both have books that are well worth reading. NM
Good for you! And thank you for the link. I just love fermented foods.
Mrs. Cog wrote a piece about it a few months back. The Great Fermenting Experiment - but I understand Cog is still resisting lol. My money is on her. :-)
Well, rumor has it that Mrs. Cog is a pretty smart lady ... so I think she's got at least fighting odds.
What character assassination poor sugar has taken? People grab yourself a delicious Mexican, real sugar (sucrose) Coka-Cola in the glass bottle and drink to your health. Thumbs up to saturated fats (butter & coconut oil that are pro-thyroid) and fuck polyunsaturated fats which deactivates proteolytic enzymes, thyroid hormone, and aerobic mitochondrial respiration.
Salt your food to taste, Bitchez...
My neighbours daughter died a couple of years ago from cancer (cant remember which one) and her oncologist was convinced margarine was having devastating effects on peoples health. Last year i went to a crushing plant for canola/rape and the chemical engineers looked real worried when they were discussing the solvents used in the refinning process, that sort of look like, we dont touch this stuff.
We crossed the moral hazard Rubicon many years ago. It has been show time and again lying cheating and stealing are not only the best ways to get ahead they are the only way and any paltry 'costs' are just a normal part of doing business.
I don't mind the lying, what I mind is the hypocrisy about it. " Are you collecting any records at all about Americans?" Answer by America's top intelligence official, who somehow still has his job: No. "America the Free". It's dawning on people that the elite lie, all the time, about everything. I just don't want to smell their sanctimonious farts about it, "oh oh I'm Grandpa Warren Buffet, you too can be an elite war-monger insider crook".
My friend in Beijing said that's the difference between China and the US. In China everyone knows the government spies on you all the time, they know they can disappear you anytime day or night, they know they can just take your money for no reason. They have lots of procedures established on how to navigate daily life, bribes to get your power turned on, corrupt workarounds that have worked for decades. In America those facts are a revelation for people (killing, lying, and stealing by the government) and we haven't figured out the workarounds yet.
Shocked. Shocked I tell you to learn we've dug a trench to lower the bar.
Although, I suspect we can dual-use the trench and probably the bar as well.
Driver! Call the fat bastard Hermann and see if he wants to go for some beer and schnitzel. He lost that bet we had about Frau Goebbels and he needs to pay up.
Economics, Science, History ... lies and damn lies.
Corruption.
Dark matter & black holes, discussed in the media (induding the once reliable NOVA) as if they were facts, are theories; and they are theories generated by mathematics to explain astronomical observations in terms of the prevailing orthodox assumption that gravity is the only active force in space, that electric charge separation does not exist in space. Increasingly it is evident that it does and predictions based on that evidence have proved out in observation while the gravity only orthodoxy ties itself in further knots. But hell if you spent your whole career hustling big money grants and writing, essentially, bullshit based on mathematical fantasy, you'd dig in your heels too.
You are of course correct... the beauty of dark matter and dark energy is you have no obligation to actually find the stuff...
One of the last articles I read in Scientific American ( I recently attempted a renewed subscription, sat down with the first publication I received, attempted to find what I thought would be a political neutral article, ie something with some scientific merit, and ended up throwing the damn thing out ten minutes later) before my second to my last cancellation concerned a glaring headline that proclaimed that a recent discovery with regard to the genetics of Sticklebacks... a rather comical group of fishes... demonstrated evolution in action. Triumphantly several pictures were shown of a species that had taken on quite diverse form dependent on their respective environments... good so far, except that these so called evolutionary trends involved point mutations... A point mutation is a substitution in a single base pair within a gene. This involves only the most minute genetic variation... has absolutely nothing to do with speciation, the formation of new species, but the pictures looked good... and if you were a casual reader you might really think they were onto something.
Science has become little more than the magician class of the new world religion of relativism, and, at its heart, occult self worship. But I will admit, the special effects have gotten better.
When I first went to college back in the dark ages of the late eighties the best theory was that somehow some amino acids were caught in a bubble in a tidal pool at the ocean a viola a cell was born. After 60 years of trying to duplicate this and failing it seems that the best theory now life came here on a rock from outer space.
And I really do not know this so would like response from someone. A few years ago it was discovered by observing pulsars? Blue light vs red light ( opposite of what would normally be thought) that the universe is rapidly expanding, which in essence disproves the " Big Bang". It seems I remember this being explained away by "dark matter". But does this not disprove the Big Bang as a whole. Yet I have looked this up a number of times over the years and the bb is still in fashion and see no mention of the rapidly expanding not contracting universe. Help please.
Enroll at your Community College and take an introductory Astronomy class. You will have some fun looking at heavenly bodies in Outer Space as well as the coeds.
Hubble's Law
v = HoD
Read this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law
According to the Big Bang Theory the Universe is supposed to be expanding at a constant velocity..
Then read this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy
The problem arises in that there has been observed acceleration for distant images.
The existence of Dark Matter/Energy has been inferred to correct for this observation which does not fit the constant velocity model that is defined by Hubble's Law.
Then you have to understand that an object remains at rest, or at a constant speed, unless there is an unbalanced force acting upon it...which causes an acceleration. That is Newton's First Law and it is FOUNDATIONAL for Classical Mechanics....for most Physics.
Where did the force that is accelerating the expansion originate?
Ahhh...We will create Dark Matter and then the problem is solved...except...uh...nobody can verify the existence of it.
And that is a problem...as much of a problem as Ptolomy's epicycles. (Or is it an opportunity to achieve greatness...if you can solve the riddle?)
Because of that abandnment of that faulty description of the Geocentric Universe we now know much, much more.
Is the Big Bang Theory wrong? Or is it incomplete?
Now personally I believe that the confusion arises because Astrophysicists are human and they confuse images with objects. And as we know that if I observe two or more images then there may be one and only one distinct object responsible for the multitude of images.
Peer into a child's kaliedoscope. Can you identify the original object?
Believe it or not you can with sensitive optics. Each Reflection loses intensity towards extinction thus also shifts to the red.
Can that be the real cause of Redshifting? Is that "acceleration curve" really an exponential extinction curve? Is the Universe much smaller? Are we so far down the line in an ever expanding universe that we are just observing images of the Local Group reflected upon the fabric of Space Time? (Gravitational Lens affect.)
I mean that if the dark matter does exist and it is not incandescent, but dark, just what are the thermodynamic implications of such a statement? Has entropy consumed the energy of 98% of the Universe?
Can the kaliedoscope be a better model of the Universe? Can all of those images we observe be reflections of ourselves in our distant past, before we got to where we are at?
What say you Kaiserhoff?
Yes we would have massive "Problems in Intergalactic Navigation" if one of our triangulation points were to disappear because it was a phantom image in the first place, The problems in Interstellar Navigation will be demanding enough...if we survive as a species.
But as for you sonoftx...Before you even begin to try to revamp the current theory it is better that you learn about them...then find the holes and exploit that.
Big Bang Theory explained in seven words...
And God said, 'Let there be light.".
And I'm not particularly religious.
http://venusdemarco.org/blog/what-is-perfect-amino-the-vegan-amino-suppl...
Dark matter and dark energy have to be there, or their theories don't work. That is the sole basis for the "discovery" of this nonsense.
If you haven't seen it already, check out the Thunderbolts Project, and almost anything by Halton Arp.
Tears the astronomers a new one;)
And then there is the complete failure of String Theory.
How could String Theory possibly fail? By their own admission, it is utterly untestable! I remember hearing a proponent say: nothing his elegant in mathematics has ever NOT been true. Well nothing untestable will ever be known to be true either.
Yes, I've been following the T-bolts people for years now. Real science, real discovery. Fascinating and exciting.
I was heard that string theory allow for 10^500 different outcome become of the number of free parameter taht they can adjust.
So they might eventualy claim anything (and their contrary)
Whom do I sue?
LOL
Start calling them on all this BS. Make them prove up their shit. If they are telling the truth it should stand uo to all good questions. Thats what makes ZH a real danger to tptb. People that will back up the stuff they claim. The trolls got nothing on the honest. Dance around the truth all ya want. The truth just stands on its own.
You forgot.......
DOD NSA DOJ CIA officials on board of company that traded with sanctioned terrorist states Iran and Sudan for 6 years http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/schlumberger-oilfield-holdings-ltd-agrees-... ......not prosecuted
War on pR0n in 3...2...
In reply to neochrome: That could account for many of the filthy mouthed, spare time, trolls that comment on ZH. Ha. Ha. Ha.
I resemble that remark. Want some?
In replu to VW: What a punk remark.
Depends on how one defines punk?
SCIENCE and education has been totally captured by multinational corporate fascist (merger of monopoly corporations with government) with their criminal corruption> The same criminal corruption that has captured and overthrown our democracy and destroyed the American Main Street Free Enterprise System of capitalism that had laws against corporate monopoly and criminal corruption. “Crony capitalism” is not “capitalism” but “corporatism” by criminal fascist.
The USA is not a democracy or a capitalist society but a criminal corporate fascist society that is evil. What really stuns me is that brainwashed Americans are somehow hoping and expecting that GOOD will be coming from EVIL.
"The USA is not a democracy or a capitalist society but a criminal corporate fascist society that is evil"
It's much easier to call them gangsters. Or mafia. With a Hollywoodized society, such memes are easier to grasp for the intelligentsia.
In reply to sledge: Slang that the “Intelligentsia” can relate to? What a Hoot! Ha. Ha. Ha. My words are concise; maybe you are struggling with the concept of the terms “good” and “evil”?
If you have examined how medicine in the West came to be then there is nothing striking about the editors' observations.
Modern medicine and the whole healthcare industry is a racket designed to extract the most amount of money out of the largest number of people.
"scientists" have become corporate whores selling their PhD credentials and reputation to the highest bidder.
The so called "prestigious journals" are now no more truthful [or important] than the tabloid press.
The nobel prize has been turned into a joke, for good measure.
Scientists aren't corporate whores. They are trying to sell their skills/knowledge and make a living just like everyone else. If you work for industry, you have to produce results that work. Academia is mainly theoretical, but most scientists don't work in academia.
What do you do for a living?
Who benifits from the undermining of science? Good science is no more or less then counting and recording your count. This became observation which became guesses and opinions. So who is left to do the counting?
When was the last time you even heard of a full and complete count, then had it another full and complete count to make sure that the counting was accorate?
Never say's i.