Kurt,
Based on your responses, I suspect your background is similar to mine -- the physical rather than the biomedical sciences. In a former life, I both wrote and reviewed scientific papers in my tiny little corner of the research world. In the physical sciences, scientists are indeed highly dedicated to the scientific method, and to honest, accurate science. You can rely on scientists working in good faith.
I have been told frequently in the past couple of years that this is not necessarily true in biomedical sciences. What I've seen in the past year has led me to believe this is true. I suspect it stems from an inherent lack of understanding of mathematics and statistics, which leads to a much lower standard of rigor than physical scientists expect. This allows for what I consider to be an unconscionable amount of bias and intrusion of opinion into what ought to be pure science.
The conclusions which extrapolate far beyond the data, discussions based more on opinion than factual evidence, and major conclusions drawn without considering the statistical value of the data, have led me to a deep distrust of biomedical research papers.
While I think the science sorts itself out over time, I don't think we conclude much of anything from most of these individual biomedical research papers. The exception, in my opinion, being those that have been heavily vetted by top-ranked journals. Biomedical research seems to work more by everybody pitching their snippets into a big pile for a decade and then shaking it to see what finally falls out. It probably works.... in the long run.
I no longer go out of my way to scientifically support or condemn the little papers. For us, it's a waste of scientific effort.
The politics of these papers is an entirely different matter. Politics do seem to play a large part in biomedical research, and most researchers in that field know how to interpret it. Clinical doctors and the media, on the other hand, do not. We physical scientists probably don't either, sad to say. I leave the politics to those academically and emotionally suited to political wrangling... and it needs to be done. But it's not science and it doesn't work like science.
