What Doctors don’t know about the drugs they prescribe: Ben Goldacre TED talk

This is a video that I think everyone should watch! It addresses the issue of ‘publication bias’ in medicine which (believe it or not) is an issue that directly affects YOU! This is well worth 13 minutes of your day.

Key points:

- There is no obligation on researchers to publish every piece of research that they conduct, so if they get ‘undesirable’ results they don’t have to let anyone know about them.

- Medical journals likewise are far more likely to publish ‘positive’ studies than ‘negative’ ones.

- A lot of research these days is ‘owned’ by pharmaceutical companies who have serious vested interests in what information your Doctor has access to.

- Half of all medical research that is conducted never gets published.

But don’t take my word for it- watch it yourself:

 

I have to say as well that this is an issue that affects all areas of medicine not just ‘pharmaceutical medicine’.

In a study of research done into acupuncture it was found that different countries produced markedly different rates of positive trials. 75% of acupuncture trials published in England were positive whereas 99% of those published in China were positive.  Now why would that be? Maybe the Chinese journals are biased towards acupuncture? Maybe the English journals are biased against acupuncture? Maybe the Chinese are just more responsive to acupuncture? The issue is that we just don’t know- and until the laws around publication of medical research are tightened up sufficiently this is going to be a problem which continues to affect us all.