The problem is that people assume science is a truth-seeking machine. Actually it is a consensus-building machine. They are very different.
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Replying to @Morvern_C_ @NiamhNolan8 and
If I could frame that tweet, I would. Beautifully put. Call me old-fashioned, but I never regarded consensus alone as science at all. I recall the maths version: 1+1=3 because enough of us say so? Yeah...right!
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Replying to @C7RKY @NiamhNolan8 and
Thanks. In practice scientific 'peer-review' means a few Profs at the top edit (aka gate-keep) the journals and vet grant applications. If one wanted to influence the direction of science, influencing these 'key opinion leaders' is all one would need to do.
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Replying to @Morvern_C_ @NiamhNolan8 and
That's a belief you & I share. The power is v concentrated. As in life, a few largely dictate the agenda to the many. Thread was long enough, otherwise I'd have looked up a damning review of the peer review system itself I saw recently too. Another gaping hole in the science net.
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Replying to @C7RKY @NiamhNolan8 and
Yes. And it's not just peer review. Even just holding certain opinions, about the efficacy of antidepressants or the usefulness of statins, or the safety of vaccines for example, are verboten in academic medical research.
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Replying to @Morvern_C_ @NiamhNolan8 and
It's funny, even though there's nothing that really surprises me in there, to hear someone in your position express it so clearly, is very striking. Thank you once more.
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Replying to @C7RKY @NiamhNolan8 and
You're welcome. It's a strange double-think. Everyone knows, for example, that antidepressants are not much better than placebo. Yet we persist with the fiction that they work and write papers and grant bids that kind of implicitly assume that they do work.
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Replying to @Morvern_C_ @C7RKY and
I must make clear that it's not malice or intentional deception. More a feeling that this is the best we have at the present time.
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Replying to @Morvern_C_ @NiamhNolan8 and
Appreciated. Perhaps if clinicians were also as ready to acknowledge the shortcomings as you have been, it would provoke a more meaningful debate about safety/efficacy & future research. Until then, the bar is way too low, imho.
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Replying to @C7RKY @NiamhNolan8 and
Clinicians are at a loss. They are too busy confronting a tsunami of human misery every day to debate the research. There are notable and valiant exceptions, of course.
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Absolutely. I've encountered a few of the exceptions. Far too few, but a few. Many just rely on clinical guidelines and a bit of CPD from the local pharma reps. It's no wonder we're in a mess when you think about it...
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