Two reasons to be cautious when reading published research

Wouldn't it be nice if we could just accept reports on scientific research at face value? Forget about the lay media, the research presented in respected peer-reviewed scientific journals has be read with cautious discrimination. Two papers just published in PLoS Medicine are good to keep in mind. In The Haunting of Medical Journals: How Ghostwriting Sold “HRT” the author states:

"In recent litigation against Wyeth, more than 14,000 plaintiffs brought claims related to the development of breast cancer while taking the menopausal hormone therapy Prempro (conjugated equine estrogens [CEEs] and medroxyprogesterone acetate [MPA]). Some 1500 documents revealed in the litigation provide unprecedented insights into how pharmaceutical companies promote drugs, including the use of vendors to produce ghostwritten manuscripts and place them into medical journals."

The author goes on to document how the public and the medical profession have been misled by underhanded promotion in many other cases including Lexapro, Paxil, Neurontin, Vioxx, Zoloft and Fen-phen. What amounts to unregulated marketing posing as medical research is a pervasive problem:

"Industry-funded marketing messages may infest articles in every medical journal...Acceptance of ghostwriting, euphemistically termed “editorial assistance,” may be so widespread that it is considered normal..."

In Why Most Published Research Findings Are False the author assembles sophisticated statistical analyses into a predictive model that suggests research claims for most study designs and settings are more likely to be false than true.

"There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias."

In health care we have to read with discrimination, cast the net widely to survey a broad range of phenomena and interpretations, look for multiple studies coming to similar conclusions, and test assertions against what is already proven to be in accord with science and nature.