Thursday, July 14, 2005

1/3 of All Studies Are Bunk

CNN Is reporting that a new review of studies published since 1990 shows over 1/3 of all of them were flat wrong. This, of course, jives with the experience of the common reader who is perplexed by being told Monday that fiber is good for you, Wednesday that it causes cancer and horrible body odor, and Friday that it cures AIDS and makes one irresistable to the opposite sex.

Experts say the report is a reminder to doctors and patients that they should not put too much stock in a single study and understand that treatments often become obsolete with medical advances.
"The crazy part about science and yet the exciting part about science is you almost never have something that's black and white," said Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, JAMA's editor-in-chief.
...
The refuted studies dealt with a wide range of drugs and treatments. Hormone pills were once thought to protect menopausal women from heart disease but later were shown to do the opposite, and Vitamin E pills have not been shown to prevent heart attacks, contrary to initial results.
Of course, this very article is based on a study. So it raises the natural question of whether it is one of the 1/3 which is typically wrong... course, if that is the case would that make the 1/3 right? I feel a riddle coming on.

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