That was one of the coolest sites ever, the other one being where you could make virtual mixtapes and send them to people. We can't have nice stuff anymore....
> people can't "fake" clinical trial results like this to sell medication
Many clinical trials are controversial when they are positive.
Most clinical trials are subcontracted. The subcontractor has a deep interest in pleasing his client. You can select patients at the beginning of the trial, or during the trial you can report that a patient with a "bad" result, just dropped out of the study. And indeed in most clinical trials there is no strong adverse effects (just weak) reported except when patients die.
Moreover, the hospitals that implement the trial often only do the minimum to satisfy the principal investigator
Just look at the field of neurodegenerative diseases or ask patients how negligently they have been treated.
It is fine to be sceptical, but I think you should have taken a few minutes to read the method chapter in the study, seeing as that possibly could have eased your doubts. The first sentence cites the previously published design of the study. In the method chapter it is reported to be an "international, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial" with 3533 participants and a mean median follow-up of 3.4 years[0]. The cited article on the study of the trial states that "Participants were enrolled from 418 trial locations across 28 countries." [1]
> Many clinical trials are controversial when they are positive.
Which isn't the same as being "faked".
> Most clinical trials are subcontracted.
They are not subcontracted, clinical trial sites are identified. They are basically doctors interested in running a trial. Usually done at academic hospitals.
> The subcontractor has a deep interest in pleasing his client.
No they don't. They have no vested interest beyond their own careers and publications. Doctors only put a few hours into a clinical trial each month, usually their own patients. Most of the work is done by clinical trial staff. The costs of the trials are paid for by the sponsor, but that money doesn't go into the doctor's pocket, it's the hospital.
> You can select patients at the beginning of the trial, or during the trial you can report that a patient with a "bad" result, just dropped out of the study.
But pretty much every trial is triple blinded. The company, doctor and patient don't know if the patient got the drug or the placebo. Placebos are chosen to pretty much be identical to the drug (people get injections, take pills that look exactly the same).
And no, you can't just "say a patient dropped out". There is a predefined set of criteria that the doctor needs to follow. The patient needs to agree to follow them as well. But again, the doctor doesn't know who received what so how they can they "tweak" the results?
Plus if a patient drops out, the results are penalized. The data doesn't just disappear. All data needs to be reported to the FDA for every patient, including all follow ups.
> And indeed in most clinical trials there is no strong adverse effects (just weak) reported except when patients die.
This is 100% false. All adverse events need to be reported, whether caused by the drug or not. This is why relatively innocuous drug have weird side effects like "diarrhea, constipation". The top adverse events have to be reported, even if it's 0.01% who had them.
> Moreover, the hospitals that implement the trial often only do the minimum to satisfy the principal investigator
No, the hospital doesn't know which patient received the drug or not. If the patient needs a blood test, they get a blood test like any other patient.
And again, the process needs to be followed or else the deviation reported. All of that is reported to the FDA. If enough deviations happen, the FDA can say they won't approve the drug.
> Just look at the field of neurodegenerative diseases or ask patients how negligently they have been treated.
What are you talking about? Can you provide a source?
You've already made many statements that are clearly false, which you would know if you had done even basic research into the field using google. You clearly don't know the field very well, so I'm not sure why you feel like your "ideas" of how trials are run are of any value.
I think GP may be referring to CROs who generally do most of the ops of a clinical trial. Their incentive isn’t to have positive results though, it’s to milk the trial contract (cost plus contracting w/ ~no incentive to operate them quickly and efficiently) and then to have the results never get disputed by FDA. A CRO that fakes data is a CRO that will not survive very long.
Agreed on all your other points though, GP has no clue what they’re talking about.
So... Derek Jarman had a studio in one of the old warehouses alongside the thames before it became the yupified, soulless nonsence it is now. I was an artist but also modelled frequently for other artists and art schools (not unusual for a young artist).
DJ was in the process of producing Caravaggio, and I heard through a freind that DJ was looking for models not shy about being 'au naturel' in front of the camera. The shoot required that I dance naked, together with many other guys, at night around a large fire, located in an empty lot next to his studio.
I know that his Caravagio movie was in production (or development) and being openly discussed at the time and this was part of my motivation behind accepting the (unpaid) gig. However, from my single viewing of the movie, I cannot recal seeing any such scene.
There are plenty of similar scenes in his movie Sebastian, but the dates don't work out. It's concievable that he was just shooting one of his off the cuf experimental works... who knows.
The shoot itself was a bit chaotic. Most of the other guys there were gay and up for a party..., Very frisky. As a young straight lad, I was a bit freaked out, but Derik himself was a complete gentleman, and also very protective of me. Needless to say I did not return. However, I maintain very fond memories of DJ. He had a wiked sence if humour and was evidently a man a great humanity.
I do recal towards the end of the evening seeing him cry. Maybe it was because of the stress of the shoot, or maybe because of health issues (he was diagnosed HIV+ around that time but my memory of the dates is fuzzy).
He was part of a London that no longer exists... Punk, alternative, pre-yuppy. Much missed.
A lot of stuff gets filmed and then cut, so it might just be that. You might be on a director's cut DVD somewhere! (Though way less likely for old stuff, where the removed material may no longer even exist.)
I feel this way too. Something about Microsoft office products makes my skin crawl. I remember back when Teams didn’t have native notifications either, oh man was that painful!
It is the worst tool by far on any computer I've used in the past 30 years.
Regularly disconnects Microsoft's own headsets and saturates CPU until the headset is unplugged and re-plugged, good job selling your products together without testing them.
Can't use triple backticks in messages for blocks of code anymore, it never works.
Can't always use single backtick either, unreliable at best.
Pasting will give crazy formatting sometimes and blocks of code sometimes, you can't choose when. Will regularly trim CRLFs, leaving you to input everything manually.
"Inserting" code (instead of pasting it like a normal person) makes the TITLE they force you to input take most of the space, it's like they thought long and hard about how to obfuscate useful information at every turn.
Switching tabs and conversations take a noticeable time, even on a decent beast (12th gen i7, rtx 3070ti, 64gb ddr4). Doing anything is sluggish in that app.
When on a call with somebody sharing their screen, can't hide the stupid vertical bar with names of other people taking 20% of the real estate.
Can't share more than one screen discord-style so half the time colleagues will be quickly shown something, and then have to be reminded to share their own screen again.
Link embeds are slow to parse, office embeds offer more options but are slow to open either in-app or in browser.
Speaking of links, any "copy link" is uncertain for users: sometimes it's a crappy useless popover, sometimes it's a link you don't realize the other user will need permission for, and sometimes it has copied without really notifying you. Awesome.
New teams is basically old teams but now your computer has twice the software and shortcuts.
Testing your sound setup requires a painfully slow call with the crappiest Skype-inspired bot, the test feedback itself being less than 30% of the entire time wasted
And the sound is just noticeably worse than literally every other service (Facebook messenger, Google calls, slack, discord..)
Once teams is on a computer, some magical shortcut (you will only ever press by mistake while doing other things) will pop up a window trying to get it integrated further into your O.S.
Searching for messages is extremely painful, there's no robust history in that bar at the top and you'll find yourself searching multiple times over sometimes, especially as you can't preview much so you try to find that one message from 6 months ago over and over again with new searches.
Setting appointments can't tweak the exact timing the way outlook's calendar does (down to 5min increments if wanted).
Can't pin more than a few teams. Good job making the tab that your app is named after the one people want to avoid the most.
I could go on but I'm not working today and already have enough sadness incurred by that horrible piece of junk 5 days a week..
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