Chapter 2: Article 1 (Listen to the article Here)
"The science is settled!" Those words are often proclaimed in a vaccine discussion. Well, I'd like to point out what the experts say about this settled and indisputable science which fills the medical journals.
Dr. Richard Horton is the Editor-in-Chief of the Lancet, which is one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. He has stated that much of the published research filling the medical journals today is very poor in quality and even fraudulent. In an article he published within the Lancet, he is quoted as saying (emphasis mine):
...[a] symposium—on the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research, held at the Wellcome Trust in London last week—touched on one of the most sensitive issues in science today: the idea that something has gone fundamentally wrong with one of our greatest human creations.
The case against science is straightforward: 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 of bad research behaviour is alarming.
A statement made by Dr. Marcia Angell, the former Editor-in-Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine (another of the most prestigious medical journals in the world), and a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, corroborates Dr. Horton's statement. She says:
Clinical trials are also biased through designs for research that are chosen to yield favorable results for sponsors. … In short, it is often possible to make clinical trials come out pretty much any way you want, which is why it’s so important that investigators be truly disinterested in the outcome of their work. …
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.
Rather than summarize an important video, I'll simply conclude by saying it's essential you watch it - it's a 12 minutes TEDMed Talk given by Dr. Ben Goldacre. This videos explain the quotes made above, providing a condensed summary of how our medical journals came to be in such rough shape, and why we should be very cautious in believing what's currently published in the medical journals. This video is specific to pharmaceutical drugs (not vaccines), but applies to vaccine research as well.
CONTINUE to the next article here: Ch2: Article 2
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