Forbes contributor Bill Frezza recently discussed the growth of bad science in his piece, "
Bad Science Muckrakers Question the Big Science Status Quo".
In particular, he notes how a combination of publish-or-perish job pressures and the race for government grants produces an enormous amount of sloppy (and sometimes outright fradulent) science.
Fortunately, there are websites like
RetractionWatch that keep on eye on scientific fraud and misconduct.
Another issue Frezza points out is the bias against privately-funded research. One excerpt:
To make matters worse, private research dollars are being choked off
by ill-conceived regulations, making researchers even more dependent on
government grants, as Dr. Thomas Stossel at Harvard Medical School points out.
Stossel calls overly restrictive conflict of interest regulations “a
damaging solution in search of a problem.” A self-described “typical
academic socialist, totally living on grants for the first third of my
career,” Stossel says his eyes were opened in 1987, when he was asked to
serve on the scientific advisory board of Biogen (now Biogen IDEC), a
fledgling biotech startup that went on to become a tremendous success.
“I realized how fundamentally honest business people are compared to my
academic colleagues, who’d run their grandmothers over for recognition.”
While working with Biogen, Stossel learned how difficult it was to
translate academic research into products that actually help people. “It
was during that time that conflict of interest mania emerged.” In 1988
Harvard Medical School instituted the first conflict of interest rules,
largely as a result of an incident at the Mass Eye and Ear infirmary
that was sensationalized by The Boston Globe.
Stossel characterizes this rationale as, “If I am paid by a
corporation to do research, I am going to lie, cheat and steal.” Based
on his experience at Biogen, he calls this a “total inversion of
reality.” He notes that, “95 percent of the scientific papers retracted
for falsification, fabrication, or plagiarism have no commercial
connection.” And yet, conflict of interest rules continue to
proliferate, choking off what could be a critical alternative to
taxpayer funding...
In other words, "privately funded" is presumed to be corrupt whereas "government funded" is presumed noble and pure.
It's bad enough when taxpayers are obliged to fund sketchy science. The problem gets worse when sketchy science is used to set "clinical guidelines" for physicians to follow -- guidelines that may be harmful to patients.
Dr. Robert McNutt and Dr. Nortin Hadler discuss this issue in more detail in, "
How Clinical Guidelines Can Fail Both Doctors and Patients":
At best, these guidelines are recommendations based on scientific
studies with results that pertain to the average among us. They do not
adequately incorporate the personal differences and preferences of each
of us as individuals. Furthermore, while these recommendations are based
on clinical science, rarely is the science complete or
incontrovertible.
Hence, the recommendations are consensus statements
reflecting the perspectives of those charged with the production of the
guideline. Of the thousands of clinical practice guidelines that have
been produced, the majority is based on inadequate science and therefore
reflects the conjecture of the “thought leaders” recruited to the task.
Unfortunately, under the new health law physician pay is going to be increasingly tied to various "quality measures" including adherence to clinical guidelines of dubious reliability.
Do you want your physician to be rewarded for putting patients on anti-cholesterol drugs based on population guidelines that might not apply to you as an individual? Or do you want your physician to be able to freely exercise his or her best individual discretion on your behalf?
Physicians will be facing these sorts of questions in coming years. You'd better hope your physician will stay loyal to you as a patient.
(National Institutes of Health; photo credit Wikipedia)
