Is It TIme for Science to Reinvent Itself?
I have been giving a lot of thought lately to these assays, and the issues surrounding them, and to clinical trials, and have come to the conclusion that scientific procedure is now outdated, and needs to be revised.
Let's take double-blind placebo tests or what have you. Recent evidence shows that placebo often works as well as medicine (we'll not go into why here) so given that, does it not now seem unscientific to proceed in comparing a trial medicine to a placebo? Not to mention, it is cruel to the patients in those trials who are hoping to receive the treatment and become well. Seems like an ethics refresher is needed there as well.
Why not simply
-Agree what defines a disease
-Choose a patient population that fits those parameters
-Administer trial medication
-Measure if they improve
You already have a built in "control" in the sense that sick people will either:
-improve
-stay the same
-get worse
Just because it was decided by concensus some time ago that the current scientific methods
were the most accurate or appropriate, it doesn't mean they are still so. With the new info about placebo, it seems absurd to be using that as a measure against which to determine the effectiveness of any medicine.
So much of the argument going on in the XMRV replication studies seems to be related to another problem I notice in academia all the time: The terms are self-defined, and therefore all argument remains within a closed set of constructs. I realise this is part and parcel to much scientific study, but it can lead to a dangerous set of flaws in thinking, and in seeing reality for what it is, rather than how it appears within the confines of your predetermined criteria.
Perhaps this query belongs in a different thread--should I move it?