The part about funding studies and throwing away the ones that don't say what they want about a drug is worse than described because a lot of the funding goes t

The part about funding studies and throwing away the ones that don't say what they want about a drug is worse than described because a lot of the funding goes to graduate programs where the students have no choice but to find results favorable to the drug. I have an ex-girlfriend that went into the PhD program for Neuroscience at a reputable university. Her entire degree and living stipend was paid for by a pharmaceutical company. The company "suggested" that her PhD research revolve around a drug that lowered aggressive tendencies. The sloppiness of the study appalled me. I couldn't say that much because she and I were dating at the time, but it was absurd. There was no funding for getting a reasonable sample of people. So they went to a halfway house and brought in 30 males and 30 females. All criminals, all on probation or parole, all with serious histories of substance abuse, and most of the women were pregnant. Almost all of the males dropped out for one reason or another. Many of the women did as well. I believe the final tally was 3 males and 13 women. All of whom tested positive for some assortment of drugs. The sample size is obviously problematic here. What was possibly even worse was when I would go to the lab and watch this person sift through ECGs. The test itself that defined aggressiveness was totally ill-defined, and the neural response to the test was basically, "Well, let's just take a look at it. Okay, this one looks aggressive. That one doesn't." It was a total shitshow. The end result? A published paper in a prestigious journal about how this drug reduces aggressiveness, a PhD, and FDA approval for the drug. I hate to identify with conspiracy theorists, and all that. But I literally watched this process happen with a person I was dating for almost all of it. When it comes to drugs, you really have to do your own research. Your doctor isn't going to do it for you. That's the double burn of healthcare in the U.S. Even when you have it, you can't really trust it. You have to pay for it, you have to know what's wrong with you, and you have to know what you need. And if it isn't a drug, then fuck off. You have to pay for it anyway. People say, "Fuck you, that's one story that probably went badly. Science is self-sufficient and self-correcting. The plural of anecdote is not data." Fair enough on all points. But there is a systematic and broken way of doing science in the medical industry. And doctors are not scientists and don't really get trained to know the difference between good and bad science.