Medical journals are just shameless shills for drug companies

[Quinlan]

According to this guy:

PLoS Medicine: Medical Journals Are an Extension of the Marketing Arm of Pharmaceutical Companies

Examples of Methods for Pharmaceutical Companies to Get the Results They Want from Clinical Trials

• Conduct a trial of your drug against a treatment known to be inferior.
• Trial your drugs against too low a dose of a competitor drug.
• Conduct a trial of your drug against too high a dose of a competitor drug (making your drug seem less toxic).
• Conduct trials that are too small to show differences from competitor drugs.
• Use multiple endpoints in the trial and select for publication those that give favourable results.
• Do multicentre trials and select for publication results from centres that are favourable.
• Conduct subgroup analyses and select for publication those that are favourable.
• Present results that are most likely to impress—for example, reduction in relative rather than absolute risk.

 

[Octarine]

Excellent discussion. Of course there are related biases with regards to public health research (pro-vaccination for example), the psychiatric industry who seem to ignore the fact that their research is inherently subject to placebo response etc.