When you learn about new medical breakthroughs in the news, you only learn about peer-reviewed research. Peer review means that she passed some basic quality standards. This is the gold standard of research.
But is it real gold or stupid gold?
Medical research looks typically mystical and fearsome for the average person. The basic concepts of medicine, which are actually difficult to understand, are clearly hidden in Latin terminology and other confusing jargon, which makes medical knowledge and theory inaccessible to the average person.
In the end, every profession should make you think that you need their services. Lawyers make this system so complicated and confusing that the average person is completely helpless without legal assistance. Accountants help the IRS set up a tax code so that it is almost impossible for the average person to know it all, understand everything, or carry out all the changes that are constantly being made. Doctors made it so that you cannot ask for medical tests or take drugs without a prescription. You call a profession, and you can see how it perpetuates itself, depriving people of their freedom.
What about the medical research profession?
One of the most important things you need to know about medical research is that, above all, it is a profession. Researchers usually earn money from both provisions and grants. The task of the researcher is to find a sponsor for his particular type of research. The more research projects and publications they receive, the more they have sponsors and the higher their income. And if the researcher has invented a patentable device or medicine, there are intellectual property rights to throw in the compensation package.
This means that researchers do not work for free. They are mercenaries. There can be very interesting and, by social standards, very important research that needs to be done so that they can be done. But without, and until they are paid for it, the work will not be done.
This means that funding sources for research, whether public or private, determine which research is actually being carried out. Most of the money for medical research comes from the private sector, usually pharmaceutical companies that are drugs that dominate modern medicine. Government funding is not much different, because it comes from agencies that are actively lobbied by pharmaceutical companies and managed by doctors who have been trained and paid by pharmaceutical companies. Medicine is a public-private partnership that gives the pharmaceutical industry power, like government, over culture and health research.
For this reason, research on non-drug alternatives is rarely conducted. That is why medicine claims to know very little about the causes of most diseases of our time. They care more about treatment than reason, because treatment is beneficial for research sponsors, although knowing the cause can lead to prevention, which translates into “inflexible” in medical terminology.
Of course, this is quite a big fraud. Consider its scope. The public is taxed and asked for contributions to pay for the medical research that goes into the discovery of medication, which the public will later have to pay incredibly high prices to get, and only after you paid the doctor for visiting the office to get a prescription. And if the drug gives unpleasant side effects, it only leads to more calls for more money to find new medicines with different side effects.
Is the public good here? How do you know that research is scientifically based? Where is the quality control?
Since most people were confident that they could not judge medical research if they did not have a Ph.D., MD, ND or other license, the study is being evaluated for you by other scientists in this field. This is called peer review.
Scientists engaged in research, as in all professions, belong to one of the like-minded researchers in one business, promoting their services and products. They belong to the same industries, such as universities or large multinational pharmaceutical corporations. They have the same education, which means that they are all equally alike. The purpose of their organization is to provide standards of practice that are provided for quality assurance. Any study must first be somehow reviewed by the peers of this club to ensure that the quality guidelines are followed before the study can be published.
However, since this confidence is in quality, the fact is that most of what is considered true today will be discarded as false in the future. “Ninety percent of what you learned in medical school is outdated and considered obsolete after ten years,” the dean of students told us when I started medical school. This means that most doctors find out wrong. It also means that new information that will come in 10 years to replace and update current misconceptions and mistakes will also be considered outdated for another ten years. time. This is a serious charge in medical research, which seems to provide little more than temporary information.
It also means that the peer review process does not guarantee the truth. This only means that the current standards of practice are complied with. Currently, this allows for conflicts of interest, as most drug research is paid for by companies that produce and profit from the same drugs. Even the dangerous side effects associated with drug testing are paid for by companies that lose most of their time if their medicines have proven unsafe. Since pharmaceutical companies have their own essence, and not disinterested service to humanity, as their reason for existence, it is extremely inappropriate to trust them to research their products. Researchers do not take oaths of honesty or honesty. They work for those who pay them, and they are not above that in order to get results in order to get the desired result.
Of course, this is not a good science. But this is science, as practiced in a culture that is professionally engaged in research in a profitable enterprise. This is not the way people fantasize, the sacred trust necessary to help the sick and wounded with inhuman devotion. Medical research is to make money with new patented drugs to replace those that have just left the patent, and are sold too cheaply by ordinary drug users.
An expert assessment does not stop a conflict of interest. Medical journals accept conflicts of interest, knowing that this is how medical research is conducted. Knowing what is happening with research, pike allows these insiders to get new stocks of new drugs before the public finds out, so they can change their portfolio of investment portfolios for the expected stock price adjustments.
The expert assessment also does not contain alternative theories and methods of research. All innovations threaten the status quo, and those who control the peer review process, such as the Supreme Court, can decide which cases to obey and which ones to ignore. They are status quo gatekeepers who hold current powers that are in power. Since medical collegial expert advice is the ultimate authority of culture in terms of quality, there is no way to challenge their decisions. The quality of the research may be in fact unsatisfactory, which is obvious when you see how many research articles criticize other, peer-reviewed research as incorrect. Any researcher will tell you that a lot of bad research has been done that is published. However, this is the world of publication or doom. Since scientists and their peers are in the same edition or die and analyze each other’s work, they are subtly hidden to get as much research as they can finance and publish. You will scratch my back and I will scratch you. They argue among themselves in journals about the quality of their work, and, of course, there is some competition between scientists, because they request grants from the same sources to do almost the same thing. But there is a common understanding that, being peers, they unite, they stand and divide, they fall.
Of course, this means that peer review is nothing more than a political agreement for researchers, such as a guild or a trade union. This goal is to maintain control over your field, suppress competition and ensure uninterrupted cash flow. This has nothing to do with science, the systematic search for truth, which should not be tainted by financial motives or the temptation of personal gain.
So the next time you hear the news of a new drug, look for a union label. If it is verified by experts, then ninety percent change is wrong.
