Every year, around US$200 billion (£150 billion) is spent globally on health research. Meanwhile, millions of people volunteer their time to be participants in health studies. Despite all the resources that go into creating medical research, though, there is a glaring issue – almost all of that time and money achieves nothing. In fact, about 85% of all research is simply wasted.
This might seem too large a figure to be true, but it is much easier to imagine when you consider that around 50% of medical trials are not published at all. Studies that tend not to be published are those with results that are inconclusive or negative – so-called “null results”. To put this into context, this means studies that find that a drug helps to treat a disease are much more likely to be published than those finding no evidence that the drug works.
Very often drugs are not tested as they should be and then publish inconclusive evidence to try and encourage investment. I am afraid the Daily Fail do this far to often.
I was given a trial medicine which was supposed to be super non reactive/ allergic. Within 3 days I felt like my head was going to explode. I was told to stop for one week and do it again and on the third day same problem. GP told me it put the research back 6 months?
You could take this a number of ways. When researching a treatment very often only one aspect or part of that treatment is researched. If that is successful then another part is researched until all aspects have been proven. It comes as no surprise that many fail. Many treatments start as a theory however turning theory into a working treatment is difficult. As many brilliant scientists have found one overlooked or unexpected reaction can ruin years of work. New drugs are expensive for that reason due to so many failing due to safety or effectiveness.
The first two need to be mandatory but this third one would only work if all they did was offer review suggestions as to how to improve the research - not use it as a reason to not publish. It concerns me that alternative medicine research is very poorly funded and I would hate to see "Registered Reports" used to hamstring research they don't like.
"3. Registered reports is a publication format where authors submit their study protocol to a journal for review before recruiting any patients."
This comes as no surprise. In my dietetic course, the 32 members of our year all did honours research projects. Mine was the only one that had a statistically significant result, and that was because I had worked on the project in collaboration with a professor at a local hospital, unrelated to the college.
The research in pharma industries moved away from a logical and intuitive approach to mechanical and automotive. The mechanical and automotive approach allows them to test a hundred thousand compounds per day. They discard 99,999 results for one drug wasting an awful lot of resources but what do they gain? The mechanical and automotive approach allows them to plead ignorance of the side effects thus avoid billions in litigation. It inflates the cost of research thus justify the high price of the drug.
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How the Far East eradicated the virus in two months while we are still at it!
Healthcare professional needed for questionnaire, Masters by Research project, thanks
A BILLION
