A shocking and newsworthy confession by the director of the world-renowned medical journal, The Lancet, has been literally ignored by the mainstream media. It could well be declared a synopsis for the current state of scientific affairs.
Dr. Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of the Lancet issued a statement back in 2015 that a shockingly large proportion of published research is – at best – unreliable, if not outright false, i.e. fraud.
Horton states, “Most of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Influenced by studies of small sample sizes, microscopic results, invalid exploratory analyses, and blatant conflicts of interest, along with an obsession with pursuing trendy trends of dubious significance, science has taken a dark turn.’
“Most of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Plagued by studies of small sample sizes, microscopic results, invalid exploratory analyses, and blatant conflicts of interest, along with an obsession with pursuing trendy trends of dubious significance, science has taken a dark turn”.
In other words, Horton is clearly stating that big pharmaceutical companies are falsifying or manipulating tests on the health, safety, and effectiveness of their various drugs by taking samples too small to be statistically significant or by hiring testing labs and scientists, where there is a conflict of interest, such as the pharmaceutical company’s need for further subsidies.
At least half of all tests are useless or worse he claims. As medicines have a serious impact on the health of millions of consumers, the manipulation amounts to criminal abandonment and mismanagement.
Studies funded by the drug industries, Horton points out, involve the development of commercial drugs or vaccines to supposedly help people, and are used to train medical staff and medical students.
Horton wrote his shocking comments after attending a symposium on the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research at the Wellcome Trust in London. He noted the confidentiality or ‘Chatham House’ rules, where participants are prohibited from mentioning names:
“Much of what is published is incorrect. I am not allowed to say who made that remark because we have been asked to adhere to Chatham House rules. We were also asked not to take photos of the slides”.
Other voices
Dr. Marcia Angell is a physician and long time Editor-in-Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ), considered another of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. Angell stated, “It is simply impossible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on doctors’ opinions or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and hesitantly in my more than two decades as editor of the New England Journal of Medicine“.
Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption by Marcia Angell
Harvey Marcovitch, who has studied and written about the corruption of medical trials and publishing in medical journals, writes, “studies showing positive results for a drug or device under investigation are more likely to be published than those studies with negative results. The authors are partly to blame for this, but so are the commercial sponsors, whose methodologically well-conducted studies with adverse outcomes tend not to see the light of day.”
At the University of British Columbia’s Neural Dynamics Research Group in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Dr. Lucija Tomljenovic obtained documents showing that,
“Vaccine manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies and health authorities have knowledge of multiple risks associated with vaccines, but have chosen to hide it from the public. This is scientific fraud and their complicity shows that this practice continues to this day.”
Dr. Horton concludes,
“Those who have the power to act seem to think someone else should act first. And every positive action (eg funding good replications) has a counter-argument (science will become less creative). The good news is that science is beginning to take some of its worst weaknesses very seriously. The bad news is that no one is ready to take the first step to clean up the system.”
Medical corruption worldwide is a huge issue, perhaps more dangerous than the threat of all wars combined. Do we have such hypnotism and blind faith in our doctors, just because they wear their white coats, that we believe they are infallible?
And, in turn, do they have such blind faith in medical journals recommending a certain new wonder drug or vaccine that they rush to dispense without considering these deeper issues?
