Did you even
read the contents of this article?!
quote:
John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, says that small sample sizes, poor study design, researcher bias, and selective reporting and other problems combine to make most research findings false. But even large, well-designed studies are not always right, meaning that scientists and the public have to be wary of reported findings.
quote:
Odds get even worse for studies that are too small, studies that find small effects (for example, a drug that works for only 10% of patients), or studies where the protocol and endpoints are poorly defined, allowing researchers to massage their conclusions after the fact
Emphasis mine.
This article is primarily about the
pharmaceutical industry. We are talking about studies involving efects on human beings, and more importantly, studies that have a
direct financial impact on the companies who pay for them.
This is the actual paper published, rather than the acrticle about it.
Please note that this is from the Public Library of Science
Medicine journal.
Here's a bit of their "Example:"
quote:
Let us assume that a team of investigators performs a whole genome association study to test whether any of 100,000 gene polymorphisms are associated with susceptibility to schizophrenia.
Studies based on pharmaceuticals, or psychology, or other studies that involve interaction with humans as test subjects, can easily reach inaccurate conclusions. Human beings are incredibly complex, and drugs can cause side effects only in a tiny poulation and thereby pass through regulations testing. The bias of the company who pays for a study (in the case where there is a direct financial benefit for a certain outcome) can also cause inaccurate results.
However, the paper's point is valid - scientific papers begin as simply hypotheses - they have been put foprward with supporting evidence but have not yet been fully tested by other research groups. Of
course most of them are falisfied - that's the entire point of the scientific method!
Those hypotheses that are held to be true by the majority of scientists, however, like, say,
Evolution for example, have been rigorously tested by many reasearch groups and have still not been falsified. That fact that most initial research papers are wrong simply provides additional credibility to Theories, like Evolution, which have
not been falsified despite the rigorous testing imposed by the peer review process.
Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.
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