Challenges with Western Medical research by Dr Holly Noon PST Wednesdays on NFTS RADIO

Last Update: June 20, 2018 at 11:18 am

Challenges with Western Medical research

by Dr Holly Noon PST Wednesdays on NFTS RADIO

Source NFTS

Date:  Feb 21, 2018

 

Have you ever the phrase, “Figures don’t lie until statisticians start to figure”? I was raised with that phrase. My uncle hated the way research was getting manipulated. I have a PhD in research, design and analysis, and like one of my profs said, “if you know how to work the design and the analysis, you can get research to say anything you want it to.”

Big Pharma pays individuals, corporations and universities to do research and or write “ghost” articles on said research. There is an underlying agenda. What do you think it is?

In addition, we are constantly being bombarded in today’s world about how medical research is being manipulated by Big Pharma. The Editor-in-Chiefs of two the most influential medical journals in the world, the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, have both claimed that 50% of the research is false and the remaining 50% is questionable.”

Richard Horton, the editor of The Lancet recently put it only slightly more mildly: “Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.” Horton agrees with Ioannidis’ reasoning, blaming: “small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance.” Horton laments: “Science has taken a turn towards darkness.” http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/believe-it-or-not-most-published-research-findings-are-probably-false

Or Dr Marcia Angell of NEJM: ““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.” http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f3830/rr/652673

And of course her article in the New York Review of Books called: Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption supports her statement about research and medical journals.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200410073511522   https://ethicalnag.org/2009/11/09/nejm-editor/

Whatever is published needs to be paid for and is paid for either by the researchers – who needs to have a list of publications on his CV; or by whoever is funding the research. And they are NOT going to pay to publish research that doesn’t support the drug they want to market.

Dr. John Ioannidis, a study design expert at Stanford University, paper on Why Most Published Research Findings are False  http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002049

He exposed, “Three years ago, when drugs company Amgen tried to replicate the “landmark publications” in the field of cancer drug development for a report published in Nature, 47 out of 53 could not be replicated. When Bayer attempted a similar project on drug target studies, 65 percent of the studies could not be replicated.” http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/believe-it-or-not-most-published-research-findings-are-probably-false ; https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd3545

Then there is Timothy Caulfield is a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Alberta whose book, The Cure for Everything: Untangling the Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness and Happiness; like various other researchers, he struggles to weed out the “crap” from the reliable and valid research.

Jerry Kassier was fired as the Editor in Chief of the NEJM in 1999 and has since written a paper revealing the present state of medicine and journals in Unanticipated Outcomes: A medical memoir that has been recognized as a “painful autoautopsy of a successful life brought down by the greed of small minds and the tripwire of personal foible.” http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)32363-2/abstract

Then we have the Gary Null group of scientists with all their articles on “Death by Medicine”, “Something is wrong when regulatory agencies pretend that vitamins are dangerous, yet ignore published statistics showing that government-sanctioned medicine is the real hazard.” http://www.lifeextension.com/Magazine/2004/3/awsi_death/Page-06 ; http://advancedmedicine.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/How-Effective-is-Modern-Medicine.pdf

Medicine is not the only science that is having this difficulty, it runs through psychology as well, and I am sure a variety of other sciences. Baker published an article in Nature: Over half of psychology studies fail reproducibility test. And he starts out the article with, “Don’t trust everything you read in the psychology literature. In fact, two thirds of it should probably be distrusted.” https://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail-reproducibility-test-1,18248

So what do we do with all of this. It sounds scary but then who do we trust? We already know that half of what is on the internet is full of the preverbial crap, so what do we do?

Learn about those you trust; do they do their research; do they know how to do research; who is supporting the research; always look for the controversies and criticisms. Then judge for yourself.

When seeing an MD or any other medical practitioner you want to know are they covering up symptoms or resolving the underlying issue – you be the judge, its your body. Here’s to your health.

References:

http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f3830/rr/652673

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200410073511522

https://ethicalnag.org/2009/11/09/nejm-editor/

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002049

http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/believe-it-or-not-most-published-research-findings-are-probably-false ; https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd3545

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)32363-2/abstract

http://www.lifeextension.com/Magazine/2004/3/awsi_death/Page-06 ; http://advancedmedicine.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/How-Effective-is-Modern-Medicine.pdf

http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2014/06/diabetes-cholesterol-bp-normal-is-no-longer-normal/

https://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail-reproducibility-test-1,18248