I have personal reasons to distrust the medical establishment, but trying to read this subject article is difficult. Can you summarize the thrust of the argument?
As I understand it, the main idea is that the (U.S.) pharmaceutical industry has been covering up hundreds of thousands of deaths and other adverse effects in their drug trials, using bogus statistical analysis to fool everyone about the efficacy of their drugs, and colluding with government agencies to disallow any alternatives. Thus, we should be immensely distrustful of any and all "evidence-based" medical information, and we should spread this idea in order to convince people to rebuild the medical establishment from the ground up. (I don't personally endorse this argument.)
I don't think any amount of statistics would allow for fraud on that scale. At that point, you're either throwing out data as it's being collected, or completely fabricating it when you go to do the analysis.
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Notes -
I have personal reasons to distrust the medical establishment, but trying to read this subject article is difficult. Can you summarize the thrust of the argument?
As I understand it, the main idea is that the (U.S.) pharmaceutical industry has been covering up hundreds of thousands of deaths and other adverse effects in their drug trials, using bogus statistical analysis to fool everyone about the efficacy of their drugs, and colluding with government agencies to disallow any alternatives. Thus, we should be immensely distrustful of any and all "evidence-based" medical information, and we should spread this idea in order to convince people to rebuild the medical establishment from the ground up. (I don't personally endorse this argument.)
Hmm yeah. Problem with advanced statistics is that it's so hard to tell who's bullshitting and who isn't.
As they say, there are three types of liars. Liars, damn liars, and statisticians.
I don't think any amount of statistics would allow for fraud on that scale. At that point, you're either throwing out data as it's being collected, or completely fabricating it when you go to do the analysis.
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