Bias Can Exaggerate Drugs’ Effectiveness

Fit people generally avoid drugs as compared to unfit people.

Doctors — and patients — might not be getting all the information they need about the safety and effectiveness of certain drugs because of “publication bias,” the tendency of researchers and medical journals to favor positive results over negative ones.

Researchers running drug trials are required to submit detailed results to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But when it comes to reporting trial results publicly in medical journals, “it’s an entirely different ballgame,” according to Dr. Erick Turner, lead author of a study published today in PLoS Medicine.

“Doctors are trained to regard medical journals as the gospel truth,” said Turner, assistant professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. “But what we’re learning here is it’s not necessarily the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

And the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is that if you do not take medications, overhyped or not, you cannot suffer a side effect or poor medication-related outcome.