It seems no matter where you turn these days to find reliable information to base ones decisions on, it turns out to be questionable or our right false. And in this case when it comes to your health, bad information can be fatal.
How did this happen and is it just a recent phenomenon? I think this has been going on for decades but it's only recently it has now it can been seen as okay to ''take the money and run''. Some politicians do as a matter of routine, and not just under the table as past practices, they seem to have a new boldness about them that no matter how corrupt their action, no one cares or suffers.
Now it just might be me that has this opinion, that since Barack took control of power back in 2009, the general and prevailing moral philosophy has been to do what ever it takes to gain an advantage over the opponent, weather it's for power or money or both. I believe many of us see what has become acceptable criminal behavior for many of our elites, find it very unsettling if not fearful for our republic.
Barack's religious jihad for transformation included his admitted desires to ignore any law he believed was not in his best interest for advancing his agenda and ideology. I wonder how that played out in the minds of average citizens that had always believed we all have to obey the law or suffer the consequences.
Corruption is acceptable as long as they get theirs.
The surge in the ''new wave politics'', that is 'by any means necessary' has infected all areas of our civil sociality to the point that most citizens that rely on professionals that have always been good sources of factual information, have now become a detriment to the general public's safety and well being..
The result of such management of misinformation is unacceptable to most of us in the trenches that have to live by the law to survive. Apparently the law has become two tiered, one for them and one for us.
The Growing Problem of ‘Fake Science’
Sharyl Attkisson / @SharylAttkisson /
Viewers may question much of what they hear and read about scientific and medical studies after watching the latest “Full Measure” cover story. It’s a cautionary note issued by respected industry leaders who say unseen interests are exerting enormous control over research and what is—or isn’t—published. Their startling claim: that a large percentage of articles in prestigious medical journals are simply not to be believed.
We begin with Dr. Marcia Angell of the Harvard Medical School, a pioneer in the medical journal field.
Find out when and where you can watch “Full Measure”
Watch the video : https://youtu.be/nynVqY-9wPk
Marcia Angell: You know any drug I take has got to have been on the market at least five years, because I think that a lot of them are harmful. I think physicians and the public have come to believe that drugs are much better and much safer than they really are.
How did this happen and is it just a recent phenomenon? I think this has been going on for decades but it's only recently it has now it can been seen as okay to ''take the money and run''. Some politicians do as a matter of routine, and not just under the table as past practices, they seem to have a new boldness about them that no matter how corrupt their action, no one cares or suffers.
Now it just might be me that has this opinion, that since Barack took control of power back in 2009, the general and prevailing moral philosophy has been to do what ever it takes to gain an advantage over the opponent, weather it's for power or money or both. I believe many of us see what has become acceptable criminal behavior for many of our elites, find it very unsettling if not fearful for our republic.
Barack's religious jihad for transformation included his admitted desires to ignore any law he believed was not in his best interest for advancing his agenda and ideology. I wonder how that played out in the minds of average citizens that had always believed we all have to obey the law or suffer the consequences.
Corruption is acceptable as long as they get theirs.
The surge in the ''new wave politics'', that is 'by any means necessary' has infected all areas of our civil sociality to the point that most citizens that rely on professionals that have always been good sources of factual information, have now become a detriment to the general public's safety and well being..
The result of such management of misinformation is unacceptable to most of us in the trenches that have to live by the law to survive. Apparently the law has become two tiered, one for them and one for us.
The Growing Problem of ‘Fake Science’
Sharyl Attkisson / @SharylAttkisson /
Viewers may question much of what they hear and read about scientific and medical studies after watching the latest “Full Measure” cover story. It’s a cautionary note issued by respected industry leaders who say unseen interests are exerting enormous control over research and what is—or isn’t—published. Their startling claim: that a large percentage of articles in prestigious medical journals are simply not to be believed.
We begin with Dr. Marcia Angell of the Harvard Medical School, a pioneer in the medical journal field.
Find out when and where you can watch “Full Measure”
Watch the video : https://youtu.be/nynVqY-9wPk
Marcia Angell: You know any drug I take has got to have been on the market at least five years, because I think that a lot of them are harmful. I think physicians and the public have come to believe that drugs are much better and much safer than they really are.
What makes Angell’s skepticism so remarkable is where she places much of the blame: on researchers and medical journals. That includes the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, where she worked for 20 years and was its first female editor-in-chief from 1999 to 2000.
In 2009, the journal says, it helped pioneer a universal form requesting “that authors report all relevant financial conflicts” during the most recent three years. And it posts the form and study sponsorship. Besides Angell, another powerful voice is weighing in. The current editor-in-chief of the British journal Lancet, Dr. Richard Horton, wrote a scathing editorial, saying: “Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Science has taken a turn towards darkness.”
Sharyl Attkisson: Most people probably think an article is, in a journal, probably written at a university based on independent study, and that’s that.But before we get to that, we begin with a more obvious example of questionable science: the Chocolate Diet. The study was a hoax by a journalist to show how easy it is to get shoddy research published. A chocolate diet is one thing. But more and more, prestigious journals are getting caught inadvertently publishing false studies.
Angell: Yeah, it used to be that way, as you describe it, pretty simple. And it began to change as the pharmaceutical industry became richer, more powerful, more influential, and began to take over the sponsorship of probably most clinical research now.
Attkisson: What’s your view of how much we can trust the articles that appear in these prestigious medical journals?Pomeranz is a neuro-ophthalmologist at the Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine. He has authored dozens of journal articles, and says many studies are written by academic researchers fraught with conflicts of interest.
Dr. Howard Pomeranz: One always has to be aware of the possibility that somebody who is an author or co-author or someone who is consulted to help support the research was a paid consultant by the pharmaceutical industry and that’s not always apparent, when you look at someone’s affiliations as authorship on a paper.
Attkisson: In some cases, it sounds like it’s nothing more than advertising by an employee that works for a drug company.It wasn’t always that way. Angell says it used to be that pharmaceutical companies stayed out of the way of the research they paid medical schools and teaching hospitals to do.
Pomeranz: It is, and I think that’s often the way you have to look at it.
Angell: The drug companies did not claim to own the data. They didn’t even see the data, and then the researcher would submit it to whatever journal he wanted to. So, it was pretty much that way.Angell says that as she applied due diligence to the many studies submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine, it started to feel like a losing battle.
Attkisson: Independent?
Angell: Pretty much independent.
Angell: I would call up and say, ‘OK, you’ve shown that your drug is pretty good. But there’s not a single side effect. Any drug that does anything is going to have some side effects.’ And I had people say, ‘Well, the sponsor won’t let me.’Angell left the New England Journal of Medicine in 2000. But she kept her eye on the journal industry, which she says resisted meaningful efforts to rein in conflicts of interest. The New England Journal of Medicine declined interview requests, b from “Full Measure,” but said: “Since 1984 we have requested author disclosures.”
I began to be extremely distrustful of most of the research that was published. We did our very best, we often rejected things because it was clearly biased, but anything we rejected always ended up in another journal.
In 2009, the journal says, it helped pioneer a universal form requesting “that authors report all relevant financial conflicts” during the most recent three years. And it posts the form and study sponsorship. Besides Angell, another powerful voice is weighing in. The current editor-in-chief of the British journal Lancet, Dr. Richard Horton, wrote a scathing editorial, saying: “Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Science has taken a turn towards darkness.”
Attkisson: What if there were those who say you are too skeptical? That the pharmaceutical industry has best practices that it uses, that it has its financial stakes at interest, but it also has human interest … at its heart?
Angell: Well, I would say I have a bridge for you …
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