"Skeptic" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:<1S6mc.36515$kh4.1812979@attbi_s52>...
Quoted message said:withholding evidence is not the same as and is not related to ghost writing.
That, crazy horse, is reality.
"fresh~horses" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:"Skeptic" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<WkTlc.22054$Ia6.3198278@attbi_s03>...
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:The source is an online Canadian news source. The sources the article
quotes as proof of this are zero. Ilena... posting more hearsay, are
we?
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:According to Star magazine - with just as many sources as your article -
George Washington was really a woman and Mars (or Saturn?... I forget
now)
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:is really an alien space station.
Of course, without a means of verifying stories, they are just that
stories - works of fiction. Have a good day (and do try to spend this
one
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:in reality).
More of that pesky reality:
http://www.healthyskepticism.org/index.htm
Sample from one of 245 hits on this topic
"An internal document advised staff at the international drug giant
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to withhold clinical trial findings in 1998 that
indicated the antidepressant paroxetine (Paxil in North America and
Seroxat in the UK) had no beneficial effect in treating adolescents."
Yawn.
Another slice of the same pie: ghostwriting, buying docs, withholding
negative results. Brought to you dear reader by SKEPTIC. Go ahead
thank him. But be sure to leave allllllll the post in when you do.
The Objectivity of Science
Flawed Evidence
Doctors "author" drug company articles without seeing the raw data
Persuasion works best when it's invisible. The most effective
marketing worms its way into our consciousness, leaving intact the
perception that we have reached our opinions and made our choices
independently. As old as humankind itself, over the past few years
this approach has been refined
While, in the past, companies have created fake citizens' groups to
campaign in favour of trashing forests or polluting rivers, now they
create fake citizens. Messages purporting to come from disinterested
punters are planted on listservers at critical moments, disseminating
misleading information in the hope of recruiting real people to the
cause. The next step is to publish flawed evidence, backed by
respected scientists.
Detective work by the campaigner Jonathan Matthews and the freelance
journalist Andy Rowell shows how a PR firm contracted to the biotech
company Monsanto appears to have played a crucial but invisible role
in shaping scientific discourse. Recently, one of the world's foremost
scientific journals was persuaded to do something it had never done
before, and retract a paper it had published.
In recent years, decline in the state funding of research has placed
scientists in a vulnerable position which industry is able to exploit.
Scientists in all areas of medicine are increasingly dependent on
pharmaceutical companies to fund their work. This places the industry
in a position to control data and to have papers drafted by company
employees. Scientists are offered large fees to put their names to
articles which have been ghostwritten by authors paid by the drug
company. Researchers who have agreed to put their names to articles
based on raw data which they have not seen, were possibly unaware of
the consequences. Drug companies involved in court cases over the
effects of SSRIs (the family of drugs to which Prozac belongs) have
apparently relied in their defence upon such articles, attempting to
shuffle responsibility onto the "authors".
Fuller Torrey, executive director of the Stanley Foundation Research
Programmes at Bethesda, Maryland said recently, "Some of us believe
that the present system is approaching a high-class form of
professional prostitution".
Marcia Angell wrote as follows in an editorial for the New England
Journal of Medicine: "Researchers serve as consultants to companies
whose products they are studying, join advisory boards and speakers'
bureaus, enter into patent and royalty arrangements, agree to be the
listed authors of articles ghostwritten by interested companies,
promote drugs and devices at company-sponsored symposiums, and allow
themselves to be plied with expensive gifts and trips to luxurious
settings. Many also have equity interest in the companies."
The situation has become so serious that the World Health Organisation
has also expressed concern. Dr Jonathan Quick, director of essential
drugs and medicines policy at WHO, says the reliability of clinical
trials - essential for the development of new drugs - is increasingly
imperilled by conflicts of interest, "inappropriate involvement" of
sponsors in trial design and management, and bias in publishing the
results.
