A review of seventy-four clinical trials of antidepressants, for example, found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight positive studies [that praised the drugs] were published. But of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the bias in publishing clinical trial results regarding antidepressants.
Marcia Angell's quote emphasizes the significant issue of publication bias in clinical research, specifically concerning antidepressants. It reveals that a majority of studies showing positive results are published, while negative results are often hidden or manipulated to appear favorable. This problem undermines the integrity of scientific research and can lead to misleading conclusions about the effectiveness of treatments, ultimately affecting patient care and trust in medical science.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the ethics of pharmaceutical research.
It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.
There could be more to the universe than the three dimensions we are familiar with. They are hidden from us in some way, perhaps because they're tiny or warped. But even if they're invisible, they could affect what we actually observe in the universe.
We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.
Global warming is controversial, of course, but the controversy is mainly over whether human activity is driving it.
The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.
... that, in a few years, all great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to carry these measurements to another place of decimals.
It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter.
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