Old article, but is the author complaining about how clinical trials are done or the idea of intellectual property rights. Who knows, because the author doesn’t really get into the details of either. How is “knowledge” “owned”? Is he talking about parents? That is the opposite of owned knowledge, it requires disclosure of what would otherwise be kept secret. Corruption of clinical trials? Is that a common problem? If so how should it be addressed? The author is just going on some sort of rant.

Popper's work has been around, and mainstream in the philosophy of science, almost as long as clinical corruption. If it's not made a difference by now, it's asking a lot to expect it to do so now.

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He’s is saying people in marketing and customer service should also help with scientific research

This entire article is based on the premise that the clinical trial process is flawed and rigged based on a few anecdotes of dangerous drugs that made it through this process. First, only 14% of drug candidates successfully passes clinical trial testing and regulatory approval. If the clinical trial process was truly rigged, wouldn't we see a much higher approval rate for them? When six out of seven of you experiments end in failure and the median cost for each failure is $20 million you'd think the process is very rigorous. The authors also mention the replication crisis in medial research, which is a real issue across all fields, but how does this compare to psychology (the authors specialty). The entire clinical process is a way to filter out bad and non reproducible research with actual experimentation and it seems to work fairly well. As bad as the replication crisis is in medicine its far worse in psychology ... perhaps they should clean their own rooms before pointing fingers at others.

Pessimism roams everything on Reddit. We should be glad that there are people out there who don't live life by the subliminal dictates of redditors.

Question:

a) if .01% of a system is genuinely rigged, is this statement as a binary True or False: "The system is rigged."

b) if two people answer differently, is one of them correct and the other incorrect, objectively and necessarily?

His brother, John, also played a mean harmonica.

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I would say presenting it as binary is ridiculous and intentionally misleading.

>if .01% of a system is genuinely rigged,

What does this even mean? How can a system be 0.01% rigged?

Are you staying that 1 in every 10 thousand drugs is going to erroneously pass a clinical trial - because what? The system chose to rig it in that particular drugs favour? That doesn't make much sense. It's much more likely that in this proposed scenario the drug would be erroneously approved due to the actions of a single, or a few corrupt individuals - which does not represent the system.

Nature has a bit of corruption at every level and humans are no different. Creating a system free of any corrupting at all is impossible. The goal is to create a system that limits it and has the capability to shoulder the weight of what does slip though

> Corruption of clinical trials? Is that a common problem?

LOL tell me you know nothing about the state of modern science...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

> If so how should it be addressed? The author is just going on some sort of rant.

Someone ia ranting without being at all informed all right...

Who is ranting?

u/mechanab is ranting.

I don't care who owns it, the science is settled.

/s

I thought there was a follow up study on the "replication crisis" and when the follow up (people trying to replicate the studies) actually get in communication with the original study authors the replication failure rate went down to 10%. Still not great, but better.

From my pedestrian/bystander understanding, journals want the most succinct article to publish, so a lot of prerequisites or best practices that exist at one university or within one discipline are left out of the publication, with the understanding that they are known. When someone educated slightly differently follows up, they don't get the same result because, from the beginning, they didn't do the same experiment.

Sorry if this is off-topic, but I think an extremely important thing that Karl Popper described is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I believe that in most of the EU countries, and in the US, not understanding the "paradox of tolerance" is the number #1 threat to those societies.

What the "paradox of tolerance" explains, is the logical fallacy which the enemies of society hide behind, to prevent being punished and destroyed. Unfortunately, in most cases, they do it successfully, and each and every step leads closer to the destruction of those societies. It basically goes like this: "if you're tolerant, then you must tolerate my intolerance". In other words: "if you try to destroy fascism, you're a fascist, because only fascists try to destroy other cultures/ideologies".

In reality, killing a murderer is not murder - it's self-defense, capital punishment, etc. Taking stuff by force from a thief/robber is not theft/robbery - it's restitution, confiscation, compensation, etc. In the same way, destroying a fascistic culture/ideology is not fascism - it's whatever you want to call it, etc.

> What does this even mean? How can a system be 0.01% rigged?

Imagine a system composed of X departments or modules - simply divide the number of rigged ones by the total and you have your ratio - of course, to do this correctly one would need a flawless algorithm for objectively identifying rigged-ness, but most people would balk at that so they use heuristics or subjective algorithms that are claimed/implied to be objective.

> Are you staying that 1 in every 10 thousand drugs is going to erroneously pass a clinical trial - because what? The system chose to rig it in that particular drugs favour?

No, I am simply saying that if it is in fact rigged, then it is rigged.

EDIT: actually, this is technically incorrect - in my previous comment, I made no assertions, but rather asked two questions about your "facts" (which you didn't answer, for some reason I imagine). EDIT 2: I was wrong again! You are not the original poster...it is /u/TheTrueLordHumungous who has yet to answer. (Man, this is a lot more complicated than it seems.)

> That doesn't make much sense.

Well, one way it could "make sense" is that if people with decision making power have financial or ~personal interests in decisions.

> It's much more likely that in this proposed scenario the drug would be erroneously approved due to the actions of a single, or a few corrupt individuals....

"likely" is a heuristic prediction with an unknown truth value - I prefer to think tautologically: the level of rigged-ness of a system is equal to the level to which the system is rigged - this is better because it cannot possibly be incorrect.

> ...which does not represent the system.

Is this to say that there are zero corrupt individuals in the system?

>How is “knowledge” “owned”? Is he talking about parents?

he's talking about private organizations doing research and then keeping the information to themselves because its their intellectual property (since they did the work.)

its a bit of a conundrum because private industry has a great deal of capital to expend on research but their motivation is profit: if they can't own their discoveries then they won't invest. but that means if they find a cure for a disease they can keep it to themselves which defeats the purpose of motivating their research.

It might be, if the person was making an assertion rather than asking questions (which is what I'm doing), and then only if they asserted that the representation is an accurate representation rather than a hypothetical thought experiment, and also if they genuinely intended to mislead people.

But then, this assumes a flawlessly rational observer, which is perhaps not a safe assumption....so maybe you are (kind of) right after all!

Interestingly, it is very easy to mislead people while being genuinely sincere and acting "in good faith" - for example, might it be possible that your comment could be misleading?

You don’t replicate clinical trials…

> follow up study

Go find it. Use the internet.

> a lot of prerequisites or best practices that exist at one university or within one discipline are left out of the publication

So you think journals are omitting methodology to save on what, printing costs?

The crisis is systemic: researchers are forced to 'publish or perish' while those dying from little understood causes are blocked from accessing said knowledge... the whole thing is designed to enrich few at the cost of the many imo, not to accurately conduct scientific investigation and communicate findings for the benefit of humans and our habitat.

Sciece results can be replicated by definition.

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Yes but clinical trials are studies run on humans and the goal is not to reproduce the results. The goal is to power the study well enough to show that you meet your endpoints. I completely agree that there is a replication crisis in reproducing research in the literature but talking about this in the same breath as clinical trials displays a fundamental lack of understanding about the drug approval process.

> dangerous misinformation

Oh! Better alert the guardians!

> doing science, especially biological science, is very difficult to fully control

It wasn't brand-related enzymatic variance that caused oxycontin to be proclaimed non addictive. You're trying to obscure the argument with overtechnicality and moralistic finger wagging. How dare I criticise science? Bud, you're in the wrong sub.

> > a) if .01% of a system is genuinely rigged, is this statement as a binary True or False: "The system is rigged."

Its false, the tiny minority does not define the overwhelming majority.

> b) if two people answer differently, is one of them correct and the other incorrect, objectively and necessarily?

Yes, one of them is correct and one is incorrect.

> who > has yet to > answer.

Calm down champ, I have a life.

Regardless of the purpose of a given study, if it isn't reproducible it isn't scientifically valid, full stop.

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> Calm down

?

>> a) if .01% of a system is genuinely rigged, is this statement as a binary True or False: "The system is rigged." > > > > Its false, the tiny minority does not define the overwhelming majority.

If you bought a product that says "Pure Product A" on the label, but it is not in fact composed of 100% Product A but instead also contains .01% of a carcinogenic substance, would you consider the label to be objectively accurate (aka: True):

a) considering the "fact" that the tiny minority does not define the overwhelming majority?

b) considering that "the tiny minority does not define the overwhelming majority" may not actually be factual?

You don't, others might.

https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/10.2217/cer-2021-0137

> you’re directly trying to link “corruption” with the reproducibility crisis

Data that doesn't reflect objective reality is by definition corrupted, but yes of course human-related financial corruption is a major factor- from the clinic to the corpotate pharm boardroom. How could it possibly not be a factor, given human nature? What other explaination would you propose for the scientific vetting of oxycontin?

> I’m a career scientist

Who funds your grants?

Nah, I don't actually care. I grew up not trusting anyone or anything, I just know that the words replication crisis make for a great headline.

I don't disagree about the incentives for academic work being heavily perverted by the current climate, however I have yet to see anyone propose a fix that will actually be adopted by anyone but idealists. Just like open source software vs. M$ and Apple, you have true believers, and then people that are just there to make money. At the end of the day, eating is more important that holding to your ideals.

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This paper does not discuss duplicating clinical trials. It would most likely be unethical to try to reproduce a clinical trial based on the adverse effects you uncover. If the first study is unclear you design a new trial but you don’t try to replicate it…

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Yes. No one is discounting that. Science should be inherently reproducible. The point I’m trying to make is that bringing up clinical trials in the same context and the general reproducibility crisis in science is comparing apples to oranges. You don’t publish the results of a clinical trial so someone can try to reproduce the trial. You share the results so that the next trial done on the same patient population can be designed to yield an even better outcome and as part of the drug/device approval process. If you run a new clinical trial on the exact same drug but you change the recruitment sites to attempt to change the characteristics of the patient population you recruit you are no longer reproducing a study. You are running a new study.

It discusses using real-world data to replicate the findings of RCTs, not duplicate the clinical trial. If you want exact duplications, RCTs should be done in heterogenous populations to be generalizable and things that work for one population may well be duplicated later in a different population

>As far as whether I’m in the right place, I’m a career scientist with a bonus philosophy degree, I might have a clue.

This may provide some very valuable insight into the metaphysical nature of reality.

>Wondering about my funding, implying that despite a decade of training to become a scientist, and all the experience after, I’m really just in it for the money and so am willing to push false narratives.

This is one possible interpretation, but there are many other possibilities.

Do they not cover the difference between subjective and objective reality in science and philosophy curriculum these days? Or how about psychology - did heuristics get covered at all in your studies?

> I can’t help you.

Whether you can help yourself seems like a more pressing issue.

The paper is trying to provide support for a standard of enabling RWE to support RCT data in the FDA process which is a good thing. You don’t usually run RCTs in heterogeneous populations. You want a heterogeneous sampling of the population you are trying to treat, but depending on where you are on the world that changes ie There are ethnic and geographic differences in CYP enzymes that will change your study (if you are from a specific. Geographic/ethnic group you get 100 mg/kg if you are from group B you get 150 mg/kg). Clinical trials are designed around a specific question. Does my study meet my primary and secondary endpoints. If yes, then it supports approval for your drug. If no, then it discourages approval based on that study. Maybe you will need to do a different RCT. This is a different premise then, for example, research done in metal organic frameworks, providing support for a new battery material. This study contains the methods the authors used to create a new material, the experiment they did to test the energy storage capacity, and the result they obtained. This is the type of research it would be beneficial to reproduce.

Most of the replication crisis is from RCTs in social psych

I see the issue here. Reproducing RCTs in psychology = good idea. Reproducing RCTs in medicine = more often than not unethical (because you could design a better trial based on the previous one).

Meta studies exist today as a means to mitigate the issue. Typically what gets into a meta study and is verified, then it gets further studied and researches build on those findings, but if it doesn't make into the study or serious faults are pointed out, then it is either ignored or someone tries to falsify/verify the claims of the original study.

This issue is being addressed; it's not a growing, awkward problem like climate change or overconsumption.

There is also an issue with resources. Just how much resources are we to waste just to verify the verification of a verification, etc. ? Some research is much more expensive than others, so we can't just have the same blanket standard for all.

It is a problem, but it is not like modern science is anywhere close to fraud; we just have an unprecedented wealth of new reports and too few people with not enough resources to verify each.

>Imagine a system...

Yeah I get what you're doing here - but you're reducing the 'rigging' down to smaller active chunks that are not necessarily representative of the system. These chunks are far more dependent on personal corruption than systemic 'rigging'. A 'rigged' system implies that the system is specifically set up in a way to produce erroneous results. A small team or department producing erroneous results for personal profit motives, is quite a bit different then systemic rigging - primarily because the system would want it try remove the offending people, because the system itself does not approve of 'rigging'. And we don't have to imagine a system either - there are lots of drug regulatory agencies, from the FDA to Heath Canada, to the EMA that we can examine to assess this rigging claim.

>I am simply saying that if it is in fact rigged, then it is rigged.

I literally don't know what you mean by 'rigged' in this context. Do you know how complicated the data production and regulatory requirements are to pass something like FDA clearance? Because I do, it just so happens to be a large part of my area of expertise. Just saying that 'the approval of drug X was rigged' is an incredibly vauge statement. There's a thousand different things that a company must produce and provide to a regulatory agency like the FDA to be verified prior to drug approval - there's many ways that companies can 'fudge' or 'massage' data to get it to say what the company wants prior to FDA submission.

>the level of rigged-ness of a system is equal to the level to which the system is rigged - this is better because it cannot possibly be incorrect.

Sure it can. You have to be very clear of what is 'rigging' and what is not 'rigging' - you have to define your terms of they're to be 'correct' or applicable.

Edit: furthermore, 'rigging' implies intentionality behind the decision - which is an accustaion that requires evidence. Just becuase the FDA approves a drug that otherwise wouldn't/shouldn't have been approved is not evidence of rigging, it could be, for exmaple, a mistake, or there may be other confounding variables.

>Is this to say that there are zero corrupt individuals in the system?

Of course not - I'm saying that there's a dramatic difference between Bob the quality control officer at the FDA allowing a drug to pass some quality parameter when company X fudged a data set error rate from 12% to 9%, passing the 10% error threshold set by the FDA, because Bob is friends with Tim, a designer at company X

And systemic rigging that specifically allows for certain companies or individuals to skate by regulatory constrains without question becuase the regulatory agency has some special interest in that company.

Just becuase there are individual corrupt actors acting within a system does not mean that the system is systemically rigged - it's not designed to be rigged. Especially when, if the system was aware of the individual corruption, it would very likely act to expunge that corruption.

That requires massive amounts of energy and effort though. What you're talking about is entropy mitigation and in any system, working against entropy is energy intensive, so as long as we have a scarcity economy, we should think carefully about what and where we stop this "corruption" as you call it, because it could take up all our resources wastefully if we pick an energy hungry system to keep it from equilibrium.

By your standards, are pride bars not pride bars if hetero individuals (who represent a much larger portion of the population already) frequent them at a high enough rate to be the majority?

A system can be defined just as much by a featured minority. A system that allows even 1/100 drugs to make it through erroneously because you bribed the right combination of senators and researchers seems rather fair to label rigged. Sure, there’s a functioning system along side of it, but there exists a mechanism for avoiding its rigors and it has been exploited rather openly and documented in court cases with opioids most famously.

> Yeah I get what you're doing here....

To some degree ("get" is not a binary).

> ...but you're reducing the 'rigging' down to smaller active chunks that are not necessarily representative of the system.

Correct - do you "get" why I am doing this?

> These chunks are far more dependent on personal corruption than systemic 'rigging'.

A reasonable speculation by common standards, although it is framed as (and perhaps even perceived as) a false dichotomy, so perhaps not likely to be necessarily correct.

> A 'rigged' system implies that the system is specifically set up in a way to produce erroneous results.

Very true! We could choose a different word if you'd like, but I will apply the same strict epistemology to that.

> A small team or department producing erroneous results for personal profit motives, is quite a bit different then systemic rigging - primarily because the system would want it try remove the offending people, because the system itself does not approve of 'rigging'.

Do you have knowledge of what is actually going on, or are you speculating? "does not 'approve of'" is a conveniently slippery/subjective way to consider it.

> And we don't have to imagine a system either...

It is not technically necessary, but to get to the level of detail you are making assertions about, imagination is necessary.

> ...there are lots of drug regulatory agencies, from the FDA to Heath Canada, to the EMA that we can examine to assess this rigging claim.

And the quality of such examinations is equal to the quality of the examinations, which is unknown to you and me (which is where imagination makes its appearance).

> I literally don't know what you mean by 'rigged' in this context.

That's the beauty about humans - we do not use precise definitions for words - not only do we not, people are generally severely opposed to them. I prefer them, so if you'd like to decide upon a definition together, I would be game.

> Do you know how complicated the data production and regulatory requirements are to pass something like FDA clearance? Because I do....

What definition are you using for "know" here?

> Just saying that 'the approval of drug X was rigged' is an incredibly vauge statement.

Correct - one among many vague/ambiguous/subjective statements involved in this conversation.

> There's a thousand different things that a company must produce and provide to a regulatory agency like the FDA to be verified prior to drug approval - there's many ways that companies can 'fudge' or 'massage' data to get it to say what the company wants prior to FDA submission.

Agree! This, and many other things.

>> the level of rigged-ness of a system is equal to the level to which the system is rigged - this is better because it cannot possibly be incorrect.

> Sure it can. You have to be very clear of what is 'rigging' and what is not 'rigging' - you have to define your terms of they're to be 'correct' or applicable.

"Rigging" is largely subjective. In addition to this, you also have a measurement problem, and and an epistemology problem (like: unknown unknowns), and a consciousness problem.

> Edit: furthermore, 'rigging' implies intentionality behind the decision - which is an accustaion that requires evidence.

Should require evidence...and this applies to all the claims you made here today. Lucky for you, presenting (epistemically sound and logically conclusive) evidence for claims on the internet is not only not required, it is almost never done!

> Just becuase the FDA approves a drug that otherwise wouldn't/shouldn't have been approved is not evidence of rigging, it could be, for exmaple, a mistake, or there may be other confounding variables.

Correct - it is kind of like the difference between lying and speaking untruthfully.

>>> It's much more likely that in this proposed scenario the drug would be erroneously approved due to the actions of a single, or a few corrupt individuals - which does not represent the system.

>> Is this to say that there are zero corrupt individuals in the system?

> Of course not - I'm saying that there's a dramatic difference between Bob the quality control officer at the FDA allowing a drug to pass some quality parameter when company X fudged a data set error rate from 12% to 9%, passing the 10% error threshold set by the FDA, because Bob is friends with Tim, a designer at company X

But, if there are in fact corrupt individuals within the system, would saying that the system is partially corrupt not actually be a more accurate representation than saying it is not corrupted? (Replace "corrupt" with "imperfect" if you prefer comprehensiveness as I do).

> And systemic rigging that specifically allows for certain companies or individuals to skate by regulatory constrains without question becuase the regulatory agency has some special interest in that company.

I wonder if this has ever happened, even once. 🤔

> Just becuase there are individual corrupt actors acting within a system does not mean that the system is systemically rigged...

Would you mind pasting in a pseudocode representation of your actual cognitive implementation of isRigged()? I am interested to see the variables and logic (the general form, and if you are using binary or ternary) you are using.

> ...it's not designed to be rigged.

This has no bearing on whether it is actually rigged (but it may have bearing on perceptions of it).

> Especially when, if the system was aware of the individual corruption, it would very likely act to expunge that corruption.

Actually, it would likely not (note: I literally just made that up - when in Rome, act like a Roman and all that).

Where did you read that the problem is a "few anecdotes of dangerous drugs?" I could not find that and find it misleading about the intent of the article.

I would say if you saw a system was 0.01% rigged and you presented it as "the system is rigged" with no further clarification you are being very intentionally misleading. This would be a case where "technically correct" is actually dead wrong

So I think I understand what you are saying but maybe I'm missing something. Wouldn't the overgrowth of the corruption be just as or more dangerous than the risk of using excess resources to stop it? Like isn't the outcome we are all doomed either way?

> I would say if you saw a system was 0.01% rigged and you presented it as "the system is rigged" with no further clarification you are being very intentionally misleading.

In my case you would be correct on the "intentionally" part, but this may not be a safe bet with most people. Remember: everyone is doing their best.

> This would be a case where "technically correct" is actually dead wrong

Disagree - technically, it "is" correct (well, depending one the particular implementation of isRigged() one is using, and whether the implementation changes per topic). It is not comprehensively correct though!

I don't know about this one. The fact that knowledge can be owned in the form of IP, patents, trade secrets, etc is the only reason that a lot of progress that gets made in the first place. It's not like it was a century ago where major scientific breakthroughs can be made left and right in your garage. They require multimillion dollar labs and sometimes billions in resources, that frequently wouldn't exist if the results of the study couldn't be protected by IP laws.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9aM9Ch97U8 I prefer the cell block wisdom of Carl Poppa

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"If the clinical trial process was truly rigged, wouldn't we see a much higher approval rate for them?" - Not necessarily. If a major factor for approvals is money then the most wealthy clients/applications may have a tendency for approval. Note that the FDA is massively funded by the same pharma industry they're supposed to be regulating.

They're both scenarios where we push things to an extreme. As I see it (from a kind of Naturalist+Existentialist-I-Guess perspective based on my reading of Schrödinger's lectures on thermodynamics and more contemporary researchers who have posed existentialist questions) all things have this entropy nature in them, a pull towards disorder (don't read this as chaos), variation and ultimately a sort of dispersion. If we do nothing, everything will crumble, if we do everything we can to stop one thing from crumbling, then everything else will crumble faster: the key is to find the right amount of "push back" needed for the right things, the aim for the optimal instead of the ideal.

So any system we create will need reforms and changes, but there is no formula to "when", "how often" and "how extensively", besides it's something that a different generation needs to deal with anyway and we cannot predict what paradigms and context will be relevant in the future. Providing a framework for the means to make changes and giving a rational permission for occasional radicalism is how systems can overall preserve its function.

The way this relates to the OP is that since we have unprecedented, massive influx of new research publications, there is a lot that just goes kind of unchallenged, this is tied in with entropy, which gets "stronger" with "bigger numbers", so we can work against this by verifying the research in some way, but just how much resources put into this verification is worth when research is just getting more and more expensive? Currently the main form of this is by doing metastudies, which collect a bunch of relevant studies, critically studies their methods, results, impact on other researches, etc. to determine whether this was in some form verified, falsified or is suspiciously lacking. It is essentially doing science on science, and in many fields it seems to work just fine, though typically the criticism is that there isn't enough people doing this with enough resources, which I agree with, but I'd also add, that metastudies are hard to do because of the highly critical focus of it.

Overall, this OP is a bit dramatic, there is no real crisis, in the general scientific community, so no, scientists are not shacks (yet), but in some fields this has grown out of proportion (psychology and medicine namely) where a bit of change is needed or more frequent/sizable metastudies.

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a) False

b) yes

Yeah so your response just makes me think you don't really know or understand how regulatory agencies are set up

>Correct - do you "get" why I am doing this?

Yes, and I think your conclusion is wrong.

>reasonable speculation

It's not just speculation - these agencies are specially set up in such a way to produce multiple independent verification steps. The approval process is not linear.

>Do you have knowledge of what is actually going on, or are you speculating?

I have specific knowledge - I directly produce, assess and report data that is to be submitted to the FDA, and I read and respond to the replies the FDA provides to the data I submit

>"does not 'approve of'" is a conveniently...

I mean that it's quite literally illegal. People end up in jail for corrupting these processes. And there are many hurdles set up in these institutions to catch erroneous results.

>> And we don't have to imagine a system either...

>It is not technically necessary, but to get to the level of detail you are making assertions about, imagination is necessary.

Not really.. your imagined scenario isn't all that applicable, because it doesn't represent the actual set up of these agencies well.

>>that we can examine to assess this rigging claim.

>And the quality of such examinations is equal to the quality of the examinations, which is unknown to you and me

This is not unknown to me. I'm quite familiar with the regulatory set up, and quality control of all three of the agencies noted.

>That's the beauty about humans - we do not use precise definitions for words

In science, precise definitions are what it's all about - so you should be careful accusing a highly precise, well defined and regulated system with imprecise language.

>so if you'd like to decide upon a definition together, I would be game.

You're mostly just talking about corruption from what I can tell.

For exmaple, a system is rigged when the results are pre-determined - a rigged voting machine is when the machine is programmed to record a vote for candidate X, even when a ballot is submitted with candidate W, Y or Z selected.

A system is corrupt when the results are changed after the fact to reflect a more desired outcome. A corrupt voting system is when the machine accurately records the ballot results, and then someone goes in after the fact to change the results to suit their purposes.

A rigged system can not produce good data - it's designed to produce data of a specific nature.

A corrupt system can produce good data, that data may then be corrupted after the fact for some specific purpose.

>What definition are you using for "know" here?

Not sure what you mean - you quoted a section where I'm asking you if you 'know' about the structure of regulatory agencies - in asking if you're aware of how they're set up, organized and how they assess information.

If you're asking about the agency 'knowing' about a corrupt individual - I'm talking about 'instututional awareness' which is essentially enough people in positions of influce who are aware of the situation and can act on it.

>you also have a measurement problem, and and an epistemology problem

... Why? The agencies and people who staff them are well-aware if these hurdles, and things are set up in such away to avoid these issues as much as possible.

>Correct - it is kind of like the difference between lying and speaking untruthfully.

No... Actually there can be very sound and well founded reasons why an agency may approve the use of a specific drug - even if that drug has not cleared all of the traditionally required hurdles. It happens all the time, there's an entire 'emergncy use' regulatory system to address this.

>would saying that the system is partially corrupt not actually be a more accurate representation than saying it is not corrupted?

Sure - it's much more accurate to describe this stuff in terms of %corruption rather than %rigged, IMO at least.

>I wonder if this has ever happened, even once. 🤔

Again, corruption =/= rigging

>Would you mind pasting in a pseudocode representation of your actual cognitive implementation of isRigged()?

No. I'm not a programmer or a philosopher, I don't work with absolutes.

>This has no bearing on whether it is actually rigged

It absolutely does - see the example with voting machines above.

>Actually, it would likely not (note: I literally just made that up

Yeah you're just wrong here. These agencies have incentive structures to correct themselves, they're not corporations.

isn't the fact the the validity of recent papers is going down an indication that our balance of control over the entropy in the system is off? Like wouldn't the ideal state be that we have a growing system that maintains an equilibrium.

I suppose there could be an argument that the equilibrium point could be more permissive but if we think we are in a good state now or even that we are slightly in a bad state, isn't the only option to devote more resources to correct course?

I'm kind of just going where my mind takes me so take everything I said with a grain of salt

> Yeah so your response just makes me think you don't really know or understand how regulatory agencies are set up

Do you realize I covered this already, in a way that does not require me to have in-depth knowledge of how regulatory agencies are set up (something that you may have "Expert" knowledge of, but not comprehensive Knowledge (JTB) of)?

>> Correct - do you "get" why I am doing this? > > > > Yes, and I think your conclusion is wrong.

Can you tell me why I am doing this?

If you read Kuhn he says corruption is an inevitability, ownership or not.

> a) False

Can you show a pseudo-code representation of the logic you would use in isSystemRigged() to generate False for the proposition?

> b) yes

If someone disagrees with you, would you be able to demonstrate that you are necessarily correct, and successfully defend that demonstration from valid logical and epistemic critique?

--

And I will re-use this:

If you bought a product that says "Pure Product A" on the label, but it is not in fact composed of 100% Product A but instead also contains .01% of a carcinogenic substance, would you consider the label to be objectively accurate (aka: True)?

The people that own those patents are rarely the people that created them. Science doesn't need them, they're just middlemen.

The replication crisis is in the field of psychology not biology.

I read "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" 45 years ago but I don't remember it saying that. It certainly said that scientific progress is not as straightforward as Popper suggested, with competing paradigms not even agreeing on what counted as progress, but that's not the same as corruption. I'd more associate that with someone like Paul Feyerabend.

They are usually the people funding something, which is definitely needed as well

>Do you realize I covered this already,

You did? Where?

>in a way that does not require me to have in-depth knowledge of how regulatory agencies are set up

Why do you think this? If your assumptions about how the regulation is enforced is wrong, why do you think you'll be able to accurately assess how they perform, and whether that performance is 'rigged' or not?

>but not comprehensive Knowledge

Obviously I'd argue that I do have a comprehensive knowledge, becauae it's my job to have comprehensive knowledge.

>Can you tell me why I am doing this?

As far as I can tell - to explain how if, for example, in an agency with 10 departments, 1 of those departments is 'rigged' the agency is therefore 10% rigged. And so when asked the question "is the agency rigged" and looking for a binary yes/no answer. The answer is 'Yes - the agency is 'rigged'' - becuase 10% is greater than 0%.

As I explained before, I think 'rigged' is used poorly here becuase it implies a structure that pre-determines results, instead of results being corrupted after the fact. The entire set up of a regulatory agency is to specifically avoid pre-determining results.

>Can you show a pseudo-code representation of the logic you would use in isSystemRigged() to generate False for the proposition?

You are suggesting that whether something is true or false is the same as whether it can be shown to be true or false with pseudo-code. This is a false premise.

The only way your ".01% rigged" system would be "a rigged system" isn't that .01% of the system were a necessary and uncollectable operation component of 100% of the output of the system. Systems are not black boxes. A system doesn't have to be 100% reliable or uncorrupted to be reliable and uncorrupted. This isn't a matter simple enough for the literally braindead logic of pseudo-code or even more braindead real code. It requires reasoning, intelligence, and the ability to grasp the meaning (not merely a single definition) of words.

>f someone disagrees with you, would you be able to demonstrate that you are necessarily correct

Yes, but I would be unable to force them to admit this, or understand it, or even recognize it.

>If you bought a product that says "Pure Product A" on the label, but it is not in fact composed of 100% Product A but instead also contains .01% of a carcinogenic substance, would you consider the label to be objectively accurate (aka: True)?

You have begun a long and difficult journey toward understanding the difference between a system and a product. Best of luck; let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

There's no way to stop it in the current system we've got, and as mentioned the issue has spread from commercial labs to the university sector. For me it boils down to money. All my research funding is from governments, and they typically aren't interested in any sort of direct financial windfall. If I was privately funded by someone with an agenda, say proving that supersymmetry exists in my case, then I can see pressure for my results to point in that direction. There are very strong checks and balances which would stop that from happening in my case, but other fields of science have different standards of proof.

https://youtu.be/Q9aM9Ch97U8

Carl Poppa?

No. You are just flat out wrong here, you are using the term energy incorrectly, using both the colloquial meaning and physical meaning at the same time.

Entropy mitigation in a moral system is not an « energy intensive » process. No raw ressources are needed, no power consumed. No physical energy is needed nor wasted.

However, « mental energy », as ill defined as it is, is needed. But mental energy is not the correct term to use here either, but mental & moral fortitude is what you really mean.

This is fundamentally a cultural & psychological problem, not a ressources management problem. Ressource management may be one way to improve the problem, but it is not the solution, only an aspect of it.

Yeah, those are middlemen. Bureaucrats. They do not contribute to science.

The enforcement of paradigms is corruption, especially in the crisis phase of science because at that point you're not "doing" science, you're regulating it.

>Complains about people not understanding the paradox of tolerance while not understanding it themselves

Reddit moment

The paradox only refers to violence specifically. What is intolerance? Intolerance is the refusal to engage in dialogue to influence society and instead turn to violence, agression on others & terrorism.

A tolerant society indeed cannot tolerate such acts, because they indeed threaten its very existence. As such, they must be punished appropriately under the law.

There is no extension of this principle to ideas, because doing so results directly in the breach of the right to freedom of speech, expression, thoughts, etc.

When you punch a Nazi, you are being the intolerable intolerant, because you are abandoning dialogue and resorting to violence. When that Nazi is gonna punch a Jew, he will be the intolerable intolerant, and appropriately punished for assault.

The ACLU in the 1940s or 50s defended the KKK and nazis going into a Jewish neighborhood holding a rally saying how they should kill all Jews and fucking won the case. Because such is Freedom of Speech. At the rally, there was no violence nor imminent threat of harm to any individual. They went there, spoke, and left.

And we protect that because we want to protect communist going at the door of Wall Street and protesting against the existence of the rich and the whole system.

You cannot be a liberal society when you abandon liberal principles. You are how you act, the end does not justify the means, and unjust/evil means can never result in good in the end. The only way forward is to focus on establishing just means, and the end will follow.

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Paradigms aren't enforced, they are simply belief-structures.

You can't enforce belief structures?

I disagree, you need tangible resources to record, interpret and apply information. There is no process that perfectly and permanently records information, thus to just maintain fidelity, it requires analysis and re-recording of the information, but this assuming perfect formulation of information to begin with, which is also not the case. To deny this is unhelpful reductionism and culture is part of the problem, but by solving that the problem still stands.

Kuhn doesn't suggest that this happens in practice. Whether it actually does is another issue.

Except the funding that makes it possible... Is this a challenging concept for you?

In the US the public is rarely in favour of spending tax dollars on science. People are constantly calling for NASA's budget to be reduced as they see no purpose in the science they do. Now try and replace all the private dollars with government ones and see how that's received.

It's a play on a rotten apple spoils the bunch. If 1 trial out of 10000 gets an automatic pass, then the system is rigged, that sort of thing.

The problem here is what "being rigged" means. It's not enough to have a flaw in the system, the system must be intentionally designed to give unequal outcomes.

So unless I am given further proof that the trial system was designed such that big pharma can bypass it at a cost, I am saying that it isnt rigged.

> would you consider the label to be objectively accurate (aka: True):

Yes I would consider the label objectively true assuming it fell within the bounds of some purity standard.

It absolutely does. We pick and choose how we frame the problem and alienate people with fringe framing. During 'normal' science this is stabilizing but once it gets into crisis science it becomes regressive and you can't avoid that because we don't know what phase we're in until after the fact. This is fundamental.

>So unless I am given further proof that the trial system was designed such that big pharma can bypass it at a cost, I am saying that it isnt rigged. [emph. mine]

Yup - exactly my point.

We get into that a little bit in that longer reply thread. It's an especially prevalent concern in drug regulation, becuase in the courts, one bad decision can produce a 'defective product' - but with pharmaceuticals, there's so many layers of review, and different types of review to clear before the product is able to be commercialized.

> there exists a mechanism for avoiding its rigors and it has been exploited rather openly and documented in court cases with opioids most famously

How were the clinical trials for opioid pain killers exploited? Are opioid pain killers not effective for reducing pain?

But it's not inherent to science. That's a clerical issue. You can conduct science publicly just as well as you can privately, nothing necessitates private organizations to being essential to creation of new science.

>In the US the public is rarely in favour of spending tax dollars on science.

Do you think we produce more science through private institutions than public ones?

> They do not contribute to science.

They literally directly fund it

Would you call them scientists?

I'm sorry, but you were the reductionist there. Objecting to the proposal of a system seeking to minimize corruption by stating it would be too ressource expensive, when in fact, in no way is the ressource cost a limiting or major factor here.

It is entirely possible for a society to exist without corruption without any records existing. It may be unrealistic in today's society, it does not mean it is impossible. As I said, ressource management is merely an aspect of the solution, better record-keeping is a plus, but they can always be falsified, numbers fudged, accounting mistakes made.

As for the example of corruption not existing despite any records keeping, you just have to think about a small hunter-gatherer community. What would corruption looks like in such a society? Assuming the existence of a patriarchal group with "traditionnal" hierarchy, an example of corruption would be a young hunter killing a prey, eating parts of the liver before bringing it back. This is corruption because the tribe leader would be the one to have first pick, and distribution rights over prized meat & offal. The youngin just bypassed that and declared that his arrow damaged the liver, hence why there is a part missing.

Corruption is a moral, conceptual problem, not a physical, material problem. It exists because there exist a predetermined code of conduct, rules to follow and social order, and that some people decide not to abide by it.
It is entirely a social problem, with ways to attempt to manage it that can manifest in the physical world, with records-keeping, but is not dependent on the existence of such records keeping, but purely on the moral fiber of the population.

If taking money from the coffers while you are in charge is the expected behavior in a society, can you really say you are being corrupt by doing it?

You can't just reduce corruption & fighting it to a material problem, when it is a much bigger problem of how human being acts in society & how this rewards him.

>How can a system be 0.01% rigged?

well look at US 'democracy' i would argue its 1% rigged (arbitrary number but still).

if the people who fund both political parties want certain outcomes and pay both parties to provide it (say lower corporate taxes and larger subsidies) and the people then vote attempting to increase corporate taxes only to have either victor lower them would that not be an example of how you can rig a system with only 1% rigging?

personally i think voting is rigged in this very way, parties do what their doors want first and foremost while the people are desperate and stupid enough to believe they have any actual say. no actual 'rigging' just mutual self-interest by those with the most say over society.

so in other words you might.

the fact you had to qualify it means you were wrong.

I don’t understand the point of this pedantic argument.

lol right because our world gives 2 shits about resource efficiency, ah naivety is gold.

we couldnt careless about wasting resources, indeed our entire system is setup explicitly to waste resources accumulating capital.

'efficiency' as used by economists has never meant 'efficiency of resources distribution' it means 'efficiency of capital accumulation'.

in what possible way is burning 1000s of tons of food every year to maintain a floor price a efficient use of resources? it sure is an efficient way of generating 'value' but is one the most inefficient ways possible for handling food distribution.

our society has never cared about minimizing loss or waste, frankly its entirely fine with maximizing losses and waste if it makes private profit.

>How could it possibly not be a factor, given human nature? What other explaination would you propose for the scientific vetting of oxycontin?

you already made up your mind apparently so i dont know why your here.

if you cant think of any possible reasons oxy was passed other then money then god help you (its not like oxy has any medical applications. ffs using your logic all painkillers are designed to make money. fuck me you probably think pharma likes cancer and wouldnt cure it if they could).

'drugs are bad m'kay' isnt an argument and neither is shameless appeals to conspiracy.

oh you mean like how gov used to until the wealthy lobbied them out of it?

again, useless middle men. Actually no they are worse then useless as they hold research back massively by only funding grants that will generate a ROI.

commodification of science is slowing it massively while we waste billions making new iphones.

you mean gov does, these clowns pick up what we paid for then tweak and it pretend its their own 'innovation'.

nothing innovative about the millionth smartphone.

>You can conduct science publicly just as well as you can privately, nothing necessitates private organizations to being essential to creation of new science.

decades of brainwashing have convinced most people gov shouldnt run hospitals, prisons or schools ffs. these idiots think gov doing things is communism and automatically worse then private leechs doing the same thing +cost.

Dangerous drugs getting by is not the only issue, and as you point out, rarely happens. What does happen often is mediocre or simply ineffective treatments that are lauded due to financial incentive. This can happen even in highly controlled trials by over exaggerating moderate to mild findings to a public that either doesn’t have access to or doesn’t understand the literature. Also, all methods of data analysis have their flaws, and there are plenty of ways to both incidentally and purposefully end up with significant findings where there are none in reality.

And I’m glad you mention how the replication crisis is worse in psychology. I’m currently in graduate training to be a research psychologist, and the first month of our clinical research methods class has had a continual discussion of scientific integrity, how to identify flawed or overblown findings, and the danger (and reality) of financial incentive’s effects on research.

[deleted]

[deleted]

Obviously not. You don't have to be a scientist to contribute to science though

That whole comment just screams that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about

> When six out of seven of you experiments end in failure and the median cost for each failure is $20 million you'd think the process is very rigorous.

That's far from sufficient to consider the approval process rigorous, it's not even necessary. Particle Physics is very rigorous but still they don't fail more than six of seven experiments.

The solution to this paradox is that the reject rate doesn't tell you that much about the quality of the selection process. If at all it may reveal something about our collective ability to formulate correct hypotheses (based on understanding of the subject) for this experimental process.

> eating is more important that holding to your ideals.

That is an extremely morally dubious claim.

Opioid overdoses are the #1 cause of death for adults 18-45 in usa... the Sacklers didn't make that happen without many accomplices with impressive science titles.

Being a middleman is not a contribution, it's a hindrance.

> Additionally, you’re fixated on just this oxy question for some reason.

Leading cause of death for 18-45 adults in usa. No big deal?

Then you have no idea what you're talking. The replication crisis refers to a specific attempt to recreate major cornerstone studies in the field of psychology.

> You share the results so that the next trial done on the same patient population can be designed to yield an even better outcome and as part of the drug/device approval process.

So what went wrong with this process re: oxycontin? Why was that drug approval process so flawed?

> It is a problem, but it is not like modern science is anywhere close to fraud

Within certain fields ie psychology, the meta studies mentioned in OP are showing 50% non reproducibility. That is a major problem.

Think about it - was oxycontin nonaddictive? Do SSRIs work? Vioxx? Phen-Phen? Adderall?

There is a crisis ongoing.

> you already made up your mind apparently so i dont know why your here.

I find the argument made in the OP to be logical and persuasive.

> if you cant think of any possible reasons oxy was passed other then money then god help you (its not like oxy has any medical applications. ffs using your logic all painkillers are designed to make money. fuck me you probably think pharma likes cancer and wouldnt cure it if they could).

Oxycontin is more addictive with similar efficacy compared to other opioids. Why do you think it was pushed, if not for the billions of usd profit?

I don't think you understand what the word "middleman" means.

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What's inbetween labor and consumers?

I haven't heard that phrase before, "clinical corruption".

Certainly not investors, who's contribution takes place before the scientists', and without which the scientists' contribution couldn't exist.

We have public institutions. Those exist.

Also, do you believe private institutions produce more science?

Yes. Unequivocally. The fact that you apparently don't means that you have absolutely no clue what you are talking about and there isn't any point even responding to you anymore.

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Just because 14% isn't 50% doesn't mean that bad science isn't passing through the filter. And whataboutism, especially pointing at a social science for replication, certainly doesn't invalidate the points this article is making. Doctors are fire hosed with pharmaceutical propaganda under the guise of impartial science.

Can you cite that for me?

It's not hard information to find. From a super cursory Google search pulling up the Funding of Science page on Wikipedia: "According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), more than 60% of research and development in scientific and technical fields is carried out by industry, and 20% and 10% respectively by universities and government."... The International Science Council says that "The private sector’s share of global science and innovation is growing, and is now estimated to represent approximately 70 per cent of global expenditure on science.". Source...

It's really not a disputable fact.

There’s so much corruption.

Self aware wolf of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Do you consider monster flavored ketchup science?

I don’t know much about the clinical trials run in OxyContin, but why do you think that the trials were flawed?

So you ask for sources, then throw out some juvenile nonsense when presented with them. Yeah, definitely done bothering with you.

That counts as R&D and for some reason that's weighed the same as a new vaccine. Do you not think that's little manipulative? What do you have against more nuance?

If you want s source, how about this one?

Well the drug in question seems to have qualities that spawned a massive public health emergency, record settlements etc, if there is to be a discussion of a crisis in scientific credibility that seems like a reasonable starting point as OP points out. How does a defender of the pharma establishment explain the variance between trials vs real life outcomes? Gross incompetence seems unlikely?

“Through web searches and online services such as LinkedIn, however, Science has discovered that 11 of 16 FDA medical examiners who worked on 28 drug approvals and then left the agency for new jobs are now employed by or consult for the companies they recently regulated. This can create at least the appearance of conflicts of inter

Clinical trials assess the safety and tolerability of a drug in the patient population when dosed correctly. I don’t know off the top of my head what follow-up studies are required for the approval of an analgesic. From my understanding OxyContin is safe when used as intended. The marketing campaign to get doctors to over-prescribe it is a completely different process which would not even begin until after the drug is approved (has passed clinical trials). To expand on this a little there are plenty of drugs with addictive potential that are legal to use (I.e dextromethorphan and Xanax). Just because there are negative side effects like to a drug (like addiction) does not mean it’s development process was flawed. All drugs have side effects.

You are shilling for an immoral nexus of pharm $, regulatory capture and corrupt science:

> FDA failure to obtain adequate evidence of effectiveness was not limited to oxycodone. Over the past 25 years, despite mounting evidence that a surge in opioid consumption was resulting in adverse public health consequences, the FDA continued to approve new opioid formulations for chronic pain based on efficacy trials utilizing a controversial methodology called enriched enrollment randomized withdrawal (EERW).26 Since its 2006 approval of oxymorphone, the FDA has relied on EERW as evidence of opioid efficacy for chronic pain.27 EERW trials differ from traditional double-blind, randomized, controlled studies. In an EERW trial, prior to randomization for a double-blind phase, all subjects are made physiologically dependent on the opioid in a 4- to 6-week open-label phase. Then only the patients who tolerated the opioid and found it helpful during the open-label phase are randomized to remain on the opioid or switch to a placebo. Critics of EERW have correctly described this methodology as “cooking the books” for 2 reasons.28 First, because only patients who tolerated the opioid and found it helpful are allowed to proceed to randomization, the study is not representative of the general population, and the results cannot be generalized to clinical practice. Second, because daily use of opioids causes physiological dependence, efficacy results are skewed in favor of the subjects who remain on the opioid. This is because opioid-dependent subjects who are switched to placebo experience opioid withdrawal symptoms, including increased sensitivity to pain. Moreover, switching opioid-dependent subjects to placebo renders the study not truly double-blind. The FDA’s decision to rely on EERW trial methodology is a consequence of the agency’s close ties to industry. In fact, the FDA’s decision to use EERW for analgesics was based on discussions at private meetings between FDA officials and pharmaceutical company executives hosted by an organization called Initiative on Methods, Measurement, and Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials (IMMPACT).29 Drug companies paid up to $35 000 each for the opportunity to attend IMMPACT meetings and interact with FDA staff.29 Yet, despite the uproar that followed public disclosure of the IMMPACT meetings, the FDA continues to rely on EERW trials as evidence that opioids are effective for chronic pain.

https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-fda-failures-contributed-opioid-crisis/2020-08

I qualified my statement that I was not familiar with these clinical trials so I don’t know why you think this is some sort of gotcha. I’m not advocating for the current mechanisms we used to fund science and develop new drugs. The entire process socializes the risks and privatizes the profits.

You said

> Just because there are negative side effects like to a drug (like addiction) does not mean it’s development process was flawed

Either the process is flawed, or killing a ton of people was the intention.

Is that why true free/hispeed internet isn’t green and available in every house, why they slow down renewable energies and lag on hispeed rail

And you sound hopelessly naive.

After the prescription opioid crisis, I’m surprised that a comment like this would get upvotes. Are you philosophy guys not following the news or something?

I've not experienced that personally, but all I'm saying is that you can't take that from Kuhn or Popper unless they have written stuff subsequent to my study of the subject.

It's just the good old problem of incentives misalignment. And the article doesn't seem to have any solution that is practical to implement.

Suppose we did form an independent research committee. That committee now has the incentive to test medicines in such a rigorous and harsh ways that nothing would get approved. In a situation of ambiguity, this committee would rather reject a newer medicine based on some vague or ill-founded doubts, rather than approve a medicine that's reasonably effective. They are not paid to get out an effective medicine in public.

They obfuscated the risk of addiction throughout the 90’s. Medical literature describes the tolerance to addiction cycle in these drugs as early as the 50’s, it isn’t like it was unknown. When faced with the sharp rise in Opioid deaths post 2000 they convened a panel of experts in 2002, early enough to reign in the off label prescriptions, the panel of 10 experts they brought in had 8 members with significant financial ties to Purdue Pharmaceutical. It wouldn’t be until 2013 before any serious steps were taken, at which point there were enough pills on the market to give every adult in the United States a full bottle.

They were able to prescribe off-label, over produce, and flood both forward facing and black markets for over a decade before any meaningful action was taken. Yes, they absolutely work. They were just way more addictive than the FDA was willing to regulate, and often even recognize.

And this is why software (algorithm) patents are supposed to be illegal.

20 Million is a drop in the bucket in an industry that moves billions.

That's not really a counter argument. If an inventor doesn't want to also be a business man selling, licensing, etc. their product, and they sell their patents to middlemen (who are responsible for the mentioned activities) for x% pay cut or front up payment instead of long term income, they still benefit from existence of patents. They wouldn't have anything to sell to the middlemen without it.

The part where patents are sold and change ownership after they're issued is irrelevant to the issue of inventors having ownership of their invention through patent.

No, my man... meta studies are just doing their job in that case and are weeding out the nonsense from the good research.

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a) Rigged isn’t measured in percentages.

b) They can both be ignored because they missed the first point and started arguing.

Respectfully, this isn't about pharma research or corporate-academic misconduct, that's just the backdrop for the real discussion. The real issue being described can best be summed up as (IMO):

Why is plagiarism bad?

If your answer is epistemological, great work, you "get" it (and, sadly, most likely didn't attend public school in the US). It matters how we know X so we can challenge the underlying assumptions when appropriate.

If your answer involves getting or stealing "credit", though - That's the heart of what this essay is condemning. Why should anyone feel a sense of ownership over "the truth"? And why should their reputation be harmed if they perform an honest experiment whose findings are later refuted? Yet, you don't need to look hard to find countless rants about positive result bias in scientific research; everyone knows it's a serious problem, but everyone also needs to eat, while operating under a system that only rewards successes.

I'm definitely not naive on that topic

We're talking about whether or not the only way innovation happens is through capitalism and markets. How can our IP system incentivize more innovation if the people who receive the largest incentivization aren't the ones actually doing the science? This relationship between capital and labor is fundamentally parasitic.

Schrodinger's cat was a literal attempt to mock quantum physics. Germ theory was similarly ridiculed even despite 40 years amazing data. Ignaz Semmelweis dropped his mortality rate for mother's and children during childbirth by 90% by simply washing his hands, nobody listened to him for DECADES. The list goes on and on. This why Max Planck said, "Science moves at the rate of it's obituaries."

This ideological territorialism. This is a corruption of impartiality and you can't escape it more than science can escape being done by people.

I thought peer review was supposed to weed out the nonsense, not a meta study decades after the subject causes a massive wave of fatalities?