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Re:Book review: Bad Pharma by shas3 on Thursday July 10, 2014 @11:43AM (#8015344)
"you think X is easy?" is a pointless statement. Everything is easy or difficult to different extents to different people. Also, the difficulty of solving a problem is not the primary criterion for choosing whether to attempt or expect to solve the problem. More importantly, there are no excuses for unethical behavior and fraudulent research.

I haven't read the book but I have read a lot of Ben Goldacre's articles (http://www.badscience.net/). His arguments are typically about how quacks, kooks, and pharmas practice 'bad' and fraudulent 'science' and are dishonest in presenting the results of their 'research'.

A vast majority of the population is inept at understanding the kind of statistical language in which drug companies misrepresent results. In addition to innate human propensity for logical fallacies (e.g. Type 1 thinking- Kahneman, Tversky, etc.), our perception is tainted by the personal dimensions of issues related to health and suffering.

Ben Goldacre is a darn good science 'popularizer' and does a great job of explaining these things to a general audience.

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