Science By Design/Junk Science
[back] Medical study ploys

Junk science quotes
Junk science articles
Government studies (MMR vaccine)

Is The Schizophrenia Mortality Study In The Lancet CREDIBLE?
A study purporting to analyze mortality rates of 66, 881 schizophrenia patients in Finland (1973 to 2005) was published in the prestigious journal, The Lancet. A critical analysis by psychiatrist, Grace Jackson, MD, identifies fatal flaws in the study design and numerous methodological artefacts that introduced bias which minimized the detection of drug-related mortality. The authors’ conclusions favoring the long-term use of second-generation antipsychotics, and Clozaril in particular, as Dr. Jackson demonstrates, are not supported by their study design: indeed, their "favorable" conclusions about patients' mortality were based upon numerous confounders (methodological tricks and problems) which mitigated the detection of actual drug-associated mortality.
Vera Hassner Sharav, AHRP/The Lancet

[2009 May] FDA Waved Through Asthma Drugs Despite Falsified Trials by Martha Rosenberg

Patient Advocacy Group Calls For Suspension Of JAMA Editors, Investigation
"We are deeply concerned about the unbecoming and unethical conduct of the Editor-in-chief and Executive Deputy Editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, who were reported to have used unprofessional and intimidating tactics against a conscientious academic, Dr. Jonathan Leo. Their behavior undermines the integrity of the JAMA peer review process, first, by failing to properly vet a manuscript for the accuracy of scientific reporting and for author conflict of interest and bias and, second, by launching an ad hominem attack on the scientist who was attempting to correct the record...."

Griffin MR, et al.  Risk of sudden infant death syndrome after immunization with the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine. N Engl J Med. 1988 Sep 8;319(10):618-23. PMID: 3261837; UI: 88318811.
Griffin MR, et al. Risk of seizures and encephalopathy after immunization with the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine. JAMA. 1990 Mar 23-30;263(12):1641-5. PMID: 2308203; UI: 90172513.
"Two studies by teams of epidemiologists headed by Marie R. Griffin represent perhaps the absolute worst I have encountered in many years of reading this literature.......It is amazing that such a study (1988 NEJM) could be accepted by a reputable scientific journal. The reason was doubtless that the study was funded by the CDC and the FDA, and that two of the coauthors (Griffin and Ray) were at the time "Burroughs Wellcome Scholars in pharmacoepidemiology" (whatever that is). Burroughs-Wellcome is, of course, a major producer of the pertussis vaccine. Have these people never heard of conflict of interest?........These kinds of articles bring the Public Health Service, the CDC, the FDA, the "peer-reviewed" journals, and the rest of the medical-industrial-government complex into disrepute. Physicians can swallow this garbage if they want, since they make their living from it, but parents who expect at least elementary honesty from those who call themselves "scientists," and whose children are being maimed and crippled by the very vaccines which are proclaimed innocuous by authors such as Griffin et al. are already taking steps to put this invalid out of its misery. The relations between the public and the vaccine establishment are surely going to get a lot worse before they start getting any better."---Harris Coulter http://www.pnc.com.au/~cafmr/coulter/vacc-deb.html