The value of a scientific publication goes beyond this simple benefit, of all relevant information appearing, unambiguously, in one place. It's also a way to communicate your ideas to your scientific peers, and invite them to express an informed view.
From Ben Goldacre
If a scientist sidesteps their scientific peers, and chooses to take an apparently changeable, frightening and technical scientific case directly to the public, then that is a deliberate decision, and one that can't realistically go unnoticed.
In an ideal world, you might imagine that scientific papers were only cited by academics on the basis of their content. This might be true. But lots of other stuff can have an influence.
Bad things happen when problems are protected by a force field of tediousness.
Data is the fabric of the modern world: just like we walk down pavements, so we trace routes through data, and build knowledge and products out of it.
Amazing things happen when you pull individual pieces of information together into larger linked datasets: meaning emerges, as you produce facts from figures.
There is actually quite a lot of crossover between the quacks and drug companies. They use the same tricks and tactics to bamboozle people into buying their pills, but drug firms can afford to use slightly more sophisticated versions.
Doctors and patients need as much data as possible to make an informed decision about what treatment is best.
There is this peculiar blind spot in the culture of academic medicine around whether withholding trial results is research misconduct. People who work in any industry can reinforce each others' ideas about what is okay.
Yes. I'm a doctor, an epidemiologist, and lots of my professional colleagues flip back and forth between industry and medical roles. I know them; they are not bad people. But it is possible for good people in bad systems to do things that inflict enormous harm.
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