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Re:80% of current drug applications in China failed to meet ... by nonbel on Sunday October 02, 2016 @12:11PM (#12622966)
I had a very similar experience. And you are correct that these problems are not at all limited to "China", although those authors tend to be a little less sophisticated in their (what may generously be called) shortcuts.

For example, if you do a real literature review on a medical topic (not just credulously take their word for it) you are almost sure to find that one of the primary assumptions/claims was actually never studied. One paper refs a second which refs a third that speculated about it in the introduction, but now "everyone knows it".

Re:80% of current drug applications in China failed to meet ... by projektfu on Sunday October 02, 2016 @12:59PM (#12623216)
So true. This is especially important as people study ways of improving metrics of markers of disease instead of actually improving disease endpoints. For example, there is a supplement marketed in the veterinary space that may lower blood urea nitrogen in uremic animals, according to a study. Whoop-de-do! I don't care about urea, it doesn't cause the disease of uremia. It is just a marker. You could convert all the urea to ammonia and now have a patient with two diseases and a BUN of 0.