"A new study links cell phone use to cancer"
"Danish study finds no link between cell phone use and cancer"
"Hyperactivity in young linked to smoking during pregnancy"
"Smoking in first four months of pregnancy 'does not harm the baby'"
"Study: Drinking Coffee Has Health Benefits"
"Coffee can kill your unborn child: Study"
Don't these studies drive you crazy sometimes? These are supposed to be 'independent' studies but I strongly feel they are very much 'dependent' on who conducts them and who backs them up. Even when someone conducting such a study tries to be fairness personified, the circumstances may result in a totally misleading outcome. Who to believe and who not to? What to believe and what not to?
Pretty much anything and everything can be interpreted and presented in different ways conveying different meaning without a need to distort the truth. Unfortunately this is what leads to multiple studies on the same subject conveying varied messages. It is not that fair and simple though. There definitely have been situations where the outcome of research was tailored to the advantage of the researcher / sponsor. One of the best examples, I know of, is the drug ecstacy. I got this information from one of the Discovery Channel's episodes on ecstacy. I won't be surprised if your immediate question is "why should we trust Discovery's study?". Well, first of all I don't think it was a study. Instead, they took the facts associated with the drug and presented them as a documentary. Assuming whatever Discovery Channel presented was true, there were a million contradictory statements about the drug. While one group finds it non-addictive and wanted to use as a genuine drug for patients, another group wanted to ban it. Eventually the drug was banned from legal use based on a 'study' that linked the drug use to cause neurotoxic damage to the central nervous system. According to the program, there was no substantial scientific proof for this though. So, who sponsored this research? Eventually a million other researches proved this wrong.
Without going that far back into history, one can look at the recent exposure of tobacco companies influencing the studies on smoking. All I want to say is that most of these independent studies may not really be 'independent'. Even if they are, they might not be self-sufficient. I mean, they might cover a very tiny portion of the big picture and hence can not be depended upon on their own.Labels: cancer, cell phone, cellphone, coffee, conservatives, democrats, ecstacy, health, independent, liberals, politics, polls, pregnancy, republicans, research, smoking, study, teenagers |
