I came across this article in The Atlantic which profiles Dr. John Ioannidis, a meta-researcher from Greece, who is the world's foremost authority on medical research. You may have recognized the title of this post from Mark Twain who popularized the saying in "Chapters from My Autobiography", published in the North American Review in 1906. "There are three types of Lies: Lies, damn lies and statistics!". The phrase describes the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments, and the tendency of people to disparage statistics that do not support their positions. This, in the nutshell, is the state of medical research today.
Ioannidis and his team critique medical research/statistics and their discoveries will make you feel manipulated and vulnerable.
" ...he and his team have shown, again and again, and in many different ways, that much of what biomedical researchers conclude in published studies—conclusions that doctors keep in mind when they prescribe antibiotics or blood-pressure medication, or when they advise us to consume more fiber or less meat, or when they recommend surgery for heart disease or back pain—is misleading, exaggerated, and often flat-out wrong. He charges that as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed. His work has been widely accepted by the medical community; it has been published in the field’s top journals, where it is heavily cited; and he is a big draw at conferences. Given this exposure, and the fact that his work broadly targets everyone else’s work in medicine, as well as everything that physicians do and all the health advice we get, Ioannidis may be one of the most influential scientists alive. Yet for all his influence, he worries that the field of medical research is so pervasively flawed, and so riddled with conflicts of interest, that it might be chronically resistant to change—or even to publicly admitting that there’s a problem."
Who do you trust with your health? Is your doctor well informed or is he or she also being manipulated? These are questions that each individual has to contemplate; the health of our society depends upon it.
Dr. David Marcon
Marcon Chiropractic & Wellness Center
Cincinnati, Ohio 45255
drdavidmarcon.com
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