Research Fraud. According to JAMA, between 2020-2022, 59% of peer reviewers were paid by Big Pharma, which shelled out over $1 billion to influence medical research in BMJ, JAMA, The Lancet, NEJM.
Former editor of BMJ: “Stop assuming that research actually happened and is honestly reported.” James Lyons-Weiler: “There is a difference between Science and Fraud. Learn it.”
Contents
Research Publishing is Significantly Corrupt: Key Points
Research Corruption: Excerpts
Digging Deeper
Specific Examples of Misconduct, Fraud, “Major Errors”, Ethical Failure
Evaluating Research Validity & Integrity
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Research Publishing is Significantly Corrupt: Key Points
See for yourself how research is manipulated and dogma is called science. Get better at validating research and integrity. Here are some basic points to become familiar with:
A former editor of BMJ: “Stop assuming that research actually happened and is honestly reported.” [Richard Smith, BMJ]
Publication bias is a common strategy for making fraudulent conclusions. [Dr. John Briffa]
“Pharma-funded research cherry-picks positive results. Clinical trial data on new drugs is systematically withheld from doctors and patients, bringing into question many of the premises of the pharmaceutical industry—and the medicine we use.” [Scientific American, 2013]
“Many times, people who arrive at unwelcome results are being asked to change their results for political reasons, or to not publish them lest their funding disappear.” [Dr. Peter C. Gøtzsche MD]
“As someone with a master’s degree in Epidemiology, I can tell you this: data can be manipulated—intentionally or unintentionally—in subtle and powerful ways. With the right filters, exclusions, statistical models, and assumptions, it’s entirely possible to either exaggerate or erase an effect.” [Dr. Gator]
Medical research is corrupted at its core. “It isn’t just an individual study here and there that’s flawed… the very framework of medical investigation may be off-kilter.” [Newsweek, 2011]
“I’ve witnessed the decline of medical journals firsthand. Once forums for open debate and intellectual rigour, they’ve morphed into gatekeepers, more concerned with preserving a narrow orthodoxy than pursuing truth.” [Maryanne Demasi PhD]
Independent journalists reveal the “ethical collapse” of the peer review process. [Yaakov Ophir and Yaffa-Shir-Raz] See also: Amid Growing Evidence of Conflicts of Interest and Obdurate Groupthink in Medical Journals, Researchers Must Entertain Contrarian Ideas See also: Are medical journals dead? Former editor of The BMJ says, “It’s interesting to me in a way that journals are still alive, because I think there are a lot of reasons why they should be dead.”
“Any time you incentivize something, you’re creating a bias.” [Dr. Lynn Fynn]
“Big Pharma paid over $1 billion to influence medical research from 2020-2022 in BMJ, JAMA, The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine. 59% of journal reviewers received pharmaceutical industry payments.” [Jon Fleetwood and JAMA]
Specific examples of flawed and corrupted research are provided below. For example, as described in The Epoch Times article, Gross Misconduct: The Nail in the Coffin for Antidepressants, the claim that antidepressants work for nearly 7 in 10 patients is clearly based on scientific misconduct and fraud. [Dr. Joseph Mercola]
“There is a difference between Science and Fraud. Learn it and support Science.” [James Lyons-Weiler PhD]
Revealing corruption is not intended to imply that we should reject data and research, which are key forms of evidence, but rather that we must actively validate the integrity of research we consult. Effective strategies provided here.
Research Corruption: Excerpts
“The Very Framework of Medical Investigation” Leads to Findings That are Unproven and “Dangerously Wrong”
If you follow the news about health research, you risk whiplash. First garlic lowers bad cholesterol, then—after more study—it doesn’t. Hormone replacement reduces the risk of heart disease in postmenopausal women, until a huge study finds that it doesn’t. But what if wrong answers aren’t the exception but the rule? More and more scholars who scrutinize health research are now making that claim. It isn’t just an individual study here and there that’s flawed, they charge. Instead, the very framework of medical investigation may be off-kilter, leading time and again to findings that are at best unproved and at worst dangerously wrong. The result is a system that leads patients and physicians astray—spurring often costly regimens that won’t help and may even harm you. Even a cursory glance at medical journals shows that once heralded studies keep falling by the wayside. A major study concluded there’s no good evidence that statins (drugs like Lipitor and Crestor) help people with no history of heart disease… “Positive” drug trials, which find that a treatment is effective, and “negative” trials, in which a drug fails, take the same amount of time to conduct. But negative trials took an extra two to four years to be published. With billions of dollars on the line, companies are loath to declare a new drug ineffective. As a result of the lag in publishing negative studies, patients receive a treatment that is actually ineffective.
Newsweek, Why Almost Everything You Hear About Medicine Is Wrong, Jan 23, 2011
“Many times, people who arrive at unwelcome results are being asked to change their results for political reasons, or to not publish them lest their funding disappear.”
Scientific freedom, honesty and integrity are constantly under attack, particularly in healthcare, which is dominated by the drug industry and other economic interests. As I have documented in my books and elsewhere, the result of this is that our prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer, and that the use of psychiatric drugs does more harm than good. Science journalist Robert Whitaker has shown that, in all countries where this relationship has been examined, the amount of people on disability pension because of mental health problems has increased at the same time as the use of psychiatric drugs has increased. Psychiatrist Peter Breggin has shown that likely all psychiatric drugs can cause long-lasting brain impairment, which may explain why the use of these drugs makes it difficult for people to live a normal life. Problems with the trustworthiness of research are not limited to healthcare. They abound everywhere, and many times people who arrive at unwelcome results are being asked to change their results for political reasons, or to not publish them lest their funding disappear.
