In , Ben Goldacre hilariously exposed the tricks that quacks and journalists use to distort science. In , he put the $600 billion global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope. Now the pick of the journalism by one of our wittiiest, most indignant and most fearless commentators on the worlds of medicine and science is collected in one volume.
The author of Bad Science reveals the shocking truth about the pharmaceutical industry and the state of medicine today.
Medicine is broken. We like to imagine that it's based on evidence and the results of fair tests. In reality, those tests are often profoundly flawed. We like to imagine that doctors are familiar with the research literature surrounding a drug, when in reality much of the research is hidden from them by drug companies. We like to imagine that doctors are impartially educated, when in reality much of their education is funded by industry. We like to imagine that regulators let only effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve hopeless drugs, with data on side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients.
All these problems have been protected from public scrutiny because they're too complex to capture in a sound bite. But Dr. Ben Goldacre shows that the true scale of this murderous disaster fully reveals itself only when the details are untangled. He believes we should all be able to understand precisely how data manipulation works and how research misconduct on a global scale affects us. In his own words, "the tricks and distortions documented in these pages are beautiful, intricate, and fascinating in their details." With Goldacre's characteristic flair and a forensic attention to detail, Bad Pharma reveals a shockingly broken system and calls for something to be done. This is the pharmaceutical industry as it has never been seen before.
Goldacre uncovers a shockingly corrupt industry in a passionate and accessible manner. His genuine and thorough research brings to light some revelatory tales of the Pharmaceutical industry and investigates the motives behind our treatments.
Following the bestselling Bad Science, which mercilessly exposed the evils of bogus, pseudo-scientific remedies, Ben Goldacre puts the global pharmaceutical industry under the microscope
The $600 billion pharmaceutical industry spends more on marketing than it does on research and development. It distorts and suppresses the results of clinical trials if they are unfavourable. New diseases are invented in order to swell profits.
Doctors are kept in the dark about which drugs are the best for their patients. Patients' pressure groups are covertly sponsored by pill manufacturers.
Authoritative-looking journals can be nothing more than disguised advertising brochures. Papers, supposedly by respected academics, are in fact ghostwritten by drugs companies.
The offences are countless and the consequences are felt by us all. What we trust to cure us may be utterly ineffectual or actually harmful.
Have you ever wondered how one day the media can assert that alcohol is bad for us and the next unashamedly run a story touting the benefits of daily alcohol consumption? Or how a drug that is pulled off the market for causing heart attacks ever got approved in the first place? How can average readers, who aren't medical doctors or Ph.D.s in biochemistry, tell what they should be paying attention to and what's, well, just more bullshit?
Ben Goldacre has made a point of exposing quack doctors and nutritionists, bogus credentialing programs, and biased scientific studies. He has also taken the media to task for its willingness to throw facts and proof out the window. But he's not here just to tell you what's wrong. Goldacre is here to teach you how to evaluate placebo effects, double-blind studies, and sample sizes, so that you can recognize bad science when you see it. You're about to feel a whole lot better.
We are constantly bombarded with inaccurate, contradictory and sometimes misleading information-until now. Ben Goldacre masterfully dismantles the dubious science behind some of the great drug trials, court cases and missed opportunities of our time. He also shows us the fascinating story of how we know what we know, and gives us the tools to uncover bad science for ourselves.
