You don't even need a monetary connection to a drug company. Just a
conviction that your hypothesis is correct and a determination that you
will not be dissuaded by evidence to the contrary.
Case in point:
The very first "scientific" study that fingered the association between
dietary fat/cholesterol and heart disease was published in 1953 by one
Ancel Keys of the University of Minnesota. Key's paper was titled
"Artherosclerosis: A Problem in Newer Public Health" but has since
become known as "the six countries study". In his paper he included a
graph showing an extremely strong correlation between coronary heart
disease and percent of dietary calories from fat for six countries which
included Japan, Italy, England/Wales, Australia, Canada and the US. And
the correlation is, indeed, amazingly strong for such broad data.
Unfortunately (for the reputation of science) Keys actually had
available to him data for 20 countries. When the additional 14
countries are added to his graph his correlation coefficient goes all to
hell. Wonder why he didn't report all the data he had.
Despite the bogus data this is where all the cholesterol hoopla got its
start. Many related and "peer reviewed" studies which have followed are
nearly as dishonest in their data reporting as this one is. I followed
up on a couple at random a few months ago. In both cases I couldn't
find any data in the study details to support the conclusions drawn by
the researchers. So much for vested science. If their conclusions had
adhered to the data they likely wouldn't have gotten any new research
grants.
Chuck Norcutt
Winsor Crosby wrote:
> I read a recent article that virtually every reviewer and staff
> member at the New England Journal of Medicine has a monetary
> connection to a drug company. I forget which drug it was, but out of
> 13 clinical trials all the negative or neutral results were
> unpublished and only the 3 with positive results. No journal is
> immune to corporate money.
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