Where Do We Draw the "Good Science vs Gossip" Line

It is always interesting to me to hear people in passing discussing some topic that I have little knowledge about. For instance, a week or two ago, I heard a couple walking passed talking about having a baby, and how underwater birth had a (insert statistic that I can’t remember) success rate and was much less stressful on the baby. Almost instantly I became suspicious. Now I’d like to say I ran home, read a number of articles on pro an anti water birth techniques, but I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t read any. I went about my business as usual, pondering for myself possible benefits of underwater birth, though probably not for more than a few minutes.

This was just a classic example of something that happens everyday. So much of the research in the world that claims to be “scientific” or “viable” really may not be. We see a statistic or hear of a result, and we act as though it is irrefutable knowledge. I myself have fallen into the trap of “I read an article once, blah blah blah,” when in reality, I couldn’t give you the title of the article, much less where it was published, who it was written by, background information, if the results achieved in other studies were similar, or a plethora of other information that would make whatever came out of my mouth next scientifically viable. For all I know, I could have been drunk when I read it.

There are stories of researchers that have often gotten completely different results from one another when studying the same topic. I like to think that when a pharmaceutical gets developed, and the FDA tests its function and relative safety for human use, that they always have our best interest in mind. But that is not always the case.

There is a lot of research out there that probably doesn’t say a whole lot. Drugs studies that don’t show how a drug is specifically responsible for a seen effect, or how that effect is only minimally present, are everywhere. Placebo medicines are prescribed almost as often as actually medications, and if you feel better, you wouldn’t know the difference.

But placebo medications do not work for diseases that will most definitely kill you. A state of mind that suggests you are better because you are taking a pill does not cure you of sickle cell anemia if all it contains is sugar. And if the developer of a drug, or a procedure, or a treatment of some disease believes in their “product,” they are going to do everything in their power to see to it that their product makes its way into the “marketplace.” Sometimes, we as consumers pay the price for their brazenness. But sometimes, I suppose the opposite is true.

Perhaps there are people out there that personify the “ends justify the means,” “Gregory House” theory of practical medicine that is “if it saves his/her life, do it. Period.” But even the likes of a doctor as good as House could not help but fall prey to incorrect data generated from inconsistent research if the medical school that taught him “what was what” said “this is right, believe it.” It really makes you stop and think for a second. After all, “what do you call the person that graduates last in their class from medical school?” Doctor.