Ever since reading this blog by Tom
Ross, I have been looking for something to either confirm or refute
this. All correspondence with my sources has confirmed what he
states in his blog. Most articles that I have found seem to confirm
what he stated as well. This article in the Lancet also confirms the
basics in his blog. It approaches the topic from a different
perspective, but is damaging in its statements.
What is unsaid is as important as the
statements made. I may not be right, but I perceive the shortage of
funding being the result of the type of studies Tom blogs about and
people disbursing these funds of being more careful to not support
research that yields fake or falsified results. In a way, these
unscrupulous researchers are penalizing good researchers.
An example of this is described in this
article and happened when an untimely article on Alzheimer's disease
was published and later came under question. This happens, but since
our own government-sanctioned research, (the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) has no appeals process, her research request was denied
and done. This systematically erosion of the basic medical sciences
means that they are being neglected and this marginalization will
have damaging effects on clinical care in the decades to come.
These studies that never prove out and
cannot be duplicated by other researchers is turning the screws down
tighter on the basic medical sciences and will make researchers leave
the field for more lucrative opportunities elsewhere. This in turn
will make drug development more expensive or prohibitive for the
pharmaceutical industry.
Even big industries cannot continue to
fund research when they cannot duplicate fabricated research results.
I will dare to say that researchers
that present these falsified results need to face severe criminal
consequences and be made to repay the grants used under false
pretenses. Something needs to happen to restore the faith in our
medical (and even food and nutrition) research.
There are many faults in our current
system of medical research, but the scoundrels are creating other
problems because both government and other research charities are
determined to concentrate their funding in larger organizations where
accountability is managed and false research is stopped sooner or may
even be prevented. This will deplete research funding at many
university medical research centers and thus curtail even commercial
development by these universities.
This is a sad state of affairs for all
basic medical research and creates future problems for retaining new
medical researchers in the field.
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