Science is the new religion. And the new heretics are those who don’t hew to the accepted scientific dogma. It’s becoming more and more apparent, to folks who still insist on thinking for themselves, that establishment science isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And now we even have the gatekeepers of contemporary science dogma — Editors of esteemed scientific journals –casting serious doubt on the veracity of what is published in their magazines. The implications of this go far beyond raw milk, or even vaccination, for that matter:
“One: Richard Horton, editor-in-chief, The Lancet, in The Lancet, 11 April, 2015, Vol 385,“Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma?”:
“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness…
“The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming. In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. Journal editors deserve their fair share of criticism too. We aid and abet the worst behaviours. Our acquiescence to the impact factor fuels an unhealthy competition to win a place in a select few journals. Our love of ‘significance’ pollutes the literature with many a statistical fairy-tale…Journals are not the only miscreants. Universities are in a perpetual struggle for money and talent…”
Two: Marcia Angell, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, in the NY Review of Books, January 15, 2009, “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption”:
“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.” Continue reading
The Bovine 