Medical studies are almost always bogus

…And the headlines promise more than they deliver, according to an article at the New York Post.

The article refers to the results of research published in the book by Richard Harris:

(Begin excerpt)

“…For any study to have legitimacy, it must be replicated, yet only half of medical studies celebrated in newspapers hold water under serious follow-up scrutiny — and about two-thirds of the “sexiest” cutting-edge reports, including the discovery of new genes linked to obesity or mental illness, are later “disconfirmed.”

Though erring is a key part of the scientific process, this level of failure slows scientific progress, wastes time and resources and costs taxpayers excesses of $28 billion a year, writes NPR science correspondent Richard Harris in his book “Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions” (Basic Books).

“When you read something, take it with a grain of salt,” Harris tells The Post. “Even the best science can be misleading, and often what you’re reading is not the best science.”

(End excerpt)

It’s not just medicine. All of science research is suffering from the same effect.

The writer does not deny the tendency is always there in the hot competition, and recognizes the shrinking budgets of taxpayer money to dole out for medical studies makes for the present crisis in which “half” of these taxpayer-funded studies (paid for by taxpayer extortion) are not reproducible.

The article describes what is happening, the symptom, but without acknowledging the “disease”. Integrity in medical research has died at the hand of the “administrative state”, unelected fiefdoms of government, less obvious because they are restricted parts of the whole, and because of the cover of mandates by laws outsourcing legislative duties to them.

If the research funds come from the organization with a monopoly of force, there is no constraint on the decisions made by the ones who disperse the funds.

In a free market, the funds would come from parties with an interest in getting results. In government the interests are politically driven careers, and personal pet projects with no personal cost.

This article makes no mention of any comparison between research funded by the private sector with no taint of government priorities, versus government funding.

But besides the difference being intuitively obvious, we have at least one example in the area of stem cell research. The media widely reported on the debate leading up to the decision by George W. Bush on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.  He eventually decided to allow continuing research with the existing embryonic cell lines that had been funded, but restrict the use of federal funding for any new cell lines. Using new embryonic cell lines means the destruction of an embryo. An embryo is a new human life, a baby.

What was not reported in “Official Media” was that this research into EMBRYONIC stem cell research had already been at full speed for decades, with at the time NOT ONE medical application.

Also not reported at the time was that there were already 72 –seventy-two– medical applications resulting from ADULT stem cell research, already widely in use, funded by PRIVATE money. A few years later there were 150, and finally one study determined that adult stem cell research couple serve for any purported application of the embryonic studies.

Meaning, when you hear that they got some good thing or another from the embryonic stem cell research, remember it easier needless anyway,  sending bad money after bad, besides the other.

But the outrageous truth is that so many new lives were needlessly snuffed out while in the first stages of growth, in the name of stuffing them out, and with the bogus cover story of interest in medical advancement and the cure, for which using ADULT cells were already proven to serve much better.

And what a colossal waste of taxpayer-extorted money, including the one BILLION dollars that California’s tax victims had to dish out for it.

 

Fake news: the Elephant in the Room

When commenting on the “new” phenomenon of “fake news” with presumably a multiplier effect with the Internet, there is an elephant in the room getting ignored by most of the traditionally respected actors in the sphere of news and commentary. They have formed a kind of “mutual admiration society” with a circularly reinforcing view of events that excludes outlying and dissenting views.

The ones who are most troubled about fake news and looking for ways to limit its effect are the ones often most guilty, in other words.

Tabloids have peppered newsstands in stores and supermarkets for decades, including testimonials of women who gave birth to two-headed aliens.

This “new” theme of “fake news” was tossed out first in the 2016 presidential campaign, pushed by both Obama himself and the Clinton campaign.

In a typical use of the term, the Washington Post was so aghast at the fake news scare that it published a list of fake news sites, throwing in serious right-leaning sites questioning official ruling party views, like Breitbart.com, in with actual blatant and overtly “fake news” sites like “The Onion”.

And of all the accused “fake news” sites getting fingered by “authoritative” sources in this discussion, is a simple news link aggregator, www.drudgereport.com,  that does not even pretend to offer its own content, and does not even have original commentary, and includes links that are even helping drive people to traditional newspaper sites like the Washington Post itself!

That list was made by an apparently “fake front” for some group that demanded anonymity from The W. P. to protect itself from blow-back purportedly, and then quickly disappeared into the cyber ether.

But let us look at a mere handful of items from the history of “fake news”.

The sinking of the Battleship Maine was immediately blamed on Spain by the Respectable Establishment Press in the United States. To this day the cause of the explosion that sunk it, deep in the bowels of the ship, is a mystery.

The sinking of the Lusitania was used as a pretext to involve the U. S. in World War One, the “Great War”. We now know, a fact hidden then, that the Lusitania was loaded with all kinds of bellicose material. Instead of reminding both Woodrow Wilson and the public of his guarantee that he would not involve the country in that war, it cheered the battle and helped cover up the military nature of that ship’s cargo, using civilian passengers as “human shields”.

More recently, the chemical attack in Syria in 2013 proved to be a “false flag” attack by the rebels supported by the USA in funding and equipment, as reported in several European newspapers and by respected award-winning journalist Seymour Hirsch: https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line
Those rebels were actively developing these weapons. The version of the recent 2017 attack that a standard Syrian bomb hit a rebel depot storing such weapons is a much more credible version.

And yet, most, though not all, the Elephant in the Room swallowed up the story without questioning why the winning side of the war, now not having to worry about Trump’s administration removing him (“Regime change is off the table”), would want to risk it all by using chemicals.

There is much ado about nothing. The winners of any crackdown on “fake news” are in a Truth is Lies ministry, as in Orwellian worlds. “War is the health of the state”, the saying goes, justifying attacks on civil liberties.

There is another good example of the “wild west” Internet doing more good than bad. ACM Communications recently published an article about the posting of what purported to be a solution to the “P versus not P” problem. It was refuted quickly, in about one day. One day! That used to take submission to peer review, with months required for review then publishing, and do it again for a refutation if it got past the months of peer review.

The Internet is Peer Review on Steroids.

In computing and science, there is not much to fear there either, except from the self-appointed “opinion leaders”. America still has a great many people thinking for themselves.

Beware, beware of the *implantables*

Beware, beware of the *implantables*. Tracking software and “citizen” control enters hidden in a Trojan Horse. Most likely excuse for sneaking in the controls as they get discovered (leak away now guys) will be control over “money laundering”, criminals, child abusers, sexual predators, and the like, but inside lurk “master class” apps.

Note in the linked article that there are some devices for behavior control.

Brain wave behavior control has been an experimental research thing for decades now. School textbook conditioning to accept the subject’s governing authority is breaking down. That’s why they are trying –somewhat successfully– to use the conditioning cultural infrastructure to break down anti-state cultural institutions like the traditional nuclear family and religious faith in a God that demands obedience to laws like “Love thy neighbor as thyself” and even more so, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, rather than blind obedience to the state.

Minimum wage

Henry Ford used a manufacturing technique that was relatively advanced for the manufacture of horseless carriages. This technology, like most such advances, allowed and even required a division of labor that dramatically increased the productivity of manufacture, and this in turn allowed for a dramatically lower price for the automobiles he made.

The combination of productivity enhancement (assembly line technology) and sales volume in a free market context (cheaper horseless carriages) combined to allow him to pay enough to hire the workers with the best work ethics.

Of course, being a pretty smart salesman and public relations brain, he made it sound like he paid his workers more to make himself richer. Yeah, right. He also sold you a Brooklyn Bridge. 1908 was also the time of the presidency of the most famous “progressive” president, and so the doublespeak was strong at the time.

Henry Ford only used the lying doublespeak of the left-fascists of the day to promote his car and make it sound more “affordable” than even the technology allowed.

It is no anomaly that South Korea has the 12th largest economy in the world, about FORTY times bigger than North Korea’s. North Korea allows ZERO “unfettered capitalism”. South Korea allows a lot more than the USSA. They started out at the same economic levels at the end of World War Two
http://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/south-korea.north-korea/economy
..Those are numbers that the Keynesians hate and that’s why you never see them talking about it in the left-fascist news cartel sources.

Singapore has one of the lowest tax rates in the world and has the highest per-capita GDP in the world.

Hong Kong with its capitalist success and freedom for doing business (for both poor and rich), that Beijing decided to keep their economic regime (and a lot of the political freedom they had), and even opened more zones to replicate it.

Chile freed the market from a lot of its fetters and chains that had been imposed by the Marxist Allende, and has become the first and so far only Latin American country to join the club of developed nations.it is certainly the richest.

In fact as part of their legislative project to find a way to get free from so much poverty, Honduran legislators and officials invited business executives and government officials from Chile to Honduras to share what they’ve learned. They sent delegations to Hong Kong, Singapore, Chile, South Korea, to learn from their successes, and the special economic zone established by Abu Dhabi.

OF course they learned that you cannot decrease poverty by subsidizing it. You help the poor by letting them enjoy the fruits of their labor and you let them do business as they see fit on a level playing field, and eliminating the confusing maze of rules and regulations that keep them down.

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