Evcidence-based medicine is highly compromised

[barbos]

Don't blame journalists here, these "scientists" were pretty clear in their claims.
Yes. it's a bit off topic, but the problem we are talking about is more general and affect all sciences, not just medicine.

Overreaching claims is one thing, outright fraud is another. Both occur in all sciences to a degree, but the degree matters alot. Studies tracking fraud across disciplines shows that medical research (especially pharma) has by far the most fraud. Fraud needs motive, and direct person profit is a larger motive for it than any other professional academic gains. Thus, there is more fraud in applied than basic science, particularly when its being applied to create claims that will sell a commercial product, which is what 95% of "medical" research amounts to.

Yes, that's what I said in my first post. But you underestimate amount of motive for fraud in less commercial fields.
Motive is still there. And in this particular case I would not be so sure to say these people are merely overreaching.
Problem is, if you can get away with "bad" science to get cheap publicity/grants/position then you will see people doing it. I knew people who were literally hoping for some flukes in data in order to have publication, because their contract was expiring and they really need it.

 

[barbos]

I was talking about academia, not drug companies. As for them (drug companies) there were quite a few cases where dangerous/useless drugs were knowingly (by a drug company) approved.

I know what you were talking about.

But it doesn't carry over to drug research.

Ultimately drug research never ends. Even after a drug is approved it is constantly undergoing review.

That is how drugs like Vioxx were found to be dangerous and taken off the US market.

And this is much more the case for cancer drugs (the topic of the OP). They are almost exclusively prescribed based on guidelines.

If a cancer drug is not effective in post approval studies it doesn't matter what the manufacturer says, the drug won't be used.

Well, maybe not to cancer drugs. But cancer drugs are not the only profitable thing drug companies have.
They make a lot of money on selling crap like headache pills, pills restless leg syndrome and other large volume crap. And how about recent revelation that they don't like to test their drugs on women or female rats?
They were doing it knowingly. So don't tell me they are clean when it comes serious drugs.

 

[untermensche]

I know what you were talking about.

But it doesn't carry over to drug research.

Ultimately drug research never ends. Even after a drug is approved it is constantly undergoing review.

That is how drugs like Vioxx were found to be dangerous and taken off the US market.

And this is much more the case for cancer drugs (the topic of the OP). They are almost exclusively prescribed based on guidelines.

If a cancer drug is not effective in post approval studies it doesn't matter what the manufacturer says, the drug won't be used.

Well, maybe not to cancer drugs. But cancer drugs are not the only profitable thing drug companies have.
They make a lot of money on selling crap like headache pills, pills restless leg syndrome and other large volume crap. And how about recent revelation that they don't like to test their drugs on women or female rats?
They were doing it knowingly. So don't tell me they are clean when it comes serious drugs.

I'm not saying the drug manufacturers are clean.

I'm saying drugs are studied even after they are approved. The initial research to gain approval is not the end of the matter.

 

[Underseer]

Here's another article on problems with medical research:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/

The article is older, but the TED talk in the original post was almost certainly inspired by the work cited in the above article.