[WikiEN-l] REPOST: Neutrality and the

[Delirium]

limholt at excite.com wrote:

>An earlire point in thiss or another thread about 'global warming' suggested looking at funding and/or publication counts for journal articles as a way yo determine concensus opinion. I think these two are very tightly coupled.
>
>If funding is available, university types get grants and mae studies. Since their future career also depends on publication, they publish results, usually in terms that will make the grant source happy.
>
>  
>
This one's always fun.  It may or may not be relevant, but one of my 
favorite recent articles on the subject is:
Freemantle, N., Anderson, I. M. & Young, P. (2000) Predictive value of 
pharmacological activity for the relative efficacy of antidepressant 
drugs. Metaregression analysis. British Journal of Psychiatry, 177, 292-302.

Which is a meta-analysis of dozens of studies on anti-depressant drugs 
that finds that the strongest predictor of whether a drug "works" or not 
is who sponsored the study (i.e. pharmaceutical companies vs. 
non-pharmaceutical funding sources).

-Mark