by Editorial board – February 10, 2013 at 3:41 pm – Those who Pharmacy Magazine
Pharmaceutical companies trick the test results of their drugs, using paradoxically legal methods to make them seem far more effective and necessary than they actually are. No, you are not in the wrong blog. You didn't end up on Luogocomune or some other conspiracy theorist dive by mistake.
The accusation is not a far-fetched delirium, but it is the well-documented result of the investigation by one of the most popular debunkers British, Ben Goldacre, who after highlighting with Bad Science the deceptions used by charlatans and scoundrel journalists to clear the pseudosciences has now dedicated itself, with the same inexorable tools, to clarifying how modern pharmaceutical research works. Result: It malfunctions, misleads doctors, and harms patients.
Goldacre wrote a book, Bad Pharma, which I invite everyone to read (I hope a good Italian translation will come out soon), especially conspiracy theorists, to understand how to make and present the true research and how to distinguish a bogus conspiracy thesis from a serious accusation. The difference lies in a single word: facts.
Goldacre also examines the Tamiflu case, emblematic of a way of proceeding in which the tests are carried out by pharmaceutical companies, which then publish only the favorable ones and cover up the others. It's the same method used by fortune tellers and psychics: highlighting successes and burying failures, to look extraordinary. It is not the only trick that is used, but the rest must be read in the book.
