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TriTorch's avatar

“Journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry”, wrote Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, in March 2004 [1]. In the same year, Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, lambasted the industry for becoming “primarily a marketing machine” and co-opting “every institution that might stand in its way” —https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0020138

You could hook the revolving door between the CDC/FDA and the corporations they govern up to a turbine and light up the Vegas strip...

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Pi Guy's avatar

"Journals have devolved into..."

Echo Chambers

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Epaminondas's avatar

Narrative enforcers. Peer review is basically a way by editors to enforce their desired views with a veneer of respectability.

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Jimmy Gleeson's avatar

3700 studies on vaccine hesitancy.

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Jimmy Gleeson's avatar

There should be a new set of cartoons on Saturday morning...instead of Conjunction Junction we have "Consensus Census"

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Pi Guy's avatar

I really like that.

"Hooking up words and phrases and clauses."

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Jimmy Gleeson's avatar

Only in this case it would be generating notions, and narratives, mantras, and morass.

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Pi Guy's avatar

*nods* Rgr tht

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The Wiltster's avatar

I used to work in regulated medical devices. Spent about 17 years including stints in design and development and system validation. I took a buy-out from Kodak/Johnson & Johnson in 1996. Even BACK THEN, I thought there was too much of a revolving door between FDA regulators and industry leaders. Suffice it to say it has only gotten worse. Or better, depending upon your point of view. I had a close colleague back then, who actually worked in regulatory affairs, who thought the revolving door was a good thing, particularly for business. Apparently, she was correct!

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Ryan Gardner's avatar

Of course she thought it was a good thing.

It's like in business;

Always assume a bureaucrat requires consulting five other bureaucrats to figure out what you can provide them to tell you they need something.

They spawn like locust

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The Wiltster's avatar

Regulatory Affairs, particularly for a Fortune 500 company, is an object lesson in where government bureaucracy inevitably leads. The regulatory set-up that the FDA creates means that a company simply CANNOT get a new assay to market without a dedicated regulatory affairs staff. There is just too much paperwork. This effectively raises a barrier to entry for small firms who might innovate, and makes big companies, the ones who can afford both a department and to grease government functionaries, the ONLY ones who can offer new products. Nice racket!

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libertate's avatar

"But hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat disregarded…"

~ Doug Casey

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Ryan Gardner's avatar

So true!

Yes. They love us all equally. They replicate like mushrooms on a moist dark patch.

"Bureaucrats can neither be hurried in their deliberations nor made to see common sense Indeed, the very absurdity or pedantry of these deliberations is for them the guarantee of their own fair mindedness, impartiality, and disinterest. To treat all people with equal contempt and indifference is the bureaucrat's idea of equity."

- Theodore Dalrymple

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Pi Guy's avatar

"The rules say _triplicate_."

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libertate's avatar

I'm afraid your papers are not in order.

Go to stall 174B. There are other "customers" ahead of you.

Your wait time for servicing is approximately 92 minutes. Please have your SSN tramp stamp clearly visible.

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Pi Guy's avatar

Like some sort of bureaucrat's vision of Hell.

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Pi Guy's avatar

*makes squinchy face*

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Pi Guy's avatar

Ryan alludes to "bureaucrat requires consulting five other bureaucrats" is really the meat of this issue: There's no Engineer or Accountant or PM so they discount all evidence but that which seems most sensible to them, Those Who Do Not Produce.

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Aria Veritas's avatar

It gets to the point where you presume people know, but I guess they don't (yet). One of the best evidence-based medicine sites I know of is earthclinic.com

If a disease isn't on there it's probably had a name change (eg.'muscular rheumatism' was changed to fibromyalgia, and 'hysteria' was changed to depression).

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Brenda Ping's avatar

Earthclinic looks like a great site. Thank you!

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Aria Veritas's avatar

It's brilliant, saved me so much worry, money and stress. No doctors in over 15 years thanks to Deirdre Lane (founder).

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Pi Guy's avatar

It feels like we could at least have just been a little more skeptical all along.

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Dr. Hubris's avatar

"You could hook the revolving door between the CDC/FDA and the corporations they govern up to a turbine and light up the Vegas strip..."

What a great source of GREEN energy - LOL!

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TriTorch's avatar

Haha, nice. Change the last letter of GREEN to a 'D' and you've got it!

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