Biostitution

On scientific corruption and selling horcruxes

• “For a pharmaceutical company, delaying or minimizing knowledge of a side effect of a medication has cash value. Similarly, not publishing negative studies may shift the balance of subsequent meta-analyses.”

• “Journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry.”

• In studies that used pills, 92% did not disclose placebo ingredients. In 74% of studies that used injections and 72% using other treatment methods, placebo composition was not disclosed.

• “For most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true.

I want to first apologise to all prostitutes. What you do is far more honourable than anything any of the people referred to in this article are engaged in.

When I listened to The Real Anthony Fauci on Audible, I noticed the mention of Gate’s trial designer. I remember thinking, off course(!), trial and study “design” would be a highly sought after skillset, that should be worth a pretty penny. There are so many clever ways to “design” the outcomes you want while doing it out in the open so that most people cannot see what you are up to.

Trial design is a magic trick, and the best magicians obviously would be employed by the best money. But I could never remember the guy’s name.

Anyway, I went back and dug it up:

The Together Trial organizer was Gates’ trial designer, Ed Mills, a scientist with heavy conflicts with Pharma and a reputation as a notorious industry biostitute.

Ed Mills.

I went looking a bit more and found him referenced here also.

TOGETHER Trial on Ivermectin: Did the Gates Foundation Fund It?

There have been questions as to the funding of the TOGETHER trial by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And how could there not be, when in 2020, Ed Mills, the Principal Investigator of the trial, said in an interview that…

The majority of the time I work for a company called Cytel, where I design clinical trials, predominantly for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

And here:

The High-Impact Medical Journal Editors Harassment Of The World's Leading Clinical Researcher of Repurposed Drugs in the COVID Pandemic - Part 1

Just ask Ed Mills and the rest of the corrupt NEJM TOGETHER ivermectin trial investigators or the corrupt JAMA Lopez-Medina trial investigators if their placebo tablets looked like their active study drug tablets. The idea that these guys are supposedly respected trialists is absurd.

And here:

The Publication of Fraudulent Ivermectin Trials by the High Impact Medical Journals - Part 1

I wish I could give him a good slap in the face. Sorry if that sounds immature but geez, I need to slap someone. Maybe I will slap Ed Mills instead, he lives closer. Remember Ed? He is the mastermind behind the most fraudulent trial of them all, a trial which sailed through peer-review to land on the front page of the highest impact journal in the world, the New England Journal of Medicine. 

I think it’s fair to say that Mills “designed” the bullet that was used to kill Ivermectin, and ultimately millions of others.

Obviously with a big helping hand from Andrew Hill.

The assassination of Ivermectin and the death of millions

Dr. AS Relman, professor of medicine at Harvard:

“The medical profession is being bought off by the drug and vaccine industry, not only at the level of medical practice but also at the level of teaching and research. Academic institutions in this country (USA) have indulged in becoming paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I find that hideous.”

But it’s Kennedy’s reference to Mills as a “biostitute” that really stands out.

Indeed, capture entails selling yourself.

Depending on the situation, selling a Horcrux (that includes a fragment of your soul) is indeed lucrative.

I’ve had this book on my bookshelf for some time.

Miller's Review of Critical Vaccine Studies: 400 Important Scientific Papers Summarized for Parents and Researchers - Miller, Neil Z.

It’s an incredible work that I have only recently been looking into as I try to get my head around what they have done with chickenpox. More on that in another stack.

But what I discovered was a final chapter titled: Conflicts of Interest, False Studies, and Industry Control

It’s a wonderful summary of 19 studies that show, rather than just tell, what capture, and data corruption actually looks like.

Study 432 stands out for me.

There is no requirement that the authors of prominent highly-cited randomized, placebo-controlled studies disclose composition of the placebo

“Failure to report placebo composition compromises the foundation on which medical decisions are based, and on which the fate of lives may rest.”

Golomb BA, Erickson LC, et al. What’s in placebos: who knows? Analysis of randomized, controlled trials. Ann Intern Med 2010; 153(8): 532-35.

• In studies that used pills, 92% did not disclose placebo ingredients. In 74% of studies that used injections and 72% using other treatment methods, placebo composition was not disclosed.

I’ve written at length about placebo corruption in vaccines here.

On Corrupting Placebos: A feature, not a bug.

But this is the first time I have come across a study that looks at broader placebo corruption.

The story we have been sold is that the RCT (double-blind randomized controlled trial) is THE Gold Standard of scientific truth seeking.

This story is built on another story, that of the “control” group.

If I asked 100 people in the street about their thoughts on the “placebo group” and what the people in that would be given, I am confident that 100 out of 100 would say, in different ways: saline, sugar pill, something inert or innocuous. That is what I used to think, and for anyone that actually thinks about it, that is what they would expect a placebo to be.

But, if you give the placebo group something harmless, them the harmful substance in the main “control group” will show up as harmful. Not good.

So the “placebo” needs to be something approximately as harmful as the substance being tested. It’s that simple.

There are two points I want to make about study 432.

One, study authors are NOT required to tell us what was in the placebo! They are allowed to keep that heart and soul of their “safe and effective” claim, a secret.

Two, between 70-90% of them take up their “secrecy option” when they know that announcing a true placebo, if that is what they used, would immeasurably increase the credibility of their study. Knowing that, they stay mum. This is proof positive, that there is something to hide about the placebo used. That is a direct and reasonable conclusion.

Dr M Angell, physician, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine:

"It is simply no longer possible to believe the essential clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of reference doctors or to authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in making this observation, which I came to slowly and reluctantly over two decades as editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.”

Desmet in The Psychology of Totalitarianism explains this replication, and data fraud problem, by comparing The Science to a carpenter:

This kind of full-fledged fraud was relatively rare, however, and not actually the biggest problem. The biggest problem was with less dramatic instances of questionable research practices, which were reaching epidemic proportions. Daniele Fanelli conducted a systematic survey in 2009 and found that at least 72 percent of researchers were willing to somehow distort their research results. On top of that, research was also replete with unintentional calculation mistakes and other errors. An article in Nature rightly called it “a tragedy of errors.”

All of this translated into a problem of replicability of scientific findings. To put it simply, this means that the results of scientific experiments were not stable. When several researchers performed the same experiment, they came to different findings. For example, in economics research, replication failed about 50 percent of the time, in cancer research about 60 percent of the time, and in biomedical research no less than 85 percent of the time. The quality of research was so atrocious that the world-renowned statistician John Ioannidis published an article bluntly entitled “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” Ironically, the studies that assessed the quality of research also came to diverging conclusions. This is perhaps the best evidence of how fundamental the problem is.

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In both medicine and psychology, measurement is usually done on the basis of tests that result in numerical scores. These figures give the impression of being objective; however, this needs some perspective. Studies into so-called “cross-method agreement” start from a question that is as simple as it is interesting: If you measure the same “object” using different measurement methods, to what extent will the results coincide? If the measurement methods are accurate, the results should be virtually identical. However, this is not the case. Not even close. In psychology, for example, the correlation between the results obtained by different measurement methods rarely exceed 0.45. This, of course, is an abstract number, which is why I like to give a concrete example in my university lectures. Imagine you are building a house and a carpenter comes to take measurements for eight windows. He uses three different tools on each window: a folding rule, a tape measure, and a laser measure. If the carpenter’s measurements are as inadequate as a psychologist’s, he would report the following results (see table 1.1).

Table 1.1. A Carpenter’s Measurements with a Psychologist’s Accuracy

With the folding rule, the carpenter concludes that window 1 is 180 cm wide; with the tape measure, the same window is 130 cm wide; and with the laser measure, it is 60 cm wide. It is the same scenario with the second window: The folding rule shows that window 2 is 100 cm wide, the tape measure shows that it is 200 cm wide, and the laser measure shows that it is 150 cm wide. The correlation among all sets of the three measurements is 0.45.

Would you hire this carpenter? This is about the best you can expect when psychologists use three different measuring instruments. This doesn’t mean that all psychological measurements are meaningless, but the idea that they are “objective” needs to be put into perspective.

This is reality distortion at its best. But more importantly it is ignorance making. It is Constructed Ignorance.

Agnotology - Lies are Unbekoming

If you control knowledge and sense making, then you control ignorance making. Duh!

What this also means is that you control capital R, Reality, or Reality™, and are able to shift it away from reality.

Dr R Horton, editor of The Lancet:

“A scandalous number of published studies are unreliable at best, when they are not completely misleading, in addition to fraudulent. 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.”

Here is chapter 24, of Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies. I strongly recommend it as a handy resource for a wide variety of vaccine questions.

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Conflicts of Interest, False Studies, and Industry Control

The studies in this chapter provide strong evidence that biomedical research has been compromised by conflicts of interest, premeditated bias, and industry control. For example, in one study, 33% of scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) admitted that they engaged in questionable scientific behavior during the previous 3 years. Nearly 16% of these top U.S. scientists changed the design, methodology or results of a study due to pressure from a funding source.

Conflicts of interest are pervasive within the vaccine industry and compromise the objectivity of vaccine safety research. For example, vaccine manufacturers sponsor research on their own products. Many authors of published papers on the safety of vaccines are paid consultants for or receive grant money from vaccine manufacturers. Medical journals rely on advertising revenue from pharmaceutical companies. Even the CDC receives money from the pharmaceutical industry that influences decisions it makes about the public welfare.

In this stack on Peer Review, I outline how this “advertising” racket works.

It’s all about the “Reprint”!

Peer Review - Lies are Unbekoming

And yet, in fact, these newspapers are intimately linked to Big Pharma's interests.

First, because they agree to insert advertisements for the pharmaceutical industry in their columns.

But above all because these medical journals practice without restraint the very lucrative system of "reprinting".

Here's how it works: as soon as one of these newspapers publishes a positive study on a drug, the manufacturer buys thousands of copies of the relevant edition.[11] !

However, the massive recirculation of a single issue can generate up to 2 million euros in turnover for the magazine!

This is not nothing, when you know that the annual turnover of The Lancet is $ 40 million.[12] (and NEJM of 100 million).

In total, it is estimated that these "reprints" represent up to a third of the revenues of these newspapers.[13] !

This is all the more significant since these revenues have a margin rate of at least 80% (because it costs nothing to re-print)[14].

In short, these reprints ordered by Big Pharma make a lot of money for medical journals!

According to John Ioannidis, an expert on research bias, most published medical studies are false. Inaccurate findings can occur from a combination of factors, including the author’s choice of study design, data, manipulation in the analysis or selective reporting of findings. Even large randomized studies with accurate research designs may provide false conclusions.

Oddly, there are no regulations guiding the composition of placebos nor is there a requirement to specify the composition of placebos in randomized, placebo-controlled trials published in journals. Placebos that are not neutral can influence study results. When studies do not provide sufficient details about placebo interventions, study replication is not possible.

Finally, anyone who questions the dominant views about vaccines is subject to threats, censorship, and loss of their livelihood. Doctors or scientists who question vaccines are considered threats to the public perception that all experts support vaccination. Proponents of vaccination suppress dissent in ways that are unfair. Methods include spreading rumors that threaten professional reputations, harassment, and denial of funding or access to research material. Suppression of dissent sends a warning to scientists and has a chilling effect on research. Free speech and the unimpeded ability to investigate unpopular topics are essential for scientific progress. In addition, authorities are tracking anti-vaccine tweets and are seeking efficient ways to censor anti-vaccine information on the internet.

420.

Many scientists intentionally fabricate data and falsify scientific research

“This is the first meta-analysis of surveys asking scientists about their experiences of misconduct. It found that, on average, about 2% of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once and up to one third admitted a variety of other questionable research practices.”

Fanelli D. How many scientists fabricate and falsify research? A systematic review and meta-analysis of survey data. PloS One 2009 May 29; 4(5): e5738.

·         This study analyzed 21 surveys that asked scientists whether they have committed or know of a colleague who committed research misconduct that distorted scientific knowledge, including fabrication or falsification of data.

·         Up to 5% (an average of 2%) of scientists admitted that they falsified, fabricated or modified data to improve results at least once. Up to 34% admitted that they engaged in other questionable research practices.

·         Up to 33% (an average of 14%) of scientists had personal knowledge of colleagues who had falsified research data. Up to 72% knew about other questionable research practices committed by their colleagues.

·         Some examples of questionable research practices included eliminating data points and altering the design, methodology or results of a study due to pressures from a funding source.

·         Scientific misconduct may be more extensive in clinical, pharmacological and medical research than in other fields due to the large financial interests that foster substantial bias.

·         In one survey, 81% of research trainees in the biomedical sciences were “willing to select, omit or fabricate data to win a grant or publish a paper.”

·         Because self-reports normally underestimate the true frequency of scientific misconduct, the findings in this paper may be conservative.

421.

Top scientists in the United States regularly engage in scientific misconduct that threatens the integrity of science

“Our findings reveal a range of questionable practices that are striking in their breadth and prevalence. U.S. scientists engage in a range of behaviors extending far beyond fabrication, falsification or plagiarism that can damage the integrity of science.”

Martinson BC, Anderson MS, de Vries R. Scientists behaving badly. Nature 2005 Jun 9; 435: 737-38.

·         Researchers surveyed 3,247 early- and mid-career U.S. scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and asked them to anonymously report their own scientific misbehavior during the previous three years.

·         Overall, 33% of scientists funded by the NIH admitted that they engaged in questionable scientific behavior during the previous 3 years.

·         Nearly 16% of NIH-funded scientists changed the design, methodology or results of a study due to pressure from a funding source; 15% dropped data points from analyses; 14% used inadequate or inappropriate research designs.

·         Nearly 13% of NIH-funded scientists disregarded others’ use of flawed data or questionable interpretation of data; 6% failed to present data that contradicted one’s own previous research.

·         Scientific misbehavior tended to increase as scientists gained in age and experience.

·         Findings in this paper suggest that questionable scientific behavior that occurs on a regular basis may pose a greater threat to the integrity of scientific research than high-profile misconduct such as fraud.

·         Estimates of scientific misbehavior found in this paper may be conservative.

422.

Scientists at top research institutions in the United States receive benefits from industry that compromise the integrity of their studies

“Our data demonstrate that senior-level investigators who responded to the survey receive a wide variety of industry-sponsored support which is important for their careers, and that industry support of research and researchers is pervasive in the clinical and research departments of top U.S. research institutions.”

Tereskerz PM, Hamric AB, et al. Prevalence of industry support and its relationship to research integrity. Account Res 2009 Apr-Jun; 16(2): 78-105.

·         An anonymous survey of 528 medical school faculty members at 33 top research institutions in the United States was conducted to learn how industry sponsorship influences scientific research.

·         Two-thirds (67%) of medical researchers in this survey received some form of industry support, and 32% admitted that some portion of their salary was paid for by industry.

·         Full professors were significantly more likely than associate professors to receive industry support, such as research grants, consulting agreements, royalty payments, joint commercial ventures, laboratory equipment, and various other financial arrangements.

·         Of the respondents who received industry support for their research, 61% granted their industry sponsor prepublication review of manuscripts. Many also agreed to present results in a way that is favorable to the sponsor’s product and to delay or completely withhold publication of results.

·         A high percentage of respondents also reported that the interpretation of research data, the publication of research results, and scientific advancement in their field of research had all been compromised by industry support.

423.

The pharmaceutical industry has control of scientific journals, censors intellectual freedom, and threatens the integrity of biomedical research

“For a pharmaceutical company, delaying or minimizing knowledge of a side effect of a medication has cash value. Similarly, not publishing negative studies may shift the balance of subsequent meta-analyses.”

Fava GA. Preserving intellectual freedom in clinical medicine. Psychother Psychosom 2009; 78: 1-5.

·         This paper reviewed ways in which the pharmaceutical industry has gained control over many scientific societies and journals, censors intellectual freedom and threatens the integrity of biomedical research.

·         Special interest groups representing pharmaceutical companies act as editors, reviewers and consultants to medical journals and research organizations, with the goal of systematically preventing the dissemination of information that conflicts with their interests.

·         Pharmaceutical companies use the public relations industry to manipulate the interpretation of clinical trials with propaganda and to stifle dissent.

·         The medical establishment is actively engaged in special interest advocacy that insulates the profession from intellectual freedom, alternative views and criticism of its prevailing practices.

424.

Medical journals benefit financially when they publish pharmaceutical industry studies that favor their products

“Journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry.”

Smith R. Medical journals are an extension of the marketing arm of pharmaceutical companies. PLoS Med 2005 May; 2(5): e138.

·         This paper reviewed the evidence suggesting that medical journals and the pharmaceutical industry have a financially incestuous relationship that could compromise the integrity of science.

·         Pharmaceutical companies provide medical journals with a substantial income from advertising. In addition, drug companies often purchase thousands of dollars worth of reprints if their papers are published. This creates a strong conflict of interest for journal editors and publishers.

·         For a drug company, a favorable study published in a medical journal is immensely more valuable than ads.

·         About 70% of clinical trials published in major journals are funded by the drug industry. Studies funded by the industry are 4 times more likely than studies funded from other sources to have findings favorable to the company.

·         Drug companies have many ways to increase their odds of producing studies with favorable results. For example, they can suppress negative studies, conduct trials against inferior treatments, or show results that are most likely to impress, such as reduction in relative rather than absolute risk.

·         The industry might also do subgroup analyses or use multiple endpoints or multi-location trials and select for publication those with favorable results.

·         The peer-review process is defunct, inclined toward bias and abuse. Medical journals have become marketing tools of the drug industry, publishing studies that favor their products. Instead of publishing clinical trials, journals should consider critically describing them.

425.

Premeditated bias has infected the basic institutions and practices of the biomedical research community

“Today’s biomedical researchers live in an organizational world within which lying and cheating are rife.”

Noble JH. Detecting bias in biomedical research: looking at study design and published findings is not enough. Monash Bioethics Review 2007 Jan-Apr; 26(1-2): 24-45.

·         Premeditated bias has infected the basic institutions and practices of the biomedical research community.

·         Biomedical researchers and their sponsors publish skewed and misleading research findings.

·         More than 65,000 product liability lawsuits have been filed against pharmaceutical drug manufacturers, which suggests that they and the FDA consider patient safety a low priority.

·         This paper reviewed the technical means by which biomedical researchers produce studies that contain premeditated bias — fabricated data is just an extreme form — and makes recommendations on ways to counteract it.

426.

Glick JL. Scientific data audit—a key management tool. Accountability in Research 1992; 2(3): 153-68.

·         Data audits by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that 10-20% of studies contained misrepresented data, inaccurate reporting and fabricated experimental results.

·         These findings resulted in 2% of clinical researchers being judged guilty of serious scientific misconduct.

427.

Conflicts of interest are pervasive within the vaccine industry and compromise the objectivity of vaccine safety research

“Vaccine manufacturers have financial motives and public health officials have bureaucratic reasons that might lead them to sponsor research that concludes vaccines are safe.”

DeLong G. Conflicts of interest in vaccine safety research. Account Res 2012; 19(2): 65-88.

·         This paper summarizes conflicts of interest that pervade the vaccine industry and offers suggestions on possible remedies.

·         Vaccine manufacturers sponsor research on their own products.

·         Many authors of published papers assessing the safety of vaccines are paid consultants for or receive grant money from vaccine manufacturers.

·         Medical journals rely on advertising revenue from pharmaceutical companies.

·         The vaccine industry employs three lobbyists for every member of Congress. Many lobbyists within the pharmaceutical industry were former members of Congress.

·         The FDA and CDC may be reluctant to sponsor research that reveals safety problems associated with vaccines that they licensed and promoted because it could damage their reputations and reduce public trust.

·         Reports of vaccine injury are not adequately investigated.

·         Agencies that oversee vaccine safety should be prohibited from promoting vaccines.

·         Data in vaccine safety studies should be released to the public so that independent scientists can replicate the findings.

428.

Authors of important studies published in top medical journals have conflicts of interest that influence study results

“Conflict of interest is widespread among the authors of published manuscripts and these authors are more likely to present positive findings.”

Friedman LS, Richter ED. Relationship between conflicts of interest and research results. J Gen Intern Med 2004 Jan; 19(1): 51-56.

·         Researchers analyzed 398 studies published in the top 2 medical journals — New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) — to determine a) their sources of funding and b) whether there is a link between study findings and conflicts of interest.

·         Private corporations funded 38% of the studies published in NEJM and 35% of the studies in JAMA. The top 5 companies sponsoring these studies were all large vaccine/drug manufacturers.

·         Nearly 39% of the studies investigating pharmaceutical treatments had authors with conflicts of interest.

·         There was a statistically significant relationship between studies that were conducted by authors with conflicts of interest and positive research findings (odds ratio, OR = 2.64). The association was even stronger when using a less restrictive conflict of interest definition: (OR = 7.32).

·         The odds are extremely small that negative study results would be published by authors with conflicts of interest: (OR = 0.05).

·         Authors with conflicts of interest are up to 20 times less likely to publish studies with negative findings than authors without conflicts of interest.

·         This study provides strong evidence that conflicts of interest in biomedical research are pervasive and that current systems of oversight are ineffective at monitoring this serious threat to the integrity of science.

429.

Meta-analyses of pharmaceutical products do not report conflicts of interest

“Among a group of meta-analyses of pharmacological treatments published in high-impact biomedical journals, information concerning primary study funding and author conflicts of interest for the included randomized controlled trials were only rarely reported.”

Roseman M, Milette K, et al. Reporting of conflicts of interest in meta-analyses of trials of pharmacological treatments. JAMA 2011 Mar 9; 305(10): 1008-17.

·         Meta-analysis is a large study that uses statistical techniques to integrate data from several independent randomized controlled trials.

·         This study investigated whether meta-analyses of pharmaceutical treatments report conflicts of interest disclosed in the original studies.

·         Of 29 meta-analyses reviewed (which included 509 randomized, controlled studies) only 2 (7%) reported who funded the study and none reported the authors’ financial ties with the pharmaceutical industry.

·         In 7 of the 29 meta-analyses reviewed, every underlying study was funded by the pharmaceutical industry or had authors with financial ties to the drug industry. Yet, only 1 of these 7 meta-analyses reported the source of funding and none reported a monetary link between study authors and the industry.

430.

Roseman M, Turner EH, et al. Reporting of conflicts of interest from drug trials in Cochrane reviews: cross sectional study. BMJ 2012 Aug 16; 345: e5155.

“This study found that most Cochrane reviews of drug trials did not report information on trial funding sources or trial author-industry financial ties, including employment, from included trials. When this information was reported, patterns of reporting were inconsistent.”

431.

The CDC receives money from the pharmaceutical industry that influences decisions it makes about the public welfare

“The CDC’s image as an independent watchdog over the public health has given it enormous prestige, and its recommendations are occasionally enforced by law. Despite the agency’s disclaimer, the CDC does receive millions of dollars in industry gifts and funding, both directly and indirectly, and several recent CDC actions and recommendations have raised questions about the science it cites, the clinical guidelines it promotes, and the money it is taking.”

Lenzer J. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: protecting the private good? BMJ 2015 May 15; 350: h2362.

·         The CDC claims that it has no financial dealings with the manufacturers of commercial products but this is not true.

·         In 1992, Congress passed legislation that created the non-profit CDC Foundation to encourage relationships between the CDC and industry. Pharmaceutical companies donate to the CDC Foundation.

·         The CDC receives millions of dollars annually in “conditional funding” from corporations and the CDC Foundation. The CDC uses conditional funds to oversee controversial recommendations and studies. Corporations can punish the CDC if it conducts research that affects their profits.

·         Industry funding inserts bias into treatment recommendations and study results which is unacceptable for a public health agency.

·         The CDC has a systemic lack of oversight of its ethics program.

·         The CDC’s high credibility among physicians would be threatened if they learned that it takes money from pharmaceutical companies.

·         The fact that the CDC takes money from industry cannot be fixed by asking the CDC to be more ethical and avoid conflicts of interest. U.S. legislators caused this problem and can make new laws to fix the problem.

432.

There is no requirement that the authors of prominent highly-cited randomized, placebo-controlled studies disclose composition of the placebo

“Failure to report placebo composition compromises the foundation on which medical decisions are based, and on which the fate of lives may rest.”

Golomb BA, Erickson LC, et al. What’s in placebos: who knows? Analysis of randomized, controlled trials. Ann Intern Med 2010; 153(8): 532-35.

·         Although placebos can influence study results, there are no regulations guiding placebo composition.

·         This study was designed to assess how often researchers specify the composition of placebos in randomized, placebo-controlled trials published in journals with a high impact factor. A total of 176 studies that used pills, injections and other treatment methods were included.

·         In studies that used pills, 92% did not disclose placebo ingredients. In 74% of studies that used injections and 72% using other treatment methods, placebo composition was not disclosed.

·         Placebos are widely believed to be physiologically inert. However, no substances are known to be physiologically inert.

·         Placebos that are not neutral can have effects that influence study results.

·         When studies do not provide sufficient details about placebo interventions, study replication is not possible.

·         Studies that fail to identify placebo ingredients violate basic scientific standards.

433.

Most published medical studies are false

“For most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.”

Ioannidis JP. Why most published research findings are false. PloS Med 2005 Aug; 2(8): e124.

·         This paper demonstrates that most published research findings are false.

·         Bias, which produces false findings, can occur from a combination of factors, including the authors’ choice of study design, data, manipulation in the analysis or selective reporting of findings.

·         Findings are less likely to be true when the effect is small, when there is great flexibility in the study design and analytical methods, when there are financial interests, and when more teams are seeking statistical significance.

·         Some findings will be false due to chance variability despite an ideal study design, data, analysis and presentation.

·         Even with large randomized studies and accurate research designs, bias is a major problem with manipulated analyses, outcomes and selective reporting.

·         Data can be used inefficiently, researchers may fail to notice statistically significant relationships, or there could be conflicts of interest that ignore or hide significant findings.

·         Conflicts of interest in biomedical research are common and rarely reported.

·         Most biomedical research has a very low probability of providing true findings. Even large epidemiological studies may provide false conclusions.

·         The peer-review process may be used to suppress the publication of findings that refute reviewers’ existing beliefs in a scientific theory or their own findings. This can condemn an entire research field to false dogma.

434.

Highly-cited medical studies, even randomized controlled studies, are often refuted by subsequent studies

“Contradiction and initially stronger effects are not unusual in highly cited research of clinical interventions and their outcomes. Controversies are most common with highly cited non-randomized studies, but even the most highly cited randomized trials may be challenged and refuted over time.”

Ioannidis JP. Contradicted and initially stronger effects in highly cited clinical research. JAMA 2005 Jul 13; 294(2): 218-28.

·         Published studies on the efficacy of medical interventions are sometimes refuted by subsequent studies that either give opposite conclusions or show that the original findings were too strong.

·         This paper compared 45 of the most highly cited studies against subsequent studies of comparable sample size and similar or better controlled designs. (The most highly cited studies receive the most attention and have the greatest influence over scientific thinking and debate.)

·         Thirty-one percent of highly-cited original clinical research studies were either contradicted or shown to have exaggerated effects by subsequent studies.

·         Eighty-three percent of highly-cited non-randomized studies, and 23% of randomized controlled studies, were either contradicted or shown to have exaggerated effects by subsequent studies.

·         Studies that were not so highly cited had similar proportions of contradicted results as the highly cited ones.

·         Publication bias, where journals favor the rapid and prominent publication of studies with statistically significant findings (versus those with no significant findings), may contribute to the high number of refuted studies.

·         Findings from recent studies — even those with impressive evidence — should be read with caution.

435.

Anyone who is critical of vaccines may be unfairly suppressed, exposed to threats, censorship, and loss of their livelihood

“According to the highest ideals of science, ideas should be judged on their merits, and addressed through mustering evidence and logic. Suppression of dissent is a violation of these ideals.”

Martin B. On the Suppression of Vaccination Dissent. Sci Eng Ethics 2015; 21(1): 143-57.

·         Some proponents of vaccination believe that anyone who is critical of vaccines cannot be credible. They may be labeled anti-vaccine or anti-science, implying that there are no legitimate scientific concerns about vaccination.

·         Doctors or scientists who question vaccines are considered threats to the public perception that all experts support vaccination.

·         Anyone who questions the dominant views about vaccines is subject to abuse, including threats, formal complaints, censorship, and loss of their livelihood.

·         Proponents of vaccination suppress dissent in ways that are unfair. Methods include spreading rumors that threaten professional reputations, harassment, and denial of funding or access to research material.

·         There is a double standard in biomedical and vaccine research. When orthodox views are promoted, serious ethical violations such as undeclared conflicts of interest, using false placebos and withholding evidence, are often ignored.

·         Suppression of dissent impedes open debate and deters vaccine supporters from considering all available evidence.

·         Scientific advancement requires challenging orthodox ideas. Suppression of dissent sends a warning to scientists and has a chilling effect on research.

·         Free speech and the unimpeded ability to investigate unpopular topics are essential for scientific progress.

436.

Authorities are tracking anti-vaccine information on the internet

“Information about social connections may be useful in the surveillance of opinions for public health purposes.”

Zhou X, Coiera E, et al. Using social connection information to improve opinion mining: identifying negative sentiment about HPV vaccines on Twitter. Stud Health Technol Inform 2015; 216: 761-765.

·         In this paper, researchers examined ways in which computer programs could be designed to improve surveillance methods on Twitter to more accurately identify anti-vaccine opinions.

437.

Dunn AG, Leask J, et al. Associations between exposure to and expression of negative opinions about human papillomavirus vaccines on social media: an observational study. J Med Internet Res 2015 Jun 10; 17(6): e144.

“This research may be useful for identifying individuals and groups currently at risk of disproportionate exposure to misinformation about HPV vaccines.”

·         In this paper, researchers sought to determine whether exposure to negative opinions about HPV vaccines on Twitter is associated with the subsequent expression of negative opinions.

·         Between October 2013 and April 2014, 83,551 tweets that included terms related to HPV vaccines were analyzed by a “machine learning classifier” and classified as either negative or neutral/positive.

·         Approximately 38% of people who were exposed to a majority of negative tweets about HPV vaccines subsequently posted a negative tweet, compared to 11% of people who were exposed to a majority of positive and neutral tweets (relative risk, RR = 3.46).

438.

Authorities want to censor free speech and anti-vaccine information on the internet

“Online communities with greater freedom of speech lead to a dominance of anti-vaccine voices. Moderation of content by editors can offer balance between free expression and factual accuracy. Health communicators and medical institutions need to step up their activity on the internet.”

Venkatraman A, Garg N, Kumar N. Greater freedom of speech on Web 2.0 correlates with dominance of views linking vaccines to autism. Vaccine 2015 Mar 17; 33(12): 1422-25.

·         In this paper, four large internet websites were analyzed to determine how much freedom of speech each site permits, as measured by viewpoints that support a link between vaccines and autism.

·         YouTube allows users to search by relevance, which allows anyone’s uploaded material to rise to the top of search results. Google’s search algorithm gives advantage to web pages that have been linked to by many other web pages.

·         Wikipedia has editors who remove information that is not supported by what they determine are reliable sources. PubMed only allows indexed scientific publications to show up in a search.

·         In this study, anti-vaccine views were found to be more prevalent on websites where greater freedom of speech is permitted.

·         With the rise of the internet, reliable and credentialed sources of information are not valued like they once were, which has allowed the vaccine-autism controversy to flourish.

·         Changing Google’s search algorithm to give advantage to “quality” sources could reduce anti-scientific views, but would not be as effective as moderation by human editors.

·         In scientific situations, it may be desirable to block out dissenting opinions. Editors can modulate free speech to reduce alarmist vaccine viewpoints.

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