4 ms·
I'd never looked at it this way before but it makes sense. You'd have thought that accounting for the extent of a cancer at diagnosis would be a requirement for
by barking 8y ago
I'd never looked at it this way before but it makes sense.
You'd have thought that accounting for the extent of a cancer at diagnosis would be a requirement for determining the success of any subsequent treatment.
Is it cynical to assume that a lot of medical research is next to worthless, done almost as a box ticking exercise. Do research to get a paper published to put on your resume. And a lot more is done by/for pharmaceutical companies who have an interest in their drug been shown in a good light.
- oderi 8y agoI'd call that overly cynical, yes. Not the point about the pharm companies - seems that a big portion of physicians I've talked to pretty much outright disregard results from trials run by them. Even in unbiased trials, however, the struggle between sample sizes/statistical robustness and getting new potentially life-saving treatments out into the real world in a timely manner is real.
- barking 8y agoYou could be right. The reason I said it was that as part of the pathway to becoming a senior hospital doctor (apart from moving a lot, working hard and studying for post-graduate exams) is the requirement to get stuff published. This makes a lot of doctors do research who aren't interested in a career in research. If that was me I'd be tempted to do something that was as easy as possible to get that box ticked.