Chinese government investigation reveals more than 80% of data used in clinical trials of new pharmaceutical drugs have been “fabricated”, by Fiona MacDonald.

[T]hey … showed that many clinical trial outcomes were written before the trials had actually taken place, and the data had been simply manipulated to match what companies wanted to find.”

Worst of all, it wasn’t just a few scientists or pharma companies doing the dirty work. The report found that pretty much everyone involved was guilty of some kind of malpractice of fraud.

Perhaps most worryingly, even third party independent investigators tasked with inspecting clinical trial facilities are mentioned in the report as being “accomplices in data fabrication due to cut-throat competition and economic motivation”.

The good name of “science” has been so abused by economic and political interests in the last few decades. Science grew up in the Enlightenment in Europe, as the best means of finding truth about the physical world — the principle was that empirical data, preferably from repeatable experiment, trumped anyone’s say so (such as the Pope). Nowadays big commercial interests abuse if for profit, and the politically correct abuse it to promote their political agenda (climate change, socialist attempts to make the perfect new person on blank slates, third world immigration, denial of statistical differences between populations and sexes, and so on).

hat-tip Stephen Neil