Junk "Science": Obamacare

Monday, 7 March 2016

We have to rely on something but when numbers are used to make arguments rather than prove them, or to justify conclusions rather than influence them, then our mistrust is warranted. Beyond the subject matter covered here which is the Kaiser Health Tracking Poll of January 2016, ( http://kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/kaiser-health-tracking-poll-january-2016/, Bianca DiJulio, Jamie Firth, Ashley Kirzinger and Mollyann Brodie), in an environment where everything about our healthcare from diagnosis to treatment is based on some "study," the alarming quantity of junk science is meaningful.

Consider articles such as, "Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science," by David H. Freedman in, "THE ATLANTIC," in November of 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/, "…much of what biomedical researchers conclude in published studies—conclusions that doctors keep in mind when they prescribe antibiotics or blood-pressure medication, or when they advise us to consume more fiber or less meat, or when they recommend surgery for heart disease or back pain—is misleading, exaggerated, and often flat-out wrong."

In the February 2016 issue of REASON.COM, Ronald Bailey in his article reports on, "Broken Science," and about "The mounting evidence that most scientific findings are false," http://reason.com/archives/2016/01/19/broken-science.

In 2012, the US National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, PubMed.gov have found the same thing-- Research by Grimes and Schulz states, "Most reported associations in observational clinical research are false, and the minority of associations that are true are often exaggerated," (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22996110).