
Top Cancer Doctor Resigns After Failing to Disclose Industry Ties - kylebarron
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/health/jose-baselga-cancer-memorial-sloan-kettering.html
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newnewpdro
I briefly dated someone with a PHD in cancer biology who worked on the
marketing side for pharmaceuticals through a "consulting" company.

On multiple occasions I watched her manipulate datasets to produce
visualizations favoring whatever drug was being pushed at that time.

The rationalization process was something like the treatments were basically
all equally ineffective against the specific type/stage of cancer, but still
the best choices at the time for people who were going to live for a brief
period no matter what. So they tweak the graphs to slightly favor whoever is
paying for the research, something on the order of a couple more months of
life expectancy vs. the alternatives. Just enough to funnel the patients.

 _sigh_

~~~
ericb
I'd like to raise the possibility that this is a milquetoast to reaction to
something that sounds potentially criminal and cruel. I have a friend with a
daughter coming out of 9 months of chemo. The thought that any of the many
drugs she consumed, some of which could damaged her body in various ways, were
unnecessary and given only because of fraud seems positively monstrous to me.

~~~
newnewpdro
Did you just call me a pansy?

~~~
ericb
I appreciate you sharing the story. There's a difference between
characterizing a specific reaction as weak and calling a person weak.

There's also a natural human tendency to overlook horrors when they are
abstract and "data" which is why "5000 dead" is a statistic, but that kid
around the corner who died is a tragedy.

~~~
newnewpdro
The word "milquetoast" specifically criticizes a man as weak, timid,
unasertive, or childish. If that's not your intention, you're misusing the
word.

It's not equivalent to saying "this is a weak reaction".

You may have preferred I reacted more severely to what I observed, but I, like
everyone, must pick my battles and this particular one was and is not a
priority for me. And if it were a priority, I wouldn't go about combating it
at such an individual level - this is just a symptom of the profit-driven
system. Just look at Purdue and the opiod crisis they've created by lying to
doctors and consumers, and how rich and powerful they've become in the
process. The behavior is rewarded systemically.

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comex
Interesting. When the original report was submitted to HN last week, the top
comment was from someone working in the field basically saying it was a
nothingburger. [1] This latest development doesn't necessarily contradict
that, but it does show that executives at least saw the issue as rather
serious.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17944235](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17944235)

~~~
joshgel
I work in this field and find it quite serious. As physicians we must hold
ourselves to a higher standard and remain above reproach. Nearly everything we
do depends on patient's trusting us and without that it becomes much harder to
effectively help people.

As far as whether drug trials are influenced by industry sponsorship, I think
the answer is a resounding yes[0], though others might disagree. But if we are
talking about hidden industry sponsorship, we erode trust and generate
questionable results.

[0]
[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/196846](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/196846)

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pdevr
List of publications by Baselga:
[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4840569-Baselga-
Arti...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4840569-Baselga-Article-
List.html)

~~~
jondubois
It's surprising how many authors all of these papers have. It makes it
difficult to allocate credit.

Not saying this is the case here, but I'm sure that if someone was very
strategic about it, they could get their names in a lot of high quality papers
without having to do much work.

In fact, I think that people who focus more on the political aspect of their
careers tend to be more successful than people who actually do the innovative
work.

~~~
maxxxxx
"In fact, I think that people who focus more on the political aspect of their
careers tend to be more successful than people who actually do the useful
research work."

That's unfortunately the case also outside research. You can have a very good
career if you only focus on politics and nothing else.

~~~
kinleyd
How much of the successful 'politics' would you say is actually sycophancy?

~~~
ekianjo
Flattering is not enough. You need to also actively undermine your competitors
to be successful at politics.

~~~
barry-cotter
If you want to get promoted it really helps to figure out a way to make your
boss look good.

~~~
throwaway8879
Isn't that the first law in the book '48 Laws of Power'?

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netwanderer
The more you learn about these stories, the more you realize that our world is
just a giant clusterfuck. We haven't witnessed many revolutionary medical
breakthroughs in recent years or even decades. With little resources back then
scientists were still able to invent breakthroughs such as vaccines,
anesthesia, antibiotics, etc. Consider all the money being dumped into medical
research field today, it's disheartening that we haven't been able to achieve
anything near the same level. The returns are quickly diminishing.

The medical field seems to progress at much slower pace compared to other
fields like computer science. Are we facing talents distribution problem? The
world certainly didn't have companies like Apple, Amazon, Google, or Facebook
back then. Are these tech companies sucking up most talents? It's sad to
imagine our brightest people are being utilized to create more online ads
rather than help curing the world.

~~~
Xixi
"It was a good description to say that it was a game, a very interesting game
one could play. Whenever one solved one of the little problems, one could
write a paper about it. It was very easy in those days for any second-rate
physicist to do first-rate work. There has not been such a glorious time since
then. It is very difficult now for a first-rate physicist to do second-rate
work." P.A.M. Dirac.

The quote is about physics, but it certainly also applies to medicine. All the
low hanging fruits have been picked. The problem now is not the lack of
talent, funding, interest or dedication: it's the lack of fruits.

~~~
manmal
To continue the analogy: The amount of reachable fruit depends a lot on the
availability of tools. That’s why we didn’t have computer science in the
copper age. There have a lot of new tools been developed recently, eg deep
learning, and new areas of expertise have been unlocked with it. One just has
to figure out what kinds of fruit are reachable now.

------
village-idiot
Medical research is so unbelievably corrupt.

~~~
serguzest
no buddy you can't argue with science. Eggs will kill you, unless you take
statin.

~~~
village-idiot
Poe’s law strikes again.

