I would like to correct the inconsistencies, errors and lack of understanding about mainstream medical research contained in the post appended below.
If as claimed in this thread that anybody who criticizes a post or article is a fool then surely this would be true of the author of the post appended below because he criticizes my earlier post and that of George, and as I had pointed out earlier, the author of the first post in this thread would also suffer from a severe degree of foolishness. For who else is a greater fool than someone who copies and pastes links to non-peer reviewed arm chair criticisms of peer-reviewed research articles and references, which by his own admission he has not read, to say nothing about the fact that both the critics of mainstream medical research in this thread, and ostensible dispensers of the outcomes of this research, have had absolutely no first hand experience with any kind of original medical research of their own. Please note that these critics of mainstream medical research are also habitual purveyors of demonstrably false and fraudulent alternative medical information and anti-establishment propaganda. The truth is that it is very hard to get away with publishing bogus articles in a peer reviewed scientific journal, essentially for two reasons. The first reason is the expert peer review process itself, which makes it very difficult for any fool to publish erroneous or fraudulent crap. Contrast that with a non-peer reviewed, non-scientific, political website such as Huffington Post, a staple source of continuing medical education for the initiator of this thread. Any fool can publish anything there, as long as it caters to the ideological bias of its owners and audiences, irrespective of whether the published contents contain blatant lies and stupid gaping flaws, or not. The same is true with the crackpot conspiracy websites that have served as the sources of information for the author of the post appended below. The second and most important reason for not being able to get away with flawed or fraudulent material in scientific literature is the reproducibility criterion for acceptance of a scientific finding. That is to say no real scientist or credible practitioner of scientific medicine accepts something as true and valid unless it is independently reproduced multiple times by other experts in the field in question. Fraudulent and flawed results are easily rejected because they are by definition non-reproducible. Contrary to the claims below, it is a fact that conventional modern medicine until recently was not sufficiently evidence-based, i.e. sufficiently based on objective scientific evidence. A substantial portion of it used to depend on subjective experience and speculations. This was primarily because of lack of proper technological and methodological tools, and a thoughtless reliance on argument from authority. Advances in molecular biology, biomedical engineering and information technology have changed the picture entirely. Medicine today is becoming more and more scientific in the true sense of the word at a rapid pace. A person who does not recognize this fact lacks much more than knowledge. Cheers, Santosh --- On Tue, 4/12/11, Dr. Ferdinando dos Reis Falcão <[email protected]> wrote: > > COMMENT : It is correct beyond doubt what Gilbert quoted: > <<Quote: Any fool can criticize, condemn and > complain, and most fools > do.>> as is seen by the above two criticisms, > condemnations & > complaints. > > A forum can discuss issues only when one is able to see an > issue > from all angles, and by not having an unilateral view. That > is known as > rationalism. The facts about frauds or lies in medical > publication is not a > fiction as one is made to conclude from the above two > criticism. > > In medical research, time and again the very real and > traditional > mechanisms for the preservation of errors trump those more > elusive ones for > their self-correction, despite some recent attempts to make > medicine now > allegedly "evidence-based" (even though it was supposed to > have been > based on scientific evidence all along). > > Medical evidence is difficult to verify and validate > because it is > easy to fake or cloak data from clinical trials. These are > reported under the > honour system, and peer reviewers or readers are unlikely > to catch clever > manipulations or fudging. The > potential for introducing flawed data into the doctrine is > therefore high. And > when people speak openly about it, here we hear: > “non-peer reviewed websites”. > Maybe even news by the Fourth estate require to be peer > reviewed by such > sceptics. > > http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/us-grapples-with-scientific-research-frauds/articleshow/3147054.cms > > http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2010/10/18/jme.2010.038125.abstract > > Dr. Ferdinando dos Reis Falcão. >
