[gmarx]

I think the search for tiny effects and the belief that they should drive treatment, is one of the biggest things wrong with medical research. Doctors will put millions of people on a pill that hits a vital metabolic pathway, for life, based on tiny (to my thinking) statistically significant (i.e. only a 5% chance they aren't based on a real effect) results.

These days I only believe large effects- like smoking causes heart disease

[jncfhnb]

Medical standards aren’t that bad. It’s just a complicated system with lots of interacting effects that only work for specific circumstances. Coupled with the fact that many medicines are not cures, but something that makes you die slower.