One of the links I posted was this paper by Richard Smith, former
editior of the British Medical Journal decrying the fact that the
medical journals have become the marketing arm of the drug companies.
Less so in Europe than the US (such as NEJM) but Europe is affected as
well. He resigned from the BMJ in 2004.
In this paper
<http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020138>
he points out how the drug companies manage to subvert the scientific
method without being totally obvious about it. As you'll see,
conducting multiple studies and only publishing the favorable outcomes
as you note is one way. There are others. Here is his list:
-------------------------------------
Examples of Methods for Pharmaceutical Companies to Get the Results They
Want from Clinical Trials
* Conduct a trial of your drug against a treatment known to be inferior.
* Trial your drugs against too low a dose of a competitor drug.
* Conduct a trial of your drug against too high a dose of a competitor
drug (making your drug seem less toxic).
* Conduct trials that are too small to show differences from competitor
drugs.
* Use multiple endpoints in the trial and select for publication those
that give favourable results.
* Do multicentre trials and select for publication results from centres
that are favourable.
* Conduct subgroup analyses and select for publication those that are
favourable.
* Present results that are most likely to impress—for example,
reduction in relative rather than absolute risk.
-------------------
Ravnskov discusses some of these methods in his book as well
Chuck Norcutt
Winsor Crosby wrote:
> That is well documented in many places as is the fact that almost all
> the peer reviewers and staff at the the New England Journal of
> Medicine receive money from the drug companies. One article I read
> said that for a particular drug, the company sponsored 9 studies of
> effectiveness in treatment. I don't remember the exact numbers but
> they were approximately 4 showing no effectiveness, 3 showing
> deleterious effect and one showing effectiveness slightly about
> random chance. Guess which one was published. The best advice I have
> heard is to take no drug developed in the last 15 years.
>
>
>
> Winsor
> Long Beach, California, USA
>
>
>
>
> On Dec 14, 2006, at 9:42 AM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
>
>
>>When I first started reading Ravnskov's book I was very skeptical
>>until
>>I read a claim that he made about the failings of the peer review
>>process in medical journals.
>
>
>
>
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