The tight alliance between ostensibly regulated pharmaceutical companies and the agencies that ostensibly regulate them has corrupted medical science. From Jennifer Margulis and Joe Wang at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:
Peer-reviewed scientific publishing works like this: a scientist or a science team have a scientific question, they come together to design and conduct an experiment to try to answer that question. The experiment may take months, years, or even decades. Once the scientists have collected and analyzed the experiment’s results, they write up their findings, and draw conclusions based on the already accepted knowledge in the field, their new discovery, and their educated speculations of what is yet to be known. Then they send their article to scientific journals within their field of study.
When a journal editor receives the article, the editor reads it carefully and either rejects it or sends it out to other known experts in the field, who were not involved with the study, to review the findings and the write-up. Once these experts weigh in, the editor then makes the decision about whether to reject the paper or to accept it, in most cases, with notes for the authors to revise their submission.
Peer-reviewers will often ask the researchers insightful questions or query parts of the findings in the paper. These queries help the researchers refine their ideas, review their findings, and double check that their data, and their analyses, are correct.
This sometimes quite lengthy peer-review process is to ensure that journals publish scientific articles that make a real contribution to our understanding to the field, whether it’s chemistry, biology, physics, social science, or any other subject.
2.6 Million Studies a Year
On the order of 2.6 million scientific studies are published every year, according to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. Given the explosion in published science—today there may be as many as 30,000 peer-reviewed journals providing scientists an outlet for their findings—it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between good science and bad science.
Good science is work that has a high level of integrity and transparency, is conducted in an unbiased way, and leads to findings that can be replicated by other scientists.
Bad science is often ego-driven or industry-sponsored: published not for the good of advancing knowledge or helping people, but to mislead the public, often for financial gain. For-profit industries have and continue to use bad science to convince consumers to buy their products.
