Psyllium

[meat]

Re: Psyllium

So, what do doctors know and advise?

To lose weight, the vast majority of doctors still advise a low-fat, restricted-calorie diet.

Nuff said.

This is precisely why people who have gotten obese following their advice seek alternative sources of information.

a physician is going to have no idea what the evidence is, that's a product of clinical research generally speaking.

physicians are really really poor sources of advice for weight loss, they don't have anything to do with the research process and are too busy to keep up so they generally assume the advice of the most high profile advocacy groups are a safe bet. most of them are taking a non-evidence based approach to weight loss.

even if you went to a board certified bariatric doctor it's often going to be a night and day difference from a GP.

[not2late]

Re: Psyllium

correct.

but it's a place to start... it's a lot more meaningful than making up a reason for something, which in it's best form is just called a hypothesis.

A hypothesis is an educated guess. It is based on observation or a series of observation. Thus, if you observe that every time you take a fish out of water, you may hypothesize that fish need water to survive. It you want to prove that, then you will have to design an experiment to show that fish need water to survive. If during your experiment, you find fish that can survive out of water, then your conclusion would be that fish need water to survive but, you have found that fish species X does not need water to survive. A hypothesis is not something that you simply make up...although in today's scientific era is it.

there are many high quality and relevant studies done on every topic under the sun everyday.

And some of these high quality and relevant studies are purely garbage and still manage to be published and promoted. I mentioned the Seven Countries Study in my other post, but

if your particular bias is to believe in atkins, remember that there's been several major studies validating it over the last 7 years, including one funded by the american heart association who had only done so for the purpose of ridiculing it when they "knew" it must be wrong.

The American Heart Association fell for the Seven Countries Study hook, line and sinker to they detriment of the population. They are so imbedded with the pharmaceutical companies, it's hard to take them seriously at all...

in other words, science works, but no human system will always be perfect.

But humans are the ones designing and analysizing scientific studies. Therefore, there is already a degree of error within every study, no matter how well designed and executed. That's why the almight p value is so statistically significant. While mathematics is absolute, it is also possibly to manipulate the numbers to get that p value where you want it.

there's no reason to encourage taking a nihilistic view of it, especially if, being biased towards atkins, and seeing how completely and totally anti-atkins the establishment was and still is, it was ultimately vindicated by science done by that same establishment who loathed/loathes it.

I'm not encouraging a nihilistic view. I am encouraging skepticism. The basis of all scientific exploration is skepticism. If everything was unquestionably accepted, there wouldn't be a need for scientific studies. And skepticism doesn't automatically accept something as fact or truth simply because it was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Skepticism prevents science from stagnation.

totally untrue.

two things happen:

1) the media is UNFORTUNATELY almost always the conduit of science to the public and for a lot of complex social reasons they're predisposed to sensationalizing the low-fat high-carb cholesterol-heart-disease anti-atkins storyline, so what gets reported, and the way its reported, is often really distorted.

Unfortunately, the media gets its information from the scientific community. For example, the fraudulent data that supported breast cancer lumpectomy: that fraudulent data was compiled by researchers and published in peer-reviewed medical journals and incorporated into breast cancer treatment guidelines. The media's culpability lies in reporting data they did not know was fraudulent.

I'm not a fan of the media, but you can only blame them so much for the weakness and corruption of the scientific community.

2) the other thing that can happen is authors put something in the 'abstract' that really doesn't jibe with the data for a variety of complex social reasons.
for instance in the cochrane meta-analysis on saturated fat they put in the abstract "saturated fat may cause heart disease" but in the public statements about the study they said something to the effect of "it was pretty disappointing we didn't find any real correlation".

So in other words, they could have put in the abstract "saturated fat may cause ESP" and it probably would have been just as relevant, but it was too complicated of a social proposition for them to say "saturated fat does not cause heart disease" or "there is no evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease" at the time.

Let's just cut to the chase here....research and the pharmaceutical industry is money-driven. Johnson and Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, Schering, etc. all have to make a profit by peddling their drugs. If they invest millions of dollars into a drug that doesn't work great, they lose. If they invest millions of dollars into a drug that doesn't work great, but still manage to get it approved and sold, they win.

Read about the Joseph Beidermann case. Beidermman promised Johnson and Johnson that his research would show their antipsychotic drug was beneficial for children---eventhough at the time Beidermann did not have the data and did not even begin doing the research to obtain that data. He made his promise during a pitch for research grant monies.

Don't fool yourself by thinking research is not profit driven. It is.

There can be just as many politics involved in the dissemination of the result of the scientific process as there are in any corporate office or any other type of organization of people working together, but that doesn't really overshadow the validity of the work, you just have to dig a bit harder to try and understand what to take away from it.

And when you dig into it, you find that the study is garbage, because the methodology is garbage, the data is garbage, the analysis is garbage and the conclusion is garbage. Yet, the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association all support that study to the point of putting those findings in their treatment guidelines.

And that's what my point has been----don't accept studies as truth, conclusive or legitimate because it was published in a major scientific journal. Be skeptical---because scientific integrity is like the Easter Bunny: totally made up.

[meat]

Re: Psyllium

A hypothesis is an educated guess. It is based on observation or a series of observation. Thus, if you observe that every time you take a fish out of water, you may hypothesize that fish need water to survive. It you want to prove that, then you will have to design an experiment to show that fish need water to survive. If during your experiment, you find fish that can survive out of water, then your conclusion would be that fish need water to survive but, you have found that fish species X does not need water to survive. A hypothesis is not something that you simply make up...although in today's scientific era is it.



And some of these high quality and relevant studies are purely garbage and still manage to be published and promoted. I mentioned the Seven Countries Study in my other post, but



The American Heart Association fell for the Seven Countries Study hook, line and sinker to they detriment of the population. They are so imbedded with the pharmaceutical companies, it's hard to take them seriously at all...



But humans are the ones designing and analysizing scientific studies. Therefore, there is already a degree of error within every study, no matter how well designed and executed. That's why the almight p value is so statistically significant. While mathematics is absolute, it is also possibly to manipulate the numbers to get that p value where you want it.



I'm not encouraging a nihilistic view. I am encouraging skepticism. The basis of all scientific exploration is skepticism. If everything was unquestionably accepted, there wouldn't be a need for scientific studies. And skepticism doesn't automatically accept something as fact or truth simply because it was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Skepticism prevents science from stagnation.



Unfortunately, the media gets its information from the scientific community. For example, the fraudulent data that supported breast cancer lumpectomy: that fraudulent data was compiled by researchers and published in peer-reviewed medical journals and incorporated into breast cancer treatment guidelines. The media's culpability lies in reporting data they did not know was fraudulent.

I'm not a fan of the media, but you can only blame them so much for the weakness and corruption of the scientific community.



Let's just cut to the chase here....research and the pharmaceutical industry is money-driven. Johnson and Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, Schering, etc. all have to make a profit by peddling their drugs. If they invest millions of dollars into a drug that doesn't work great, they lose. If they invest millions of dollars into a drug that doesn't work great, but still manage to get it approved and sold, they win.

Read about the Joseph Beidermann case. Beidermman promised Johnson and Johnson that his research would show their antipsychotic drug was beneficial for children---eventhough at the time Beidermann did not have the data and did not even begin doing the research to obtain that data. He made his promise during a pitch for research grant monies.

Don't fool yourself by thinking research is not profit driven. It is.



And when you dig into it, you find that the study is garbage, because the methodology is garbage, the data is garbage, the analysis is garbage and the conclusion is garbage. Yet, the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association all support that study to the point of putting those findings in their treatment guidelines.

And that's what my point has been----don't accept studies as truth, conclusive or legitimate because it was published in a major scientific journal. Be skeptical---because scientific integrity is like the Easter Bunny: totally made up.

It's hard to figure out where to begin here.

This is an incredibly non-skeptical post by someone who considers themselves to be a skeptic, and it smacks of a very large misunderstanding and perhaps popularized notion of what skepticism is.

I don't really want to debate the merits of science at all, and this thread has become hopelessly derailed by a simple request for the evidence backing an idea.

It also seems like you have poor reading comprehension because you missed many of the points made in my previous posts, so I'm pretty sure my words just fall on deaf ears in your case.

The only reason I'm responding is because I would hate for someone else to read your post, become confused, and then also become infected with this mind virus and spread it to others.

Let's start here:

And some of these high quality and relevant studies are purely garbage and still manage to be published and promoted.

A high quality, relevant study would not be "purely garbage".

That doesn't make any sense.

A high quality study is the direct opposite of garbage.

The American Heart Association fell for the Seven Countries Study hook, line and sinker to they detriment of the population. They are so imbedded with the pharmaceutical companies, it's hard to take them seriously at all...

and yet, as I already stated:

'if your particular bias is to believe in atkins, remember that there's been several major studies validating it over the last 7 years, including one funded by the american heart association who had only done so for the purpose of ridiculing it when they "knew" it must be wrong. '

So the american heart association, which you say is corrupt, stupid, 'imbedded' with big pharma, and impossible to take seriously...

ALSO funded one of the first major ground breaking studies of atkins circa 2002 validating it as a healthy and safe diet despite the fact that they were completely against the atkins diet at every institutional level, and only funded it because they were absolutely certain the study would fail and they wanted to ridicule it.

at the same time, a study was done by duke university which was funded by the atkins foundation, it reached the same results.

so, to review:

a study funded by the american heart association, and a study funded by the atkins foundation, reached the same conclusion about the atkins diet, at the same time, and the results were released at the american heart association conference that year in 2002.

the conclusions of both studies were that it was safe and effective.

there were 3 studies that year presented at the american heart association conference total, all validating atkins as a safe and effective weight loss program.

This alone contradicts most of the made-up assertions you've made about how science works.

Two diametrically opposed entities funded scientific research, yet the research produced the same results in both cases.

But humans are the ones designing and analysizing scientific studies. Therefore, there is already a degree of error within every study, no matter how well designed and executed. That's why the almight p value is so statistically significant. While mathematics is absolute, it is also possibly to manipulate the numbers to get that p value where you want it.



I'm not encouraging a nihilistic view.

if that's not a nihilistic view, what is?

The point isn't whether absolute perfection exists in humanity or not, the point is that after thousands of years of trial and error the product of that is science, and science is the best tool we have.

While mathematics is absolute, it is also possibly to manipulate the numbers to get that p value where you want it.

It's possible for anyone to manipulate anything, anywhere.

How do you decide where your conspiracy thinking begins and ends?

Was the moon landing real? Was 9-11 an inside job? Was AIDS created by "the government" to kill africa so "they" could take the continent over?
Is "the government" putting flouride in our water to control our minds?

Name a thing that exists in the world and it's possible for it to be manipulated, this is not an argument for anything specifically being manipulated.

Scientists are just people, they're the same as you, the other people on this messageboard, your parents, cousins, co-workers, etc.

They're not a dehumanized abstract concept movie villain.

They're people who put a lot of really hard work through middle school, high school, 8 to 11 years of usually insanely expensive college while living in near poverty, all of that hard work and sacrifice, which takes a tremendous amount of character in the first place, just to screw everyone on earth over in the end and manipulate and falsify all of their research?

All of them?

Even a majority of them?

Even 10% of them?

How much do you REALLY believe it?

I'm not encouraging a nihilistic view. I am encouraging skepticism. The basis of all scientific exploration is skepticism. If everything was unquestionably accepted, there wouldn't be a need for scientific studies. And skepticism doesn't automatically accept something as fact or truth simply because it was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Skepticism prevents science from stagnation.

The number of non-skeptical statements and inferences you've made are truly mind-boggling but in a way you've answered your own mental dilemma here:

Scientific studies exist because they are vastly superior to making up an explanation for something that sounds good, regardless of how plausible or implausible it sounds to us "logically".

In fact, scientific studies are the ONLY way we know of to prove whether an explanation for something or an idea is most likely to be valid.

I will reference again the first american heart association study on atkins. Atkins sounded as terrible as possible to them, yet a scientific study provided evidence that their ideas and explanations were wrong, as did others.

This has nothing to do with whether every single study in the new england journal of medicine is valid or not.

Who would make such a ridiculous assertion?

The point is that SOME evidence is better than NO evidence.

Assuming every study in the new england journal of medicine is false, is just as stupid as assuming every study in the new england journal of medicine is true.

Actually, it's far more stupid to assume every study in the new england journal of medicine is false, and is entirely non-skeptical.

Unfortunately, the media gets its information from the scientific community.

I don't know what planet you're on, but the way the media reports the contents of a new study they can sensationalize often bears no relationship at all to what the study or it's authors claim or to any reasonable interpretation of it.

The way new studies are explained to the public and reported on is actually a source of despair for the scientific community and how to communicate more effectively and meaningfully to the public is a big topic of debate.

For example, the fraudulent data that supported breast cancer lumpectomy: that fraudulent data was compiled by researchers and published in peer-reviewed medical journals and incorporated into breast cancer treatment guidelines.

There are scumbags and there is incompetence in every field.

There have been some scandals in medicine, there will be more.

There's been scandals in rigging television game shows, energy price manipulations, congressmen taking bribes, governors getting prostitutes, embezzlements at major corporations, ponzi schemes, cooking the books with phony revenue to raise the stock price of major corporations, accountants who steal their clients money, invalids who are raped by their caretakers, dogfighting, repackaging and selling spoiled eggs, charities who use the money donated to them to buy sports cars and mansions, ministers who hire actors who pretend to be healed by them....

You name it, there has been or will be one or more scandals in it.

This does not make a case for something's legitimacy or even likelyhood to be fraudulent.

Let's just cut to the chase here....research and the pharmaceutical industry is money-driven. Johnson and Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, Schering, etc. all have to make a profit by peddling their drugs. If they invest millions of dollars into a drug that doesn't work great, they lose. If they invest millions of dollars into a drug that doesn't work great, but still manage to get it approved and sold, they win.

And here it is. The king of all non-skeptical arguments. The notorious big pharma gambit.

Now, I have NO idea what you think this has to do with anything, but...

Let me just direct you to this blog posting to clear many of the problems up with this thinking:

Science-Based Medicine The “pharma shill” gambit

As far as what i have to say...

It's true the pharmaceuticals are a capitalist, for profit industry.

That means for all practical purposes, the pharmaceutical industry is exactly the same as the oil companies, the banking industry, the insurance industry, the restaurant industry, the supermarket food industry, the auto industry, the retail industry (walmart, best buy), etc

So they're entirely driven by raising revenue as fast and as high as possible and getting their stock prices up as fast and as high as possible, and a simplistic but basically accurate argument could be made that ultimately this manifests in those being the only two things which they care about at all.

The problem is, they're much closer to human health than any of the other industries, including food.

It may take 10,000 bowls of ice cream to become diabetic but taking the wrong medication or the wrong dosage can kill you instantly.

So for this reason they are more heavily regulated by the government than perhaps any other industry.

The result of this is a very high threshold they need to meet to get a drug accepted by the FDA.

This is intended to put a wall between their industrial "profit at any cost" aspiration and the need to protect human lives from the possible consequences of that in this case.

The average timespan for a drug from discovery to the pharmacy shelf is 14 years, because it's so difficult to prove a drugs effectiveness and then get it approved.

There is hardly any system in place where some guy discovers a new compound in a lab, presents it to a manger, then cooks up some data in excel hands it to someone in the fda and the drug is on the shelf for $350 a year later.

Something like 9.9 out of 10 new therapies which work in animals do not work in humans.

Pharmaceutical companies must shell out tens of millions of dollars conducting trials on their new drugs, the vast majority of which fail and are thrown out.

If you google for any year and fda rejected drugs you can read long lists of drugs that have gone through a decade of scientific work, which the fda still rejects.

The first two that came up for me in 2008 were suggamadex, which was deemed an effective drug, but rejected due to the potential of "hypersensitivity/allergic reactions" and Provenge a prostate cancer vaccine.


Both of these drugs were recommended for passage by an advisory panel but the fda still rejected them.


This is often devastating to the companies involved, pushing their stock prices down, and setting them back years.

Yet it still happens everyday?

Earlier this year zetia and vytorin, two statins worth 1 billion dollars a year to merck, were shown to be less effective than niacin. Doctors were declaring all over the media zetia was dead and they would no longer prescribe it.

Last month a landmark study came out in the journal of the american medical association showing anti-depressants to be no better than a placebo.

How gigantic is the anti-depressant industry? Is there any part of "big pharma" bigger right now? How did the blood thirsty profiteers controlling everything allow this to happen?

Pfizer just paid a 2.3 billion dollar fine, the largest criminal fine in US history for improperly marketing bextra in september.

This was more than double what they made in total revenues from bextra.
They lost massive amounts of money on this.

Eli lilly just paid 1.4 billion for essentially the same thing.

Looks like these gangster pharmaceutical companies sure do a crappy job of controlling and manipulating everything to me.

so when you say....

Don't fool yourself by thinking research is not profit driven. It is.

You're missing a wholeeeeeee big part of the scientific world you're not even aware of because you have a very non-scientific and non-skeptical bias towards conspiracy and very simplistic one dimensional views of the world which do not match reality.

You're the sort of person who desperately needs science and skepticism in their life.

Again, i raise the point, the establishment has been and continues to largely be very against the atkins diet.

Yet, every study done on it in the last 10 years has shown it to be the most effective "diet" there is that involves eating, and has shown it's safe and effective, contradicting the expectations and desires of the establishment.

How is this possible? Who is making money from this? Why aren't the big pharma profiteers manipulating the data on the 17 or so studies proving atkin's safety and efficacy?

Who is manipulating all of these studies to lie and make atkins win and reaping the big money from this?

Why are you here with so many studies vindicating atkins, shouldn't you head for the hills knowing they're all most likely manipulated and garbage? Why would you believe any of them?

By your logic the low fat diet must actually be the clear winner and the data is all being secretly suppressed and manipulated.

A few other examples on this topic:

In july a study was released showing diet and exercise were far more effective than angioplasty and stenting (36 deaths in the exercise group vs 55 in the angioplasty group) in stable heart disease.

How much money is being lost from this? Who is profiting from the diet and exercise treatment?

Statins... huge multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical jackpot right now. Lets look at what the author of a landmark 20,000 person statin study said in 2008:

---- quote ----

Dr. Paul Ridker, the lead researcher of the study, suggests other interventions before a prescription.

In the study, people with a high level of what's called a C-reactive protein benefited from Crestor. But Ridker shared his recommendations for someone with a high C-reactive protein score with the Boston Globe:

"The first, second, third, and fourth intervention for anyone with elevated hs-CRP is get to the gym, lose a few pounds, throw away the cigarettes, and start thinking about a healthier diet. That remains overwhelmingly the most important intervention for lowering cardiovascular risk," he said.

---- quote -----

In august a $5000 spine surgery performed around 100,000 times each year was found to be a placebo via clinical research.

Spine Surgery Found No Better Than Sham Procedure, in Study - WSJ.com

Once again, tons of money flushed down the drain by this pesky data which should be solely profit-driven.

10 days ago a study was release showing that diet and exercise were effective at lowering blood pressure alone by duke university.

Diet combined with exercise more effective in lowering BP

But what about all the pharmaceutical companies selling blood pressure medications?! Why didn't they stop this?! There's no one to profit from diet and exercise!

what's the most prescribed treatment for type II diabetes despite the fact that we have drugs like metformin?

diet and exercise...

The Effect of Diet and Exercise or Metformin on the Metabolic Syndrome ? Ann Intern Med

what did the study find?

"The benefit of the diet and exercise program was larger than the benefit of metformin."


on & on I could literally go on forever with examples.

Whats the #1 thing all physicians prescribe?

DIET AND EXERCISE!

Guess what? It's free. And incessantly researched.

I hope I've done a sufficient job sinking this statement forever:

Don't fool yourself by thinking research is not profit driven. It is.

The truth is that there is research which is profit driven, and there is also research with is not profit driven.

And often, profit-driven research betrays it's financiers desires.

Be skeptical---because scientific integrity is like the Easter Bunny: totally made up.

The irony in this statement is almost blinding.

There are people with integrity, and people without integrity.

Some of them are scientists, some of them are garbage men, some of them are construction workers.

The only thing that's made up are your bizarre preconceptions of how the world works.

and lastly...

And that's what my point has been----don't accept studies as truth, conclusive or legitimate because it was published in a major scientific journal.

This statement is painfully obvious.

When the cochrane collaboration does a meta-analysis (a study of all the available studies) on a topic, it's not uncommon for them to toss out 20 to 50% of the available literature because they don't feel like it's up to snuff for consideration.

The more data that is available, the more likely you are to reach a valid conclusion.

Science is a process, as more data comes in or different eyes examine the same sets of data or various sets of data are compared to each other the conclusions can change over time.

It's still the best thing we've got, and far superior to mere opinions, in any form.

And it's the present culmination of all of human history's efforts to decipher reality, which leads me to....

A hypothesis is not something that you simply make up...although in today's scientific era is it.

Your hysterical concept of what a hypothesis is aside,

What is the golden era of science you think has passed us by?

Double blind randomized controlled clinical trials weren't even implemented until the 1960's.

You are in the the ultimate scientific era, and it's made your quality of life so
high that you've become so spoiled you don't even realize it.

Think about that, it's a pretty amazing accomplishment.

Nothing is more amusing that someone trashing modern science on an internet connected computer.

[not2late]

Re: Psyllium

It's hard to figure out where to begin here.

This is an incredibly non-skeptical post by someone who considers themselves to be a skeptic, and it smacks of a very large misunderstanding and perhaps popularized notion of what skepticism is.

I'm using the definition of scientific skepticism. Both of which subscribe to methodologic examination in order to ascertain the reliablity of a claim.

It also seems like you have poor reading comprehension because you missed many of the points made in my previous posts, so I'm pretty sure my words just fall on deaf ears in your case.

FYI: ad hominem attacks (attacking the person, not the idea) during debates is a sign of a poor debater because it is only employed to divert attention from the argument at hand.

The only reason I'm responding is because I would hate for someone else to read your post, become confused, and then also become infected with this mind virus and spread it to others.

And this is the only reason why I'm responding to you. Blindly accepting something is not scientific at all. Just because it's printed in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings doesn't mean it's entirely accurate.

A high quality, relevant study would not be "purely garbage".

That doesn't make any sense.

A high quality study is the direct opposite of garbage.

Theorethically a high quality study would not be garbage. But in today's scientific era, "high quality" studies that are deemed to be peer-reviewed as "relevant" may not be what they appear IF one takes the time to analyse it. Unfortunately, the reviewers have been known to be less than objective when determining what will go to print and what will not.

So the american heart association, which you say is corrupt, stupid, 'imbedded' with big pharma, and impossible to take seriously...

ALSO funded one of the first major ground breaking studies of atkins circa 2002 validating it as a healthy and safe diet despite the fact that they were completely against the atkins diet at every institutional level, and only funded it because they were absolutely certain the study would fail and they wanted to ridicule it.

at the same time, a study was done by duke university which was funded by the atkins foundation, it reached the same results.

so, to review:

a study funded by the american heart association, and a study funded by the atkins foundation, reached the same conclusion about the atkins diet, at the same time, and the results were released at the american heart association conference that year in 2002.

the conclusions of both studies were that it was safe and effective.

there were 3 studies that year presented at the american heart association conference total, all validating atkins as a safe and effective weight loss program.

This alone contradicts most of the made-up assertions you've made about how science works.

Two diametrically opposed entities funded scientific research, yet the research produced the same results in both cases.

In addition to the Duke University study, there were 2 Atkins-related studies published in 2003.

They were:

Samaha FF. Low-Carbohydrate as Compared with a Low-Fat Diet in Severe Obesity. N Engl J Med. 2003 May 22;348(21):2074-2081.

Foster GD. A Randomized Trial of a Low-Carbohydrate Diet for Obesity. N Engl J Med. 2003 May 22;348(21):2082-2090.

Samaha's study per the article ( NEJM -- A Low-Carbohydrate as Compared with a Low-Fat Diet in Severe Obesity ) received grant from the Veteran's Administration, not the American Heart Association.

Foster's study per the article ( A Randomized Trial of a Low-Carbohydrate Diet for Obesity -- Research article on Atkins Diet from New England Journal of Medicine ) recieved grants from the National Institute of Health, not the American Heart Association.

NIH and the VA are not the same as the AHA.

The point isn't whether absolute perfection exists in humanity or not, the point is that after thousands of years of trial and error the product of that is science, and science is the best tool we have.

I have never stated that science is not the best tool we have. My position has been that we cannot blindly accept whatever some guy in a white lab coat is telling us as the undeniable truth.

It's possible for anyone to manipulate anything, anywhere.

Exactly. And that's why we must all look at these studies critically and not accept them as the absolute fact.

How do you decide where your conspiracy thinking begins and ends?

Was the moon landing real? Was 9-11 an inside job? Was AIDS created by "the government" to kill africa so "they" could take the continent over?
Is "the government" putting flouride in our water to control our minds?

I remind you again, that ad hominem attacks are used by poor debaters.

Name a thing that exists in the world and it's possible for it to be manipulated, this is not an argument for anything specifically being manipulated.

I'm glad you agree with me.

Scientists are just people, they're the same as you, the other people on this messageboard, your parents, cousins, co-workers, etc.

They're not a dehumanized abstract concept movie villain.

I know scientists are people---with the same moral and ethical flaws as everyone else and are therefore susceptible to greed and corruption like everyone else.

They're people who put a lot of really hard work through middle school, high school, 8 to 11 years of usually insanely expensive college while living in near poverty, all of that hard work and sacrifice, which takes a tremendous amount of character in the first place, just to screw everyone on earth over in the end and manipulate and falsify all of their research?

Yep...I bet they rack up alot of debt with their student loans. And if I recall correctly from my undergrad days the motto among the academicians was "publish or perish".

All of them?

Even a majority of them?

Even 10% of them?

Not every.single.researcher is corrupt. But enough of them are---that's why we have so many problems with drug recalls : Baycol, Vioxx, Vytorrin,

Scientific studies exist because they are vastly superior to making up an explanation for something that sounds good, regardless of how plausible or implausible it sounds to us "logically".

In fact, scientific studies are the ONLY way we know of to prove whether an explanation for something or an idea is most likely to be valid.

I agree with that, which is why I stated in my first post "Whether or not a data and conclusions from a scientific study are valid or in
valid is determined by examining the methodology, the data and the analysis of that data. Therefore, it is a fallacy to accept everything that is published in medical/scientific journals without doing that"

I will reference again the first american heart association study on atkins. Atkins sounded as terrible as possible to them, yet a scientific study provided evidence that their ideas and explanations were wrong, as did others.

See above. By the way....which Atkins study was funded by the American Heart Association?

This has nothing to do with whether every single study in the new england journal of medicine is valid or not.

Actually it does. IF you click the links to the Samaha and Foster studies, you will find that their studies have been cited by more than 20 other studies. These studies have become foundations for diet research. Therefore, if Samaha or Foster were wrong in any of their conclusions or analyses, then the studies that have built upon their fallacy are flawed as well.

The point is that SOME evidence is better than NO evidence.

Maybe, maybe not. If you were dying of thirst and you came across a vial with a poisonous liquid, would it be better to drink the poison, quench your thirst and die or would it be better to die of thirst directly.

The "half a loaf of bread is better than none" idea is not really valid.

Assuming every study in the new england journal of medicine is false, is just as stupid as assuming every study in the new england journal of medicine is true.

I agree with you. And I cautioned against doing that in my initial post.

Actually, it's far more stupid to assume every study in the new england journal of medicine is false, and is entirely non-skeptical.

Maybe, maybe not.

I don't know what planet you're on, but the way the media reports the contents of a new study they can sensationalize often bears no relationship at all to what the study or it's authors claim or to any reasonable interpretation of it.

I'm on the planet that acknowledges that fraudulent scientific data has been passed off as factual by the research community and has only served to hurt us in the long-run.

The way new studies are explained to the public and reported on is actually a source of despair for the scientific community and how to communicate more effectively and meaningfully to the public is a big topic of debate.

So, it's the media's fault the research community cannot communicate effectively? There comes a point when blaming the other guy for one's shortcomings becomes a sad, sorry inexusable excuse---ie a cop-out.

There are scumbags and there is incompetence in every field.

There have been some scandals in medicine, there will be more.

There's been scandals in rigging television game shows, energy price manipulations, congressmen taking bribes, governors getting prostitutes, embezzlements at major corporations, ponzi schemes, cooking the books with phony revenue to raise the stock price of major corporations, accountants who steal their clients money, invalids who are raped by their caretakers, dogfighting, repackaging and selling spoiled eggs, charities who use the money donated to them to buy sports cars and mansions, ministers who hire actors who pretend to be healed by them....

You name it, there has been or will be one or more scandals in it.

This does not make a case for something's legitimacy or even likelyhood to be fraudulent.

Yes, it does. The more corruption pervades an industry, the more its reputation and integrity suffers--and rightly so. As the old saying goes: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

And here it is. The king of all non-skeptical arguments. The notorious big pharma gambit.

Now, I have NO idea what you think this has to do with anything, but...

Let me just direct you to this blog posting to clear many of the problems up with this thinking:

Science-Based Medicine The “pharma shill” gambit

As far as what i have to say...

It's true the pharmaceuticals are a capitalist, for profit industry.

That means for all practical purposes, the pharmaceutical industry is exactly the same as the oil companies, the banking industry, the insurance industry, the restaurant industry, the supermarket food industry, the auto industry, the retail industry (walmart, best buy), etc

So they're entirely driven by raising revenue as fast and as high as possible and getting their stock prices up as fast and as high as possible, and a simplistic but basically accurate argument could be made that ultimately this manifests in those being the only two things which they care about at all.

Odd isn't it. During his pitch to get a grant, BEidermann was able to promise Johnson and Johnson that his study on their medication would show it is beneficial, before he even had the data. If that doesn't spell shill, I don't know what does.

The problem is, they're much closer to human health than any of the other industries, including food.

That is a sad statement....pharma's meds are more healthful than a farmer's food.

It may take 10,000 bowls of ice cream to become diabetic but taking the wrong medication or the wrong dosage can kill you instantly.

So for this reason they are more heavily regulated by the government than perhaps any other industry.

The result of this is a very high threshold they need to meet to get a drug accepted by the FDA.

This is intended to put a wall between their industrial "profit at any cost" aspiration and the need to protect human lives from the possible consequences of that in this case.

The average timespan for a drug from discovery to the pharmacy shelf is 14 years, because it's so difficult to prove a drugs effectiveness and then get it approved.

There is hardly any system in place where some guy discovers a new compound in a lab, presents it to a manger, then cooks up some data in excel hands it to someone in the fda and the drug is on the shelf for $350 a year later.

Something like 9.9 out of 10 new therapies which work in animals do not work in humans.

Pharmaceutical companies must shell out tens of millions of dollars conducting trials on their new drugs, the vast majority of which fail and are thrown out.

If you google for any year and fda rejected drugs you can read long lists of drugs that have gone through a decade of scientific work, which the fda still rejects.

The first two that came up for me in 2008 were suggamadex, which was deemed an effective drug, but rejected due to the potential of "hypersensitivity/allergic reactions" and Provenge a prostate cancer vaccine.


Both of these drugs were recommended for passage by an advisory panel but the fda still rejected them.


This is often devastating to the companies involved, pushing their stock prices down, and setting them back years.

It seems Baycol, Vioxx, Rotateq, etc. somehow managed to evade that "very high threshold" the FDA sets with their advisory panels, etc. etc. etc.

Pfizer just paid a 2.3 billion dollar fine, the largest criminal fine in US history for improperly marketing bextra in september.

Yes, a stunning display of how much integrity Big Pharma like Pfizer has. They are so honest that they need a regulatory board to make sure they are doing the right thing. Stunning.

This was more than double what they made in total revenues from bextra.
They lost massive amounts of money on this.

Eli lilly just paid 1.4 billion for essentially the same thing.

Looks like these gangster pharmaceutical companies sure do a crappy job of controlling and manipulating everything to me.

Yes and they are the ones who are actively involved in "research", yet these are the guys you want to trust with "science"?

You're missing a wholeeeeeee big part of the scientific world you're not even aware of because you have a very non-scientific and non-skeptical bias towards conspiracy and very simplistic one dimensional views of the world which do not match reality.

You're the sort of person who desperately needs science and skepticism in their life.

Yet again, I remind you ad hominem attacks are a sign of a poor debater.

Again, i raise the point, the establishment has been and continues to largely be very against the atkins diet.

Really, then why did you imply above that the American Heart Association endorsed Atkins as safe and effective because they supposedly funded ATkins studies? The AHA is the "establishment" or at least makes up part of the establishment.

Yet, every study done on it in the last 10 years has shown it to be the most effective "diet" there is that involves eating, and has shown it's safe and effective, contradicting the expectations and desires of the establishment.

How is this possible? Who is making money from this? Why aren't the big pharma profiteers manipulating the data on the 17 or so studies proving atkin's safety and efficacy?

Big Pharma doesn't profit off a diet you can do at home, which is why these studies about Atkins are done: to show that weight loss/diabetes management/high blood pressure management/etc. is possible without medications. As you have stated, with the exception of the Duke studies, most of these studies have been conducted to invalidate Atkins.

HOWEVER, you fail to mention that most of these studies do say that long-term effects of Atkins has yet to be studied and that a increase in lipids is a real possibility with Atkins. The second line management of hyperlipidemia is medications---Liptor, Crestor, etc----all goodies made by BigPharma.

Who is manipulating all of these studies to lie and make atkins win and reaping the big money from this?

I don't see how a $20 book, which is available free in libraries and at used bookstores for half the publishers price can reap "big money". But I can see how selling shakes, bars, and other low carb stuff can make "big money".

Why are you here with so many studies vindicating atkins, shouldn't you head for the hills knowing they're all most likely manipulated and garbage? Why would you believe any of them?

I'm here because I read the book. I researched what Dr. Atkins wrote. And it made sense to me. I didn't go on Atkins because some study in the NEJM said "Wow! Atkins is great! Look at our study!"

By your logic the low fat diet must actually be the clear winner and the data is all being secretly suppressed and manipulated.

Heavens no! I would know better than that during my Atkins research (which was months before Samaha and Foster were published ) I read the Seven Countries Study and I saw the flaws in that "scientific" study.

However by applying your rationalization that we must accept all scientific studies as facts/absolute truths, since low fat has the more than 30 years of studies to back up it's effectiveness, then it is obviously the way to go.

A few other examples on this topic:

In july a study was released showing diet and exercise were far more effective than angioplasty and stenting (36 deaths in the exercise group vs 55 in the angioplasty group) in stable heart disease.

How much money is being lost from this? Who is profiting from the diet and exercise treatment?

Who are profitting are the bariatric centers that are now cropping up like pimples on a teenager. Likewise, the "Weight loss industry"---gyms, personal trainers, nutritional plans (like Kimkins!), etc. are all profitting. And so are the pharmaceutical companies, because people have a tendency to fall off their plans, revert to their old ways and have to go on drugs to control their cardiovascular disease.

Statins... huge multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical jackpot right now. Lets look at what the author of a landmark 20,000 person statin study said in 2008:

---- quote ----

Dr. Paul Ridker, the lead researcher of the study, suggests other interventions before a prescription.

In the study, people with a high level of what's called a C-reactive protein benefited from Crestor. But Ridker shared his recommendations for someone with a high C-reactive protein score with the Boston Globe:

"The first, second, third, and fourth intervention for anyone with elevated hs-CRP is get to the gym, lose a few pounds, throw away the cigarettes, and start thinking about a healthier diet. That remains overwhelmingly the most important intervention for lowering cardiovascular risk," he said.

---- quote -----

In august a $5000 spine surgery performed around 100,000 times each year was found to be a placebo via clinical research.

Spine Surgery Found No Better Than Sham Procedure, in Study - WSJ.com

Once again, tons of money flushed down the drain by this pesky data which should be solely profit-driven.

REgarding pharmaceutics, in the US, Medicare is a big payor for prescription pills. Medicare has a formulary because drugs are expensive. Since there is a concerted effort to decrease the cost of medications, there is now concerted effort to promote non-pharmacologic interventions.

Same thing for spine surgeries--when insurance companies and Medicare paid for these procedures, they were being done with abandon (I know...I used to do medical billing at a major teaching hospital) because they were recommended in the treatment guidelines. Now that MEdicare and other insurances aren't reimbursing for these procedures---guess what they aren't in the treatment guidelines and they aren't being done as frequently. FYI: there will be a drastic decrease in and guideline recommendations for total knee replacement because Medicare stopped paying for it as of Jan 1, 2010.

10 days ago a study was release showing that diet and exercise were effective at lowering blood pressure alone by duke university.

Diet combined with exercise more effective in lowering BP

But what about all the pharmaceutical companies selling blood pressure medications?! Why didn't they stop this?! There's no one to profit from diet and exercise!

See my previous response on which industry profits.

what's the most prescribed treatment for type II diabetes despite the fact that we have drugs like metformin?

diet and exercise...

The Effect of Diet and Exercise or Metformin on the Metabolic Syndrome ? Ann Intern Med

what did the study find?

"The benefit of the diet and exercise program was larger than the benefit of metformin."


on & on I could literally go on forever with examples.

Whats the #1 thing all physicians prescribe?

DIET AND EXERCISE!

Guess what? It's free. And incessantly researched.

No argument from me there. But you neglect to acknowledge that diet and exercise is only effective IF the person is actually doing the dieting and exercising. If you read posts here, we do have folks who ask "do you really need to exercise?" or folks who post "I have these physical problems that prevent me from exercising...." And of course, we have folks who post questions like "If I don't eat any carbs, then can I have a chocolate chip cookie? It's only like 15 net carbs for 1/2 of one."

For those people, you can tell them to diet and exercise and the chances are they won't.

So theoretically, diet and exercise is great. But in the real world....it might not be something everyone will do. And since we live in the real world and not in some theoretic test tube......

I hope I've done a sufficient job sinking this statement forever:



The truth is that there is research which is profit driven, and there is also research with is not profit driven.

And as I have countered, profits run the world----if you take meds, Big Pharma gets bigger. If you go the diet and exercise route, the weight loss industry get bigger. Money makes the world go 'round---including the peer reviewed, double blinded, multicenter placebo controlled world of research.

And often, profit-driven research betrays it's financiers desires.

The irony in this statement is almost blinding.

There are people with integrity, and people without integrity.

Some of them are scientists, some of them are garbage men, some of them are construction workers.

The only thing that's made up are your bizarre preconceptions of how the world works.

Ad hominem attacks are a sign of a poor debater.

and lastly...

This statement is painfully obvious.

When the cochrane collaboration does a meta-analysis (a study of all the available studies) on a topic, it's not uncommon for them to toss out 20 to 50% of the available literature because they don't feel like it's up to snuff for consideration.

The more data that is available, the more likely you are to reach a valid conclusion.

Science is a process, as more data comes in or different eyes examine the same sets of data or various sets of data are compared to each other the conclusions can change over time.

It's still the best thing we've got, and far superior to mere opinions, in any form.

Once again, I remind you that my assertion was that "Whether or not a data and conclusions from a scientific study are valid or in
valid is determined by examining the methodology, the data and the analysis of that data. Therefore, it is a fallacy to accept everything that is published in medical/scientific journals without doing that" So I don't know where you got the idea that I was anti-science.

And it's the present culmination of all of human history's efforts to decipher reality, which leads me to....



Your hysterical concept of what a hypothesis is aside,

Ad hominem attacks = poor debater.

What is the golden era of science you think has passed us by?

The Golden Era of Science was in the 1800s to early 1900s---that was when researchers weren't blinded so much by money and other lucrative deals. Unlike today's world of BEidermanns and lumpectomy researchers and other frauds.

Double blind randomized controlled clinical trials weren't even implemented until the 1960's.

Yes, the same double blind studies that "showed" hydrogenated fats were better than natural fats, that obesity was due to a high fat diet, and a multitude of other brilliant studies.

You are in the the ultimate scientific era, and it's made your quality of life so
high that you've become so spoiled you don't even realize it.

An "ultimate scientific era" would be marked by an improvement in health....not by an increasing obesity rate, increasing cardiovascular disease rate, increasing diabetes rate, etc.

Think about that, it's a pretty amazing accomplishment.

I got to agree with you there. It is a pretty amazing accomplishment that the famed cardiologist Paul Dudley White reported heart attacks were rare occurences in the years before WWII, yet in 2010 heart attacks are one of the leading causes of death in the US. Yes, that is a pretty amazing accomplishment of the ultimate scientific era.

Nothing is more amusing that someone trashing modern science on an internet connected computer.

I'm not "trashing" modern science....I'm raising concerns about the integrity of modern researchers.

But it was fun reading your response filled with ad hominem attacks, faulty citations and wild assumptions. By the way....which Pharma company(s) do you work for and/or supplies you with grant monies?