90% of Medical Research Is Wrong
 

Well that's a pretty strong accusation.

I wonder if this applies to other areas beside medicine?

link

I think it's 85% in other areas.

I work in healthcare, but God help us, it's a ƒucking fiasco that needs to be scrapped from the ground up in this country. If we devoted one one-thousandth of the funds gobbled up by this booming industry toward incentivizing people to eat healthy and get some exercise, we could give away free healthcare and nobody would need it. All we would have to do is stitch up a few car crash victims here and there.

I loved this post!

That's an unfiltered brain dump right there...it just popped out.

I don't know if this is what you meant by "incentivizing," but in my fantasy government, all that money would be specifically poured into subsidizing organic fruits and vegetables--excluding white potatoes, corn and soy--to the point that they were by far the cheapest way to feed a family. And I'd luxury tax the shit out of processed/convenience foods. It'd be all, "Sorry kids, Dad got laid off at the plant, so it's gonna be sweet potatoes, bell peppers, and pineapples for awhile until we get back on our feet. Pass the kale."

In other news, Presidential candidate Clodfobble placed 7th in the Iowa caucus, renowned for its corn farmers, and is now considered a long shot. :(

Fuck 'em. This is my fantasy land--I'll be paying them to plow up their corn fields and plant other foods, just like they used to before the government paid them to plow everything up and plant corn.

And then when food companies start making really tasty and addicting snacks from those healthier veggies, the tide will totally change.

That's when the executions start.

I agree, but we would have to have laws to force people to do what we want them to do to be healthier, oh wait, we are already starting to do that.:p:

But you can't force people to go against their instincts; you have to create a set of conditions where their instincts produce the desired results.

As far as I can tell, that has not worked, ever, ever, ever.....look at the obesity, smokers, alcoholics, drug abusers, etc. Take your pick of chronic health conditions related to personal choice......

Lung cancer seems to be reducing....

http://www.cancer.gov/aboutnci/servi...shots/lung.pdf

Austin enacted a city-wide smoking ban a couple of years ago. It was a huge brouhaha at the time, and everyone bitched and bitched about personal liberties, and how the bars were gonna lose business, etc. etc... Except it turned out that downtown nightlife business actually went up, and all but the most hardcore of nicotine addicts used it as an excuse to quit smoking. People will quit their bad habits, but only if you make it truly inconvenient/expensive enough.

There will always be deep dark secret alcoves where one can have a smoke.

I get not smoking in restaurants. I'm not there to smoke I'm there to have a meal. So a place, even a bar, with a smoking code is perfectly understandable.

However, I've always felt that each owner of each establishment should make their own call. You can't be around smoke? I apologize, you might not like it here. Whereas the person who offers a smoke-free environment will be patronized by those who like that idea. Something about free enterprise, or something.

Think of all the money spent on legislation to make us healthy. Why, I bet: see Post 3

We had the same thing happen in Savannah, everyone has just gone outside to smoke. If you think it make people stop smoking you will be sorely disappointed.

But it doesn't get cold in Savannah.

Stopped lots of people here....... (yes, it is cold outside) although most I know said the price was a main factor and the ban was the icing on the cake.

Maybe Merc is just popping his head in the sand a little. No ban on that, yet.

Well....... the Savannah City Council just outlawed smoking in all Bars.......

So no, I don't have my head in the sand....

I support it. My wife and I hate going out and coming home stinking like cigs...

In some places, esp in the winter, it is unbearable. So we just do not go.

um, the head in the sand would be about the results, not the bans.... and your support or not is irrelevant....

On the medical research ...
What usually happens when a new field opens up is that dozens of individuals (or teams, usually) publish papers on a topic, review each other, repeat each others experiments, publish, develop further et cetera. After a decade or two, someone does a survey article, collecting, comparing and summarising what has been found and repeatedly tested and survived the scrutiny. This is about the best kind of source there is, scientifically. The findings of this article will be the backbone of the next generation of textbooks.

So the message I take from this finding is a reminder not to get too excited about one, or even a couple of articles with a new finding. Anything less than 3 yeas old is insufficiently tested, anything more than 10 is probably out of date.

Oh and did anyone notice, if this is medical research and 90% of medical research is wrong, there is a 90% chance this guy is wrong?

Also Zen, I think the gist of this article is really about whether or not
the meta-researchers are correct when they try to assess the "quality"
of the individual studies being used in the meta-study, and they find that they can not.

It's not really about 90% of all medical research being wrong.
It's about evaluating "odds ratios".