I've got a story for you that you would probably "enjoy" (it will piss you off but confirms your thoughts):
A family member thought she would be a pharmacist. She loved medical science and was especially interested in how medicines can magically cure people. So she pursued a pharmacy career path.
She was super fresh, going through her internship (think it is called something else), doing research on a set of drugs. They were nearing end of a research cycle for one of those drugs where they could decide if it was safe enough or effective enough to start doing human trials.
Results showed the drug didn't work. That it had no efficacy. It was no better than placebo. So she wrote up that it should not pass and the formulation abandoned. Her boss told her that's not acceptable - the big bosses wanted the drug to go through because they spent too much R&D. They wanted it to get on the shelves.
So she was forced to go back and work some voodoo on the stats to show statistical significance. While she was falsifying statistics, she started applying to med schools. She was abandoning pharmacology.
Why? This is just one scenario, right?
Nope. Her boss gave her a talk when she refused. Told her this is normal and she needed to either choose a different career or get used to the politics. Her boss' ethical justification was "it will fail in Phase I-III human trials and that's someone else's problem."
FYI, if you want to know why statins are so dangerous but widely prescribed, this is why - pushed by pharma.
(post is archived)