7 ms·

Two relevant perspectives to share: "It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of

Two relevant perspectives to share: "It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine." -Marcia Angell "If the image of medicine I have conveyed is one wherein medicine lurches along, riven by internal professional power struggles, impelled this way and that by arbitrary economic and sociopolitical forces, and sustained by bodies of myth and rhetoric that are elaborated in response to major threats to its survival, then that is the image supported by this study." -Evelleen Richards, "Vitamin C and Cancer: Medicine or Politics?"

avalys 3y ago
Ah, but don’t worry folks, those vaccines which generated $40B in profits for Pfizer and Moderna, those are just A-ok. Trust the science, which in this case is perfect, unassailable and uncorruptible (unlike everything else the pharma industry does). Don’t question the faith.
- chiefalchemist 3y ago
  And those weren't simple studies they were self-policed and self-reported trials. Trials that determined FDA green lighting. How can the FDA operate like that when the incentives to profit are 40B x more than being honest. File under: Follow the money
- strken 3y ago
  "Trust the science" is dumb, but "trust that the single-most reviewed medical studies of the past decade with 30k+ participants aren't outright bullshit" is enough for me. The risk for those studies is probably closer to what happened with Astrazeneca, where a very rare side effect got missed because 30k people weren't enough to detect it. I think skepticism is healthy to a degree, but ironically, the more adversarial the general public is to an area of study the more rigorous it usually is.
  - junofan 3y ago
    I mean I’m as vaccinated as anyone, but the originally reported 95% effectiveness against symptomatic COVID-19 with the monovalent vaccine just doesn’t seem realistic in hindsight. Who knows what complex set of incentives was at play. If you’re running a trial site and your business relies on continued contracts from Pfizer, are you reporting every cough, fever, or headache?
    - eru 3y ago
      I wonder if the 95% effectiveness was actually true: against the strains prevalent at the time they ran the trial. But effectiveness against later strains was diminished.
    - downWidOutaFite 3y ago
      I don't think the claim was 95% against symptomatic covid, it was against hospitalization or death. The vaccine was tested against the original virus but Omicron was almost a different disease with much more immune escape. We're lucky the vaccine held up as well as it did. This is also why the alternative doctors that wanted everyone to catch covid to build up herd immunity were wrong, but nobody seems to bring them up. These discussions just devolve into the usual polarized political talking points.
      - somenameforme 3y ago
        Whether the original study said so or not, that is absolutely how it was universally sold to the public. This [1] is a collection of various high profile individuals talking about the efficacy of the vaccines, why that means you won't carry the virus, you won't get sick, and and how that will completely stop the spread of COVID. It's only as this very obviously failed to be the case that the metric was completely shifted to hospitalization/death. I'd also add this is about the time that the 'public messaging' swapped from talking about efficacy and other topics to outright vitriol and attacks on unvaccinated individuals, which is probably where the politicization of the topic began. [1] - https://twitter.com/i/status/1472327161352798212 https://twitter.com/i/status/1472327161352798212
wrp 3y ago
Serving as editor of a major journal in any discipline can make one cynical. I read many years ago a quote from a mathematics editor that a large fraction of published proofs were faulty, and from a computer science editor that a large fraction of published theorems were false. (My foggy memory gives 1/2 and 1/3 for the fractions, but I don't remember which was which.)
- frozenport 3y ago
  Almost nobody has the throughput to check equations at all
  - dazed_confused 3y ago
    You mean the 10 pages of the proofs located in the Appendix aren't read? I hate CS academia...

avalys 3y ago

Ah, but don’t worry folks, those vaccines which generated $40B in profits for Pfizer and Moderna, those are just A-ok. Trust the science, which in this case is perfect, unassailable and uncorruptible (unlike everything else the pharma industry does). Don’t question the faith.

chiefalchemist 3y ago
And those weren't simple studies they were self-policed and self-reported trials. Trials that determined FDA green lighting. How can the FDA operate like that when the incentives to profit are 40B x more than being honest. File under: Follow the money
strken 3y ago
"Trust the science" is dumb, but "trust that the single-most reviewed medical studies of the past decade with 30k+ participants aren't outright bullshit" is enough for me. The risk for those studies is probably closer to what happened with Astrazeneca, where a very rare side effect got missed because 30k people weren't enough to detect it. I think skepticism is healthy to a degree, but ironically, the more adversarial the general public is to an area of study the more rigorous it usually is.
- junofan 3y ago
  I mean I’m as vaccinated as anyone, but the originally reported 95% effectiveness against symptomatic COVID-19 with the monovalent vaccine just doesn’t seem realistic in hindsight. Who knows what complex set of incentives was at play. If you’re running a trial site and your business relies on continued contracts from Pfizer, are you reporting every cough, fever, or headache?
  - eru 3y ago
    I wonder if the 95% effectiveness was actually true: against the strains prevalent at the time they ran the trial. But effectiveness against later strains was diminished.
  - downWidOutaFite 3y ago
    I don't think the claim was 95% against symptomatic covid, it was against hospitalization or death. The vaccine was tested against the original virus but Omicron was almost a different disease with much more immune escape. We're lucky the vaccine held up as well as it did. This is also why the alternative doctors that wanted everyone to catch covid to build up herd immunity were wrong, but nobody seems to bring them up. These discussions just devolve into the usual polarized political talking points.
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      Whether the original study said so or not, that is absolutely how it was universally sold to the public. This [1] is a collection of various high profile individuals talking about the efficacy of the vaccines, why that means you won't carry the virus, you won't get sick, and and how that will completely stop the spread of COVID. It's only as this very obviously failed to be the case that the metric was completely shifted to hospitalization/death. I'd also add this is about the time that the 'public messaging' swapped from talking about efficacy and other topics to outright vitriol and attacks on unvaccinated individuals, which is probably where the politicization of the topic began. [1] - https://twitter.com/i/status/1472327161352798212 https://twitter.com/i/status/1472327161352798212

wrp 3y ago

Serving as editor of a major journal in any discipline can make one cynical. I read many years ago a quote from a mathematics editor that a large fraction of published proofs were faulty, and from a computer science editor that a large fraction of published theorems were false. (My foggy memory gives 1/2 and 1/3 for the fractions, but I don't remember which was which.)

frozenport 3y ago
Almost nobody has the throughput to check equations at all
- dazed_confused 3y ago
  You mean the 10 pages of the proofs located in the Appendix aren't read? I hate CS academia...