stinkbug

"always verify". Well that's obviously not a true statement but (not singling you out) I wonder why there is such a compulsion to defend the honor, as it were, of medical doctors.

It's not exactly the same as pharma, but in the medical device field salespeople are commonly in operating theatres. Clearly the surgeons doing this do not have time to "verify" what they are being told. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/why-i...

Americans would do well to stop idolizing doctors and realize that huge numbers of them are lazy, incompetent shills who routinely do a lot of preventable damage.

Yes of course the advertisements are total bollocks. That is the claim. You are making these very strident back-of-the-envelope "economics" arguments without realizing that the economic ideal for the health care industry is to provide therapies that make people sicker, thereby ensuring their return for more therapies.

Why on Earth would this get down voted?

>if he had already taken steps to prevent it from happening, I’m betting he would’ve mentioned them specifically.

It said the studies have to be approved by a review board and that the researchers have to agree to destroy or return the samples when they're done.

I don't think we should cynically assume "he knows the answer is yes." He may be hedging simply because he knows it relies on the word of the researchers.

But biomedical researchers have been sensitized to issues of research ethics much longer than internet/data science practitioners. There can be significant penalties for procedural violations and in my experience people do not tend to play fast and loose with the rules.

Last in, first out. Let's get rid of the medical adverts first. There's nothing reasonable they can even possibly say in their defense.

Hmmm. I guess there really is no free lunch after all.