Massive Over-Certainties In Medicine: Bad Statistics, Bad Experiments

I can’t speak for the US editors – but the three cited from the British journals (BMJ and Lancet) are all known to me as leaders in the crass leftist politicization of their journals, promotion of peer review above truth, and the elimination of real science from their pages.

None of the three have the slightest interest in or knowledge of real science – they are just fashion-obsessed ideological propagandists.

That they affect a concern with the destruction of genuine clinically-focused medical research is sheer hypocrisy – or stark insensibility.

(But I believe Marcia Angell was sincere in her concern – by her subsequent actions.)

The major health gains were realized a century ago by clean water, closed sewage systems, etc. The pharmaceutical companies piggy-backed on those gains and called them their own. Now we have expensive drugs chasing gains that are less and less marginal and more and more nonexistent, at best — outright dangerous in many cases. So the need to cheat to imply efficacy is real.

The ever growing ‘war on cancer’ grift is a real money maker. My lurking suspicion
is that most of the ‘cancer survivors’ treated with these quack drugs never had cancer
in the first place. That would imply the entire medical profession is in on the grift.
After two years of the covid op, with an overall survival rate of 99.89%, and the failure
of rank and file doctors to address the absurdity of the measures taken resulting
in the destruction of the entire world economy this premise is not easily dismissed.
The funny thing is that by following the entirely bogus science that contradicted natural
herd immunity and pushing ineffective and unnecessary vaccines their profession was
one of the hardest hit financially. It is now viewed with a gimlet eye by an ever increasing
proportion of the public as profits continue to plummet.

many thanks for the article and for the comments. the peer review system has changed since the 65 years when I was first involved in it.

I have to second Bob Kurland’s comment, though it hasn’t been 65 years yet for my own dealings with peer review. Back when I was introduced to it, people were insistent on questioning your results and having you do as extensive an error analysis and propagation as you could do. That was what was seen as a quality paper, given science is a conditional endeavor in a contingent existence. It has greatly changed over the some 50 years for me.

It is all political now. We used to scoff at Lysenko. We can see how Lysenko arose and what sin comes from it.

@ Incitadus,
While I can’t speak for the current situation; I do know that in the past (I have worked in pathology labs), diagnosis of cancer typically required a biopsy specimen, often obtained by open surgery. Did mistakes happen when examining the specimen? Sure; but it cost you if you made that kind of serious mistake too often.

Nice! one of the best short pieces ever – I’m going to pass it on to people who should, but will not, read it.

This great post by Briggs brings to mind another profitable con perpetrated by the medical//pharmaceutical complex, “The Great Cholesterol Con” which is the title of a very entertaining and informative book by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick. The book’s description says it best:

“Statins are the so-called wonder drugs widely prescribed to lower blood cholesterol levels and claim to offer unparalleled protection against heart disease. Believed to be completely safe and capable of preventing a whole series of other conditions, they are the most profitable drug in the history of medicine.

“In this ground-breaking work, GP Malcolm Kendrick exposes the truth behind the hype, revealing: high cholesterol levels don’t cause heart disease; a high-fat diet – saturated or otherwise – does not affect blood cholesterol levels; and, the protection provided by statins is so small as to be not worth bothering about for most men and all women.

“Statins have many more side affects than has been admitted and their advocates should be treated with skepticism due to their links with the drugs’ manufacturers. Kendrick lambastes a powerful pharmaceutical industry and unquestioning medical profession, who, he claims, perpetuate the madcap concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ cholesterol and cholesterol levels to convince millions of people to spend billions of pounds on statins, thus creating an atmosphere of stress and anxiety – the real cause of fatal heart disease.

“With clarity and wit, “The Great Cholesterol Con” debunks our assumptions on what constitutes a healthy lifestyle and diet. It is the invaluable guide for anyone who thought there was a miracle cure for heart disease, an appeal to common sense and a controversial and fascinating breakthrough that will set dynamite under the whole area.”

There is a category that cannot be looked at…

“people who have the disease, don’t know they have the disease, don’t know that they have not been treated for the disease”.

How many people don’t die when they don’t get treatment for a disease they don’t know they have.

Also, Journals, universities, regulators and pharma are totally connected. https://odysee.com/@FrontlineCovid19CriticalCareAlliance:c/CorruptionofMedicalJournals:5

In this case, a drug company made, I think, a 40 million dollar grant to a university just before the professor published a paper supporting IVM. In the second half of the film he is on tape admitting that someone else edited his paper for him. https://rumble.com/vwfia3-a-letter-to-andrew-hill-dr-tess-lawrie-oracle-films.html?mref=6zof&mrefc=3Dr

cdquarles writes: Did mistakes happen when examining the specimen? Sure;
but it cost you if you made that kind of serious mistake too often.

I would just like to point out that it didn’t cost you it cost your patient who actually
pays for the test twice monetarily and medically. (Or do labs give refunds?) I take your
point and no one in a medical lab wants to generate errors it’s just that industry parameters
which are steeped in tiny p-values have lead them astray. Cancer cells are present in everyone
at one point or another throughout the course of their lives. The immune system destroys them
on a regular basis so finding them in a biopsy is not necessarily an earth shattering development.
I think the point is that when cancer has progressed to terminal velocity the medical treatments
consisting of various drug cocktails at best advance life by a only few months. So where has all the
money poured into the war on cancer gone it seems like an effort in futility at best or another grift
propped up by tiny p-values.

What Have We (Not) Learnt from Millions of Scientific Papers with p-values?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n87PHd3PmSo

You put it all together, Matt.

Less academic descriptions can be found in my book Butchered by “Healthcare.” And I ascribe the motives as well. See my website robertyohoauthor.com for a far more inflammatory description of the whole scene.

Readers of this blog can download my book free at: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/4kliod8a9z. If you want to thank me, review it.

Best

No, it cost you, too. It cost you your job and if you were high enough up the chain, you’d get sued. In some jurisdictions, it would often go against you even when you had sufficient evidence on your side. And no, we are not talking a few stray cancer cells, we’re talking millions/billions of them out of the trillions or quadrillions of the cells in your body. After all, an inch sized tumor in the right place could and did cost you your bodily life.

That said, you are correct that much of the effort, but not all, given some advancements in earlier detection, is an exercise in delaying the inevitable.

Thanks, Dr. Yoho. I’ve downloaded your book.
bob k

cdquarles…That was a bit hyperbolic on my part the point being the actual survival
rates for advanced cancer despite the billions of dollars thrown at it is abysmal. I
didn’t mean to imply that testing was of no value it’s just that at cells in the billions
current treatment doesn’t offer much more than a few months life extension. That in
and of itself may be of value to some. If I were over seventy with a stage four diagnosis
I would pass on the chemo given the debilitating side effects and diminished quality
of life.

So we should basically treat published medical results the same way we treat nameplate power ratings for wind turbines.

I have a small but growing collection of books by doctors (some of them retired, which tends to give them both leisure and greater freedom). Their titles tend to be along the lines of, “How to stop your doctor from killing you” (I think that one is Dr Vernon Coleman). All of them explain that virtually no progress has been made in curing cancer in the past century. Most of the vast sums of money invested have gone to developing fancy drugs and other treatments that are mostly quite useless. The treatments are still “slash, burn, or poison” and the biggest breakthrough has been the definition of survival as “still alive 5 years after diagnosis” – hence the great interest in earlier diagnosis! Meanwhile the “cancer” industry has grown to huge dimensions and provides a good living to tens of thousands of scientists, doctors, pharma workers, etc.

Personally, I think that cancer is better avoided than cured. Early white explorers who documented the lives of the indigenous people they met all agreed that cancer was unknown until those people began eating “white man’s food” and living like white people. Hunter-gatherers got far more exercise, far more sunshine, purer water, food suitable to humans, plenty of sleep, etc. And they were not harmed by poisons and pollution.

A large part of the trouble is that disinterested science has been overtaken by science for other ends (mainly profit and power).

The expensive equipment and supplies required by much of modern science cost so much that scientists need sponsorship, and such sponsorship is not given away free.

Religions’ claims are akshually more accurate than science to Briggs.

Justin