Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

The current issue of Atlantic has an article by David H. Freedman, "Lies, damned lies, and medical science." It's primarily about the work of one man, John Ioannidis (pronounced yo-NEE-dees). I had just been reading a current issue of JAMA about the ongoing controversy about HRT for women experiencing hot flashes during menopause. "Estrogen Plus progestin and breast cancer incidence and mortality in postmenopausal women" JAMA p. 1684, Oct. 30, 2010. Truly, you could get whip lash trying to follow this! In the early 90s, I remember a nurse friend of mine saying that HRT was practically the magic bullet for women--benefitted the heart, controlled osteoporosis and could fight Alzheimer's. There was, even then, some concern about elevated estrogen levels and breast cancer, but heart disease is a bigger killer of women than breast cancer, and osteoporosis kills many older women in falls and deforms their bodies worse than a lost breast, and Alzheimer's? That is a frightening disease.

In 2002, the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) was stopped early because of evidence that estrogen/progestin (made from horse urine) was increasing the risk of breast cancer AND myocardial infarction AND risk of stroke and pulmonary embolism. Big oops, right? And while reading this I started to jot down other big oops we've heard over the years like Vitamin E, fish oil, Fosamax, and drink 8 glasses of water a day.

One ongoing medical/social controversy is DDT. Millions and millions of Africans have died since U.S. environmentalists in the 70s scared it off the market. The research is terribly contradictory, but facts are facts--millions of people, mostly children, who would have been alive are dead or injured for life. There could have been something done that reached a middle ground before the parasties were again allowed free rein to multiply to a trillion cells in a few days and consume half a person's volume of blood. Folks, this is an excruciating way to die! All for thin shells of birds.

Then when I met AZ for coffee she gave me a copy of Freedman's article. It seems it is based primarily on the 2005 article that John Ioannidis published in Public Library of Science: Medicine. Ioannidis has recently been appointed to Stanford Prevention Research Center.

PLoS Medicine: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False