Hijacking of Evidence Based Medicine

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks to shehasathree for linking to this fascinating (if depressing) article about the unfulfilled promise of evidence based medicine.

http://retractionwatch.com/2016/03/16/evidence-based-medicine-has-been-hijacked-a-confession-from-john-ioannidis/

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Since clinical research that can generate useful clinical evidence has fallen off the radar screen of many/most public funders, it is largely left up to the industry to support it. The sales and marketing departments in most companies are more powerful than their R&D departments. Hence, the design, conduct, reporting, and dissemination of this clinical evidence becomes an advertisement tool. As for “basic” research, as I explain in the paper, the current system favors PIs who make a primary focus of their career how to absorb more money. Success in obtaining (more) funding in a fiercely competitive world is what counts the most. Given that much “basic” research is justifiably unpredictable in terms of its yield, we are encouraging aggressive gamblers. Unfortunately, it is not gambling for getting major, high-risk discoveries (which would have been nice), it is gambling for simply getting more money.

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The speaker is John Ioannidis, heavily cited for his paper,

"Why Most Published Research Findings Are False"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/

Comments

[firecat]

Sadly he's probably right. The more I drill down into medical studies the more problems I find.

[bibliofile]

I'm hoping it's not just confirmation bias that I seem to agree with his premise. And the Republicans are not going to help improve things AT ALL.

[luzula]

Interesting, thank you!