To be honest it's really only adult trials that are fucked. Well, those and rare diseases with a noisy yet ignorant "advocacy" lobby ("We won't have to pay if t

To be honest it's really only adult trials that are fucked. Well, those and rare diseases with a noisy yet ignorant "advocacy" lobby ("We won't have to pay if the drug doesn't work, the magical Insurance Fairy will pay for it!"). I understand the latter (some hope is better than none, if it's your kid that's sick) but as for the former... ick. Take away the profit motive and it's astounding how much more reliable the trials get. Of course reviewers whine about how they're often equivocal or negative, because the thought of the literature being horribly biased either a) has never crossed their mind (too busy with protocols), or b) is precisely what they want, for "showing progress". So in order to keep up the appearance of positive results and keep the gravy train flowing, the trials that get published tend to be the ones that "show" "progress". Mind you, these are clinical trials with preregistered endpoints and protocols. Pretty much the entirety of experimental science outside of physics is much worse. So what I'm telling you is that this is the BEST-CASE SCENARIO for an awful lot of science. I'm not going to write up "my story" beyond this, because it's the same as most everyone else's story in the field. Killing humans for profit is not my idea of a good time, even if adult trials tend to pay better than the Army. YMMV. I may be jaded, but I still believe there are populations that, through no fault of their own, end up with few or no options. There is room in this world for integrity -- but get (real) money involved and the bad money drives out the good. The linked paper is dead on.