Category: International news

An investigation of industry-sponsored medical studies shows that pharmaceutical companies had an impact on all parts of the research.

Much medical research takes place in purely academic environments, ie at universities or other independent research institutions.

But when promising drugs are being developed into finished vaccines or medications and tested on humans, it is almost always a drug company that is behind.

Now the industry and independent researchers are involved: The pharmaceutical company finances the study and supplies the medicine, while physicians and researchers carry out research on their patients. This is a collaboration that both serve.

Obtains credibility from independent researchers

Hospitals gain increased competence, prestige, free access to new and better medicines, greater opportunity to follow up patients and funds for more employees.

Industry receives access to hospitals ‘patients and physicians’ treatment skills. And not least, to the credibility of independent researchers. It will be a guarantee that the research results are reliable and not controlled by industry’s financial interests.

But now a new survey suggests that this warranty is less worthwhile than we have assumed.

The results showed that industry was often deeply involved in all parts of the studies. In many cases, there were researchers from the pharmaceutical companies who analyzed the data alone. They also often wrote the research articles without their names appearing in the authors lists.

The drug companies had great influence

It is Kristine Rasmussen at the Nordic Cochrane Center at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen and her colleagues who have done the survey. They took care of the 200 latest industry-financed studies of medicines, vaccines and medical equipment, published in seven highly prestigious medical journals.

Rasmussen and co. also sent a questionnaire to the main authors of the 200 studies.

The results showed that employees from pharmaceutical companies were writing 87 percent of the articles. And in 92 percent of the cases, the industrial partner had an influence on the design of the study. In many cases, this study design may have a lot to say for what results the survey can provide.

Only four percent of the studies were completely independent, ie completely planned, performed and reported by researchers from academic institutions.

When it came to analyzing the data, industry workers were included in 73 percent of the studies, while independent researchers only participated in the analyzes in 40 percent of the cases.

This means that employees in the pharmaceutical companies not only had an influence on how the data from the study were interpreted. In many cases they had the full control. But the information in the articles about who stood for the analyzes was often ambiguous.

This result is consistent with the conclusions of previous studies.

It was also often unclear whether the independent researchers themselves had access to the data. This is consistent with previous research, writes Rasmussen and colleagues. A study from 2012 showed that industry partners often had control of the data.

Research.no also wrote about similar issues. A survey we conducted in 2017 showed that researchers often have no influence on what happens to the data from studies in Norwegian patients.

The questionnaire to Rasmussen and colleagues shows that most academics looked at the cooperation with industry as useful.

However, some reported about problems, for example because the drug company delayed the publication of the results, or that the two parties disagreed as to how the study should be designed or reported.

In a research.no research, 2015 showed that Norwegian researchers have also experienced such episodes.

– Should decline cooperation

In a comment about the research, Rasmussen writes that she and colleagues started the survey because they knew about researchers who had experienced their academic freedom limited by the industry partner.

And because they knew about researchers who were only concerned about the benefits they could derive from an industrial partnership.

Thus it was interesting to find out how widespread this was. The results of industry-sponsored clinical trials are important. They have a lot to say when professionals and health authorities decide what kind of treatment patients will receive.

Good decisions depend on the fact that the clinical studies that are based are reliable and safeguard the patient’s interests, for commercial reasons, writes Rasmussen, and strikes a blow for more independence in future studies.

– The academic environment should refuse cooperation when the industry requires control over design, implementation, data, statistical analysis or reporting.

“Researchers have found close ties between climate denying and xenophobia. 63 percent of conservative Norwegian men do not think climate change is man-made, “we read from journalist Iselin Elise Fjeld at NRK on Tuesday night.

Fjäll quotes what she refers to as “research” made by Olve Krange, at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA). NRK also writes that Krange concludes that “climate denial seems to go hand in hand with a wider pattern of high nationalism and xenophobia.”

“We have not measured high-level nationalism or xenophobia, but a question about attitudes towards immigrants lets us observe that conservative men, who are also skeptical of immigration, more often doubt human-induced climate change than everyone else, even when we check for a variety of other variables, explains Krange.

There must also be a US study showing the same.

White men

“Both the Norwegian and US study argue that climate denial can be understood as an attempt to protect current power structures,” writes NRK

“There is a way to protect group identity, and maintain a social structure that allows white men to enjoy benefits over other communities,” the researchers explain in the report according to the NRK.

– High-spirited individuals tend to more easily accept and justify existing social structures and oppose changes in traditional lifestyles, called it.

National spokesman for MDG, Arild Hermstad, also states:

“The research explains something we have experienced since the MDG entered the city council in Oslo. Conservative middle-aged is a loud group fighting for the right to drive a car at the expense of children and the sick. They are provoked by women of power and foreign appearance, and in addition they deny the climate knowledge. Climate skepticism and nationalism are linked because such cross-border challenges can not be solved within the national state.

Comment

You almost do not know where to start commenting on such a combination of “research” and the NRK’s ​​reporting of it. But let’s try.

First, it is the use of the word “climate neglect”. The use of this term adds that there is something that is true, which is thus denied. For example, would you use the term “UFO-denial”? And also the combination “climate” and “deny” put together becomes completely meaningless. No one denies that the climate exists, or even is skeptical about the climate. In that case, it is climate change, or more precisely the potentially man-made parts of climate change that you are skeptical of or “deny”. Anyone who uses the term “climate neglect” pertains to the definition of Fake News.

It is obvious that NINA researcher Olve Drange for himself tries to figure out the “mystery” about how someone can deny it to him the obvious truth that human terrible activity destroys the planet by changing the climate. And then it’s good that other views the researcher finds incomprehensible, yes maybe morally reprehensible, such as skepticism about mass immigration (!), Are connected.

Therefore, it becomes logical. If you do not understand a specific thing, there is a good chance that you will not understand other things. You’re simply stupid.

Not stupid, but powerful

But wait a bit. It’s not that Olve Drange says. The skepticism of white men expresses immigration and man-made climate change (“climate denial” in Dranges and NRKS language draws) due to “attempts to protect current power structures.” The white men are not stupid. No, they are cynical, power-seeking individuals, he believes. And this defense of their own privileges is the explanation, not that they are stupid.

Drange therefore supports the American study that inspired him, who found that the explanation for the climate denial of white men was that it is “a way to protect group identity and maintain a social structure that allows white men to enjoy benefits over other social groups” .

Responsibility and self-catering operation

It should be noted in this context that self-catering is a good property that is probably chosen. That one wants to protect his group has been absolutely necessary for the survival of humanity (and all other plants and animals). And then the question of men, or “white men”, sees themselves as a group. My assertion is that there is little or no vote.

We white men, like Arab men, black men, yellow men, Swedish men, Danish men, Muslim men, etc., experience us as part of societies where women (and children) make up an entirely natural part. To the extent that we work to protect an “identity” or to “maintain a social structure,” it is a primary entity that wishes to be protected. The primary such entities have historically been families, clans, tribes, ethnic groups, nations, religious or ideological communities.

Of course there are also gender identities and also fighting about status and power between women and men, but for example, in today’s immigration ship, the struggle between white men and white women is far subordinate to the white men’s “struggle” against strange men about resources, and just a fight for the women of the white, or the foreign men.

One can easily understand why skepticism about mass immigration is in the interests of white men. I suppose it is in the interests of white women too. A society of increased violence, rape and crime, increased numbers of hostile people who are offended by trifles, as well as a welfare state that bleeds money for immigrants, is barely in the interests of some of its citizens.

But it is not good to say what a skepticism to accept that man-made climate change would favor white men over women, and neither white men more than dark men, nor immigrants. So here is a significant short circuit outside and goes to the head of the researcher and the NRK journalist.

Critical sense

A more likely explanation of the correlation between immigration skepticism and skepticism to accept the claims about the importance of man-made climate change is that both require a certain degree of critical sense and ability to think independently and beyond consensus and it’s “all” mean.

For decades, the prevailing ideology in the West has hammered sunshine stories about the multicultural society and the doomsday prophecies about environment and climate. At the same time, it is obvious that those who were skeptical of mass immigration at an early stage were most right. It now admits the vast majority.

Even the gloomiest climate cases have been thoroughly disproved by the climate itself. So it has been sensible to be skeptical of the sunshine history of the multicultural society as climate alarmists. For if one should follow the latter’s warnings, a number of expensive measures would have been implemented for no positive benefit.

I’m not going to hang out on the complaints queue that sits over how bad white middle-aged men are treated in Western society. In my opinion, we still have the best cards at hand and are not as discriminated as anyone wants it to. But that does not mean that there are no radical environments trying to “war” against the white man trying to construct an opposition between white men and white women, or rather between white men and everyone else, an artificial, constructed polarization that is harmful to all of us.

But what society should more likely reflect on is whether white men are actually worth listening to in many contexts. Yes, so they have been listened to in questions about politics, governance, war and peace for thousands of years. Is it that women tend to be a bit more consensus-oriented than men? Is it therefore possible for men to dare to point out that the emperor has no clothes and that such a point is sometimes what the society needs to adjust course?

One of the problems we have today is that the intellectual establishment in social sciences believes that they have found the final truth about the good society and that everything is about defending this truth against the heretics. And most heretics are among white middle-aged men. The establishment thus also makes sense of a matter of morality. And they defend their dogmas as obstinate as the church in their day.

NRK disappoints

The report to NRK is simply crafts, if not also Fake News in some aspects. The impact of those who are not as critical (as white, conservative men) of reading this NRK article would be to think that climate skepticism is as common as immigration skepticism. And it’s something everyone other than white, conservative men should keep away from thinking.

But the truth is that people should get more into the climate issue on their own. Search for alternative views, see if it makes sense. Imagine if humans might be a little less influential compared to changes in the sun, the terrain, the slopes and other conditions that affect the climate than the Green Party the Green and NRK want you to believe.

It does not hurt to investigate the climate case a little further on your own. And if you do not worry yourself, listen to a white man with self-restraint and some individuality. What does he mean about what affects the climate?

We have never seen anything like this before

– All arrows point straight down, and it goes very fast, warns climate scientist.

“We must figure this out now. It really hurts. This is one of the most existential questions in science.

That’s what Johan Rockström, head of the Stockholm Resilience Center research institute, told The Guardian earlier this month.

He referred to a recent study considering the risk that nature’s own uncontrollable domino effects will prevent attempts to curb global warming.

He was one of several who hit the alarm. A number of climate scientists also pushed out and warned that climate change could speed up, even though all countries in the world cut their emissions. At worst, many areas on the earth can become uninhabitable.

The reason for the researchers’ concern was the so-called backlinking effects that affect the climate on Earth.

These are effects that are “built-in” in nature itself and, as in many cases, enhance the effects of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, NTB writes.

One of the most famous effects is linked to the sea ice in the Arctic. As the soil gets hotter, it becomes less ice – which causes more energy from the sun to be absorbed into the ocean so that the heating is enhanced.

But there are also a number of others: Heating in the Arctic can increase emissions of methane from the ground and the seabed, emissions grow from forests that are chopped, rotting or burning, and warmer seas can absorb less greenhouse gases than they have done so far.

“This wave of events will be able to tip the entire Earth system into a new state,” said German researcher Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, according to AFP news agency.

– All arrows point straight down

New shocks from Greenland are depressing reading for those who were already concerned.

It’s the British newspaper The Guardian who writes about the sensational find. According to the newspaper, what has long been considered the strongest of all sea ice, which is located north of Greenland, has broken cracks and is breaking up.

It is already well known that the sea ice in the Arctic melt. And at a pace that still surprises researchers worldwide.

There will be less and less sea ice in the Arctic, and it is a trend that just continues and continues, “says climate scientist Bjørn Hallvard Samset at Cicero to Dagbladet.

– All arrows point straight down, and it goes very fast. It’s not necessarily equal every year, but on average it’s going too fast, says Samset.

But the fresh find from the sea ice north of Greenland is still sensational enough to scare the experts.

“This area has been called” the last ice field “, since it has been said that the last sea ice in the Arctic came to lie here, says Ruth Mottram at Meteorological Institute in Denmark to The Guardian.

Video : North Pole melts in 20 seconds

Melt easier

“We have never seen anything like this before. Not there. It was thought that it would be one of the last places it would disappear summer in the Arctic, the Samset agrees.

It is first and foremost a powerful wind that came across the area, which led the ice to the open sea.

But the heat wave that has been lying like a gloomy wool blanket over the northern hemisphere in summer also gets its share of duty. The heat helped to melt large parts of the ice, which in turn made the ice easier. This made the wind an easy job of grabbing it and moving it into open waters – the melting process could accelerate.

– This in a place where we had thought the ice was about as stable as it is possible to get it in the Arctic. There is not much ocean currents there and it is mostly very cold. Therefore, it should be frozen, “says the Norwegian climate scientist.

The sea ice has been like a solid block – frozen all year round. The ice was thus many meters thick.

– Now a large part of the ice cream is freezing in the winter fresh and one year old. It’s thin and smells easier if you get a hot summer, Samset explains.

– Another clear notice

It is in turn helping to accelerate the melting process and the division of the ice. The samset says he is scared of the new measurements.

– It is scary. There is enough clear notice. One warns that the ice in the Arctic explodes and melts quickly. Looking at the measurements from 1980 up to now, they point only one way; right down, he says.

In a number of climate models, scientists have attempted to estimate when the summer ice is completely out of these areas, if the warming continues at the pace that has been seen so far.

“It’s very hard to calculate because it’s a phase transition that it’s demanding to get into a mathematical model. But if you look at the new measurements, it seems that it is the most pessimistic climate models that get right. If these measurements are correct, it will not be surprising if it is completely free of ice in the Arctic in the summer before 2040.

Another who is scared of the findings is the researcher Thomas Lavergne at the Meteorological Institute in Norway.

“Scary”, he writes in a Twitter message where he shares a satellite image of the ice that drives from land.

“I can not say how long this open sea area will remain open, but even if it should freeze within a few days, the damage will already happen. The thick old sea ice will be pushed away from the coast to an area where the ice will melt, he says, according to The Guardian.

Although Norway is far north, the ice in the Arctic can feel far away for anyone living on the mainland. Nevertheless, the Sami warns of serious consequences, also “here south”, if the ice in the Arctic disappears.

– When the ice disappears, the ocean will absorb more sunlight. This will lead to smaller temperature differences between Europe and the Arctic. This again affects the wind systems, probably also the weather systems. It will do something to the south, he says.

And more precisely than he does not dare to be.

– No, for this we have not seen before. It’s possible to guess, but it’s hard to say what the consequences will be. It is talk about the front of research. It’s so far we’ve come, he says.
Never be worse around Svalbard

The ice cream service at the Meteorological Institute, which, among other things, monitors and measures ice around Svalbard, also comes with a disappointing message, according to Aftenposten.

According to the newspaper, the Ice Cream Service has never seen less ice around Svalbard at this time of the year since it began with measurements 51 years ago.

Tuesday this week, the icecream around Svalbard was measured to be more than 115,000 square kilometers less than the average between 1981 and 2010.

– Last year at this time there was a lot more ice. Now you have to find about 200 kilometers north of Svalbard before you find the ice. Last year there was drizzle all the way to the coast, “says Frank Andreas Amdal, consultant in the ice cream service, for the newspaper.

This is just another example of how the climate breaks the expectations of researchers, says Samset.

“It’s almost old, because they were on minimum ice, so less than you’ve ever seen, both in June and July this year. It is therefore good to know that Svalbard is warming very fast and is a good example of how the new climate is breaking our expectations, he believes.

The samset believes there is little evidence that shocking discoveries have ended with this.

“We must expect more climate surprises. Wait it unexpectedly, he says.