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Medical Journals Fight Burying of Inconvenient Research
A dozen leading medical journals have announced that they plan to refuse publication of clinical studies unless those studies were publicly registered ahead of time. Part of the intention is to prevent researchers from privately doing multiple studies and then selectively releasing for publication only those which yield favorable results. There are many other journals which have not signed on to this plan, however, and it remains to be seen what will happen. Personally, I'm surprised it's taken this long; as Karl Popper wrote, "what distinguishes the scientific approach and method from the prescientific approach is the method of attempted falsification."
The problem with statistics is that they can often be made to say what you want. There was a recent advertisement around here that said 80% of accidents happen within a five mile radius of your home. The ad was pushing to use seatbelts even for a short trips. However, if 90% of driving is done within that same five mile radius, then your actually less likely to get in an accident then when your driving close to home. The message is still good, but the statistics may not actually support what the message is saying.
as wrong as the idea that NIH-funded research does all (or even much) of the work of drug development
No they just do the basic research that results in the drug leads. The companies then do the expensive but scientifically easy trials and rake in all the money (and now it seems, the credit as well).
And since when is an industry spokesman considered a reliable source of information..?
Exactly, all research should be published whether it be good or bad and let the reviewers decide whether the results are valid and the methdology is good and is worth publishing. In that way the researchers will probably gain from the positive critism allowing them to do even better research the next time around.
If they don't know why things are failing, how can they improve?
When the article was talking about companies doing multiple studies and only publishing the best one, though, they were talking about this sort of thing. The companies weren't changing the experiment to make it work. Doing that would raise red flags - maybe not so obvious as creative methods for patient recruiting, but something that other doctors would likely catch. They're just doing the studies several times and publishing the best one (or just doing one big study and only using part of the data set for publishing). Doing a pre-run study as you suggest would help their odds, but would nowhere near assure them good resuls in the second, registered study.
This nicely illustrates Lowe's point: what you're saying is widely believed, but is absolutely, utterly, entirely, absurdly false. (Except for the non-sequitur at the end about "credit" which I don't understand at all.)
And since when is an industry spokesman considered a reliable source of information..?
First, he's a chemist, not a "spokesman". Second, he (and I) do precisely the work you claim doesn't exist and might be thought to have something to say on the matter. But, if you want to limit your "reliable sources of information" to people who don't know what they're talking about, that's certainly your right.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...