Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science

[Monster]

The Atlantic has an interesting story about problems with medical research.

Slashdot sums it up like this:

jenningsthecat writes: "From The Atlantic comes the story of John Ioannidis and his team of meta-researchers, who have studied the overall state of medical research and found it dangerously and widely lacking in trustworthiness. Even after filtering out the journalistic frippery and hyperbole, the story is pretty disturbing. Some points made in the article: even the most respected, widely accepted, peer-reviewed medical studies are all-too-often deeply flawed or outright wrong; when an error is brought to light and the conclusions publicly refuted, the erroneous conclusions often persist and are cited as valid for years, or even decades; scientists and researchers themselves regard peer review as providing 'only a minimal assurance of quality'; and these shortcomings apply to medical research across the board, not just to blatantly self-serving pharmaceutical industry studies. The article concludes by saying, 'Science is a noble endeavor, but it's also a low-yield endeavor ... I'm not sure that more than a very small percentage of medical research is ever likely to lead to major improvements in clinical outcomes and quality of life.' I've always been somewhat suspicious of research findings, but before this article I had no idea just how prevalent untrustworthy results were."

 

[ssvs04]

Pretty scarey stuff!!!

 

[Monster]

Pretty scarey stuff!!!

Yup ... I'm used to the thought b/c as a software developer I see what's going on in computer science and the software industry, and it's a natural conclusion that it's the same mess in all of science.

Here in Germany, we had a lot of health care or medical-related scandals.

Like, in the 70ies and 80ies, when public health insurances covered unlimited treatments for mental conditions, patients were often committed to asylums for many years b/c of misdiagnosis. One guy spent like 17 years in an institution without any reason, and had to be compensated for the traumatic experience after he was rescued. There was even a phone line called "mental emergency" in which you could have people delivered to asylums anonymously.

Another well-known scandal was the so-called "heart valve scandal", in which artifical hearts and related parts had been sold to hospitals way overpriced, like for 100 times the actual value.

Pharmaceutical companies were found guilty of price-fixing many times, manipulation of doctors by giving free samples of their most expensive medicines, press manipulation, etc.

Doctors have been prescribing unnecessary treatments whenever possible. They're probably still doing that, given that a prescription gets them payments from the health insurance.

As a result of that and other scandals and statistical evidence, further regulation of the health sector tries to ensure now that health insurances only pay so much for treatments, and that cheaper treatments have to be administered when available. Of course, this can result in a worse treatment than is available, but we all have to carry the burden of the deeds of many black sheep in the past.

But that's only the tip of the iceberg.

:lol2:

---------- Post added at 05:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:47 PM ----------

p.s. once a report showed some of the implications of health care cuts: In many hospitals preemies (children born too early) have to die b/c there's only so much money available for treatment. And then the government complains about falling birth rates ...