How a pharma company made billions off mass murder by faking the science on Oxycontin

[hydroxide]

For this, if you’ll permit, I’m blaming people like you.

I don’t. Your scapegoating others, especially nonamericans, for US antiintellectualism is rich. Especially when antibiotics is strictly perscription-only in their countries, unlike in the US, where you could easily buy ointments and band-aids with antibiotics on them when I was there last.

Some would argue that corporate-funded and corporate-conducted research barely qualifies as scientific evidence. You did read the article(s), no? Besides, science doesn’t only happen in in labs, and not just by people wearing lab coats.

Anyone arguing so has clearly no clue about the quality of medical research. And it is telling that you prefer nonsense dished out by people who never learned scientific rigor and method and who have as much grasp of statistics as an average brick to people with the means to actually ask a statistician. Some of the biggest medical scandals happened entirely without industry involvement, but frothing crusaders like you wouldn’t notice, because a five subject “trial” presented by an independent “researcher” who never once learned when to use a t-test and when a chi-squared test is appropriate is more “impressive” to you than corporate research.

Your comment about science not only happening in labs is pure waffling without any connection to anything I said. It is painfully evident from your frothing that you could not care less about the actual quality of the science and prefer to seek for excuses to erect pyres and burn heretics.

[anon55609254]

@fuzzyfungus

If XR mechanisms are highly drug-specific

You make very good points, and I dunno the answers to any of them. If you look up drug delivery on Pubmed you get over 13,000 hits for 2015 alone. So maybe there’s hope.

[hello_friends]

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[anon33466019]

@hydroxide

unlike in the US, where you could easily buy ointments and band-aids with antibiotics on them when I was there last

What?

I’ve lived here my entire life, and antibiotics are controlled at pharmacies, and you need a prescription from a doctor. The bandages you mention are polymixm and zinc. They are in the same class of antibiotics as hydrogen peroxide, ethanol, and cleaning a wound.

[doop]

@hydroxide

No justification for any investigation.

Hey you seem to know, what justification does the DOJ need in order to conduct an investigation?

@hydroxide

People like you complain about hundreds of patients having serious side effects in antibotics used on millions and millions of people worldwide.

He does? When and where did he say that?

@hydroxide

Incidentally, neither documentaries nor random webpages are scientific evidence.

And sentences that start with “people like you” are not arguments. They’re just, I dunno, shit-slinging. It’s a nasty way to attribute things to people that they didn’t say and you maybe shouldn’t do it.

@hydroxide

Your scapegoating others, especially nonamericans, for US antiintellectualism is rich. Especially when antibiotics is strictly perscription-only in their countries, unlike in the US, where you could easily buy ointments and band-aids with antibiotics on them when I was there last.

From what I understand here it seems like you both agree that overuse of antibiotics is a bad thing, but by all means don’t let that ruin a good fight. Also why is @thaumatechnicia having a dig at US anti-intellectualism rich? A few posts up he identifies as Canadian.

@hydroxide

Anyone arguing so has clearly no clue about the quality of medical research.

Please enlighten us. Specific examples would be useful but remember that neither documentaries nor random webpages are scientific evidence.

@hydroxide

And it is telling that you prefer nonsense dished out by people who never learned scientific rigor and method and who have as much grasp of statistics as an average brick to people with the means to actually ask a statistician.

Are there specific “people who have never learned etc. etc.” that you have in mind here? Have said people already been mentioned in this discussion? Can you then show some evidence of their lack of credentials and abilities? Or did you just invent these people or bring them into this argument because it sounded good when you said it?

@hydroxide

Some of the biggest medical scandals happened entirely without industry involvement

Some do, some don’t. But let me put it this way, if you can find one single example of corporate-funded, peer-reviewed and published research that reaches a conclusion counter to the interests of its corporate backers, I would be extremely interested to see it. Just one example will do, please.

@hydroxide

frothing crusaders like you

There you go again. “Arguing with you is no fun, so I’ll argue with people like you instead.” It lets you say what you really want to say and I get how satisfying that is, but it’s not really fair to the person you are actually arguing with. Again, maybe don’t do that.

@hydroxide

pure waffling without any connection to anything

I know the feeling. Try to be more specific with your arguments, leave out the “people like you” stuff, calm down just a little bit (telling people they are “frothing” isn’t necessary) and try again.

[thaumatechnicia]

The way this is supposed to work is you attack what I actually said:

“…especially nonamericans” - for the record, I’m not USAian. You would know that, if you had bothered to read other comments on other topics I’ve made here on Boing Boing before trying to poke me in the eye with things like “People like you…”.

I WAS attacking the practice, very prevalent in the USA, of putting antibiotics on everything and for everything [recall my sentence-fragment:] “which seems [ <-- note the sarcasm, eh] to be a US federal law” [emphasis added]. Was I not clear enough?

Now, as far as my “Some would argue that corporate-funded and corporate-conducted research barely qualifies as scientific evidence”, I stand by that statement. You could have / should have attacked me for dissembling with ‘Some would argue’ - that would have scored a hit, IMHO.

A missed opportunity, eh. <— Oh look, he’s Canadian! Also, the reference to Dr. Nancy Olivieri above, another clue that I’m Canadian.

A frothing crusader, I’m not, though I sometimes drool in my sleep.

Here:
Google these three words: “Medical Research Fraud”. G’head, I’ll wait. You’ll get more than 100 million hits.

When I did it, the first hit was from the US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health - hardly what any reasonable person would call a ‘random webpage’.

The second sentence in the linked-to article (J Res Med Sci. 2012 Nov; 17(11): 1077–1081. PMCID: PMC3702092 Fraud and deceit in medical research by Umran Sarwar and Marios Nicolaou1) is [emphasis added for the benefit of all the people whose eyes have glazed over long ago]: However, instances of individuals and institutions subverting the ethos of honesty and integrity on which medical research is built in order to advance personal ambitions have been well documented.

[hydroxide]

@japhroaig

What?

I’ve lived here my entire life, and antibiotics are controlled at pharmacies, and you need a prescription from a doctor. The bandages you mention are polymixm and zinc. They are in the same class of antibiotics as hydrogen peroxide, ethanol, and cleaning a wound.

No, they aren’t, And it’s not just zinc but bacitracin zinc. Polymyxin B - Wikipedia Bacitracin - Wikipedia

Hydrogen peroxide and ethanol are disinfectants. Different kind of substance.

[hydroxide]

@thaumatechnicia

Now, as far as my “Some would argue that corporate-funded and corporate-conducted research barely qualifies as scientific evidence”, I stand by that statement. You could have / should have attacked me for dissembling with ‘Some would argue’ - that would have scored a hit, IMHO.

I give a rodent’s posterior what you stand by. The fact is that corporations all too often have to actually hire people to do statistics courses for their customers so as to be able to actually discuss scientific literature with them because the statistical foundations of modern medical research are completely lost to them. The fact is that MDs are primarily trained as practitioners, not as researchers, but humongous numbers of them, without having gone through an MD/PhD program, consider themselves God’s gift to medical research and no PhD to be their equal. Are there good researchers among them? Yes. I’ve worked with some of them. But the vast and overwhelming majority of them couldn’t get a term paper passed in molecular physiology. But they produce massive floods of medical “research” because an MD is only any good if their publication list rivals the Mississippi in length. But of course, their work is much better than that of any corporation, by sheer fact of it being from a corporation.

@thaumatechnicia

Here: Google these there words: “Medical Research Fraud”. G’head, I’ll wait. You’ll get more than 100 million hits.

So?

@thaumatechnicia

The second sentence in the linked-to article (J Res Med Sci. 2012 Nov; 17(11): 1077–1081. PMCID: PMC3702092 Fraud and deceit in medical research by Umran Sarwar and Marios Nicolaou1) is [emphasis added for the benefit of all the people whose eyes have glazed over long ago]: However, instances of individuals and institutions subverting the ethos of honesty and integrity on which medical research is built in order to advance personal ambitions have been well documented.

Uh-huh. Lo and behold, it happens easily without big, bad corporations.

And if you look at Scientific misconduct - Wikipedia
you will find an astonishing number of cases not involving any corporation at all but rather university researchers out for glory.

[hydroxide]

@doop

Hey you seem to know, what justification does the DOJ need in order to conduct an investigation?

It would be very strange for the DOJ to conduct an investigation into a company NOT having engaged in promotion contrary to the approval.

@doop

Please enlighten us. Specific examples would be useful but remember that neither documentaries nor random webpages are scientific evidence.

http://www.perfendo.org/docs/BayesProbability/goodman%20steven%201.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1525-1497.1998.00227.x/pdf
http://www.jgme.org/doi/pdf/10.4300/JGME-D-12-00161.1

And in fact it was corporate researchers who recently sounded alarms on the reproducibility of biomedical research:
http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v10/n9/full/nrd3439-c1.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a.html

not the least because the sheer amount of trash circulating in the form of scientific publications hinders their efforts to find drugs that actually work.

[anon33466019]

I really don’t think we are arguing. I listed polymixm, and none of these are even similar to penicillin. Overuse of topical aids isn’t driving drug resistance in bacteria.

[anon33466019]

@hydroxide

The fact is that MDs are primarily trained as practitioners, not as researchers, but humongous numbers of them, without having gone through an MD/PhD program, consider themselves God’s gift to medical research and no PhD to be their equal

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s take a quick breath

You just said MDs don’t go through an MD program. MDs are practitioners and aren’t researchers, as opposed to PhDs–which is true by definition.

Clear, level headed discourse rules the day.

[hydroxide]

@japhroaig

I really don’t think we are arguing. I listed polymixm, and none of these are even similar to penicillin. Overuse of topical aids isn’t driving drug resistance in bacteria.

It’s not relevant whether they are similar to penicillin. There are many different classes of antibiotics. And the name is polymyxin. Or, more precisely, polymyxin B, derived from Bacillus polymyxa.

@japhroaig

Overuse of topical aids isn’t driving drug resistance in bacteria.

Once more, we are talking here about antibiotics, and no mere antiseptics.
Check this: Systematic review of antibiotic resistance in acne: an increasing topical and oral threat - PubMed

@japhroaig

You just said MDs don’t go through an MD program. MDs are practitioners and aren’t researchers, as opposed to PhDs–which is true by definition.

No, I didn’t say MDs don’t go through an MD program. I said the majority does not go through an MD/PhD program, which allows them to get both degrees.

[Wanderfound]

@japhroaig

@hydroxide

The fact is that MDs are primarily trained as practitioners, not as researchers, but humongous numbers of them, without having gone through an MD/PhD program, consider themselves God’s gift to medical research and no PhD to be their equal

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let’s take a quick breath

You just said MDs don’t go through an MD program. MDs are practitioners and aren’t researchers, as opposed to PhDs–which is true by definition.

Not quite; I read that as “MDs who are just MDs, but haven’t done a combined MD/PhD program”.

OTOH, on the overall theme of the discussion, I’m generally on the side that Hydroxide is arguing against. Research manipulation and fraud by commercial pharma is well documented, routine and lethal. See Ben Goldacre’s work if you want a layperson introduction, see PubMed if you feel like digging out the source studies.

And, incidentally, I do hold a PhD in a biomed research field.

[anon33466019]

Err, I know what you are saying. In my field of study X/Y means X or Y. Not X and Y.

Slash (punctuation)

The slash is commonly used in many languages as a shorter substitute for the conjunction “or”, typically with the sense of exclusive or (e.g., Y/N permits yes or no but not both).

I apologize if I was confused.

[hydroxide]

@Wanderfound

OTOH, on the overall theme of the discussion, I’m generally on the side that Hydroxide is arguing against. Research manipulation and fraud by commercial pharma is well documented, routine and lethal. See Ben Goldacre’s work if you want a layperson introduction, see PubMed if you feel like digging out the source studies.

And, incidentally, I do hold a PhD in a biomed research field.

So do I, and your post illustrates the problem. Sampling bias. No one questions that research manipulation and fraud by commercial pharma has occured. But it occurs just the same in noncommercial research activity. And you still ignore the massive amounts of studies characterized by sheer incompetence. I cited pertinent publications earlier.