There is strong evidence that medical researchers’ financial ties to their industry funders may directly influence their published positions in supporting the benefit or downplaying the harm of the products they are “studying”.
For example, there is often a demonstrated difference between internal drug company documents about the research trial results that they fund, and the articles reporting that research that end up in the medical journals that your doctor reads. The New England Journal of Medicine has referred to this practice as ‘selective outcome reporting’.
But for the sake of clarity, let’s just call it ‘lying’. Continue reading
I’m not a scientist. I’m merely a dull-witted heart attack survivor who three years ago started asking questions about the fistful of cardiac drugs I now have to take each day. But I did spend 20 years of my life living with a scientist, which meant countless scintillating breakfast table conversations on topics like zinc and copper sediment in the Fraser River estuary. One thing I did learn from such scintillation is that there’s research – and then there’s research.
In case you believe that the medicine you’re taking has been adequately tested on real live patients before being legally approved, you might want to consider new research published this month in The New England Journal of Medicine
