By Alexander Fratzis, Citizen Journalist
(NaturalNews) Internationally recognized as the foremost expert in assessing the credibility of medical research, Dr. John Ioannidis made a most disturbing discovery. Up to 90 percent of published medical information directly relied on by doctors to determine treatment is misleading, exaggerated, or quite often flat out wrong. Even more unsettling, the medical community agrees with his assessment.
Starting his medical career at the beginning of the evidence based medicine movement, Ioannidis gravitated away from undertaking new research towards assessing the validity of previous research. Systemic inaccuracy emerged consistently at every level, and began to paint the picture that most studies were biased. Uniquely positioned as an expert statistician, Ioannidis carefully assembled a team, which spent a decade exploring the problem before publishing a landmark paper. It concluded:
With natural levels of researcher bias, generally imperfect research techniques, and a common tendency to focus on novel rather than plausible theories, wrong findings will be the norm. At the same time the scientific journals are strongly biased towards publishing the most novel claims and lack effective safeguards for filtering out inaccurate studies.
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