SPOTLIGHT: Physicians and medical researchers are often armed with outdated facts.
BIG PICTURE: In 1993, a pair of papers published in a prestigious medical journal suggested that Vitamin E helped prevent heart attacks in both men and women. These papers were based on observational studies, which suffer from serious shortcomings.
A follow-up study published in the same journal seven years later found no evidence that patients who’d been taking Vitamin E for years experienced fewer heart problems. Because these findings were the result of a randomized controlled trial, a superior form of research, they should have put the matter to rest.
But erroneous ideas linger. As Richard Harris explains in Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions
Mistaken ideas persist. Science may be self-correcting over the long haul, but that process is slow and haphazard. In the interim, lots of people continue to make real-world decisions based on outdated information.
Harris quotes John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine who says scientists who’ve spent their career studying Vitamin E aren’t necessarily keen to change their mind. They’re too heavily invested in a particular perspective:
They were living in their own bubble, unperturbed by the evidence. This is one major reason why having lots of false results circulating in the literature is not a good idea. These results get entrenched. You cannot get rid of them. There will be lots of people who…will never know that this thing has been refuted.
TOP TAKEAWAY: We celebrate the ability of science to self-correct. But major caveats apply.
LINKS:
Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions Richard Harris |
- The 1993 paper concerning men, Vitamin E, and heart disease has been cited 2,780 times. The one concerning women has been cited 2,570 times.
- The more rigorous 2000 results may be seen here.
- Half of citations in 2005 were still treating the 1993 papers as true: Persistence of contradicted claims in the literature
- see my previous commentary, Is science really self-correcting?
please support this blog
→ Receive posts via e-mail by signing up on the right side of this page, above – or by following this blog on Facebook and Twitter.
→ Download or e-mail a PDF of this post by clicking the Print button under Share This below – then select the blue arrow beside PDF at the bottom left.