Can we trust clinical studies?

[faridaro]

Here is the article written by my favorite electrophysiologist Dr. John Mandrola whom I've been following for the past 4 years. In the nutshell - the 29 teams of researchers analyzed the same data in 29 different ways and found out that varying analytic choices, would generate different outcomes. Who knew that there are so many different ways to analyze the data and how this can affect study results?

sensiblemed.substack.com/p/...

[House2]

If you really want to blow a gasket, consider the research questioning impact of the placebo effect,

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/200...

[faridaro in reply to House2]

It seems there is such a multitude of factors affecting clinical trials outcomes that it's impossible to wrap our minds around this.

[park_bear]

Good find. Paper here:

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10...

Impressed with the degree of variability.

"Twenty-nine teams involving 61 analysts used the same data set to address the same research question: whether soccer referees are more likely to give red cards to dark-skin-toned players than to light-skin-toned players. Analytic approaches varied widely across the teams, and the estimated effect sizes ranged from 0.89 to 2.93 (Mdn = 1.31) in odds-ratio units. Twenty teams (69%) found a statistically significant positive effect, and 9 teams (31%) did not observe a significant relationship. Overall, the 29 different analyses used 21 unique combinations of covariates. Neither analysts’ prior beliefs about the effect of interest nor their level of expertise readily explained the variation in the outcomes of the analyses. Peer ratings of the quality of the analyses also did not account for the variability. These findings suggest that significant variation in the results of analyses of complex data may be difficult to avoid, even by experts with honest intentions"

[Hidden]

And then there’s the research data on Alzheimer’s that seems to have been fudged and has led to years wasted.

[NellieH]

First of all, this was not a clinical trial. More importantly, no worthy study posits itself as 100%. That's why there are systematic reviews. And the virtue of science is that it's designed to be reputable. I'd say that 69% concurrence about what were likely very hard-to-interpret multiple variables, is pretty good.

[faridaro in reply to NellieH]

Good point.

[MarionP in reply to NellieH]

Yes, the scientific method addresses much of these, so long as we actually do it. But DO we?

[NellieH]

We live in a time of so much distrust of institutions. I think it's good to maintain trust where it makes sense, especially in institutions designed to be testable, rather than those that just require our belief. Also, I meant that the virtue of science is that it's designed to be repeatable and testable. Autocorrect, which we should almost never trust :-), changed it from repeatable to reputable. I'm not suggesting scientists never get anything wrong or never fudge their data, which is much worse than getting things wrong. (That guy who made a reputation in the '80s by claiming that vacccines were linked to autism was revealed conclusively to have deliberately fudged his data.)

[alexask in reply to NellieH]

Institutions have only themselves to blame. For instance I don't believe it is possible to design a safe medication in ten months. And so it has proved. Yet here we are, with no liability accepted for any side effects and actual mandates still in place. We have the best science that money can buy.

[kaypeeoh]

No, one cannot trust a clinical study. Because researchers are liars and cheats who live by the 'publish or perish' mantra.

IF 100 studies support something while 10 studies refute it, then maybe It's worth looking into. The problem is it gets into the literature and ultimately is published as a textbook and students are taught something that's false.

As a student it was really difficult to 'unlearn' bogus beliefs.

In vet medical school we learned never to use tetracycline in a horse because it could cause fatal colic. Once I was in practice the experienced vets told me they couldn't run a practice without it.

[Solvang53]

big pharma "funds" vet and medical schools to push their agenda...which includes the vaccine "schedules"... vaccines are neither safe or effective...for humans or pets

[Solvang53]

clinical trials are funded by big pharma...a known criminal enterprise

[MarionP]

Who knew? Some of us. It's a matter of realizing that you're only going to find things that are within the illuminated path of where you are beaming your flashlight. Everything that is outside that flashlight beam, away from where you happen to be specifically pointing it, out there in the dark that the flashlight is not pointing at, is not going to be noticed.. and instead, we assume that because it's dark, there's nothing out there in that dark so there's nothing to be found by pointing a flashlight all the other ways that the flashlight could be pointed. Humans tend to assume that there is nothing outside the beam of where you happened to be pointing your flashlight. That's why scientists are actually supposed to follow the actual standard scientific method for investigation, but not enough give much of a rat's ass about that really. Comes to get in the way of what we want.

[MarionP]

That's why they're working as fast as they can to finally achieve complete virtual reality so we don't have to go through all this in the first place