Assuming there are about 3 dozen common scientific mistakes in medical journal articles, each appearing in on average 10-20% of papers with a relatively high degree of independence, there isn't really much foundation for medical science to begin with. (And I think these assumptions are probably fairly accurate.)
You haven't validated any of those assumptions. Moreover a "common scientific mistake," while regrettable and something to reduce, may not have a lot of impact on actual clinical practice based on what physicians read in published medical journal articles. You'll have to connect a lot more dots to show that there is a high-impact problem here.
Meanwhile, life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world,[1] so at least the trend lines look good for continued improvements in health as medical research is incrementally improved. Girls born since 2000 in the developed world are more likely than not to reach the age of 100, with boys likely to enjoy lifespans almost as long. The article "The Biodemography of Human Ageing"[2] by James Vaupel, originally published in the journal Nature in 2010, is a good current reference on the subject. Vaupel is one of the leading scholars on the demography of aging and how to adjust for time trends in life expectancy. His striking finding is "Humans are living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day."[3] An article in a series on Slate, "Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life expectancy doubled in past 150 years. Here’s why"[4] makes clear that it's progress here, and progress there, and a lot of little things adding up that have resulted in the dramatic increases in healthy lifespan over the last few generations.
There's an entire field of researchers researching researchers, so it's trivially easy to put together a list of common research errors and their prevalence. The only difficult thing is calculating the degree of independence. But there isn't any evidence, so far as I know, that these errors are highly correlated. Nor is there much reason to beleive that they are, since presumably the more errors a study has, the less likely it is to be published. Also, we already know from Ioannnidis et al. that the percentage of medical studies that can't be replicated is (iirc) in the 80-90% range. And just because a study can be replicated doesn't mean it's accurate, so 10-20% is really an upper bound on accuracy.
> Meanwhile, life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world
But as I've posted previously, and as you can find trivially easily via Google, of the 30 year increase in life expectancy in the US, a minimum of 25 of those years have come from public health improvements rather than from modern medicine.
> But as I've posted previously, and as you can find trivially easily via Google, of the 30 year increase in life expectancy in the US, a minimum of 25 of those years have come from public health improvements rather than from modern medicine.
Assuming you are getting the 25 years from the CDC[1], you are being obtuse. Immunizations is the first thing listed. Vaccines are a component of modern medicine. Control of Infectious diseases includes antibiotics, which are medicine. Clicking on "Declines in Deaths from Heart Disease and Stroke" shows that it includes "an increase in the percentage of persons with hypertension who have the condition treated and controlled" using pharmaceuticals, definitively modern medicine.
In summary, these 25 years aren't coming from just getting people to quit smoking. There's a large component that is modern medicine.
Given that the argument was about the reliability of modern medical studies, it would probably be only reasonable to include studies that came onto the market after the era of plabeco controlled RCTs. But many if not most of the most impactful vaccines came out before then. Of the remaining important vaccines, they account for only a tiny fraction of the literature.
But more importantly, it's not even a valid argument to begin with since the increase in life expectancy has nothing to do with the percentage of medical papers that are flawed.
> But as I've posted previously, and as you can find trivially easily via Google, of the 30 year increase in life expectancy in the US, a minimum of 25 of those years have come from public health improvements rather than from modern medicine.
Do you categorize vaccination as modern medicine, or as public health? Is there no overlap, some overlap, or much overlap in the concepts of "modern medicine" and "public health"?
> Do you categorize vaccination as modern medicine, or as public health?
It depends on what point you're trying to make. E.g. if you're talking about contribution of pharmaceutical drugs to longevity, then it doesn't make sense to include vaccines since they're not drugs. If you're talking about the contributions of modern medicine as a whole, then it make sense to include all the vaccines developed roughly since Dr. Gold popularized the gold standard clinical trials, so sometime in the mid to late 1950s. Or if you're talking about the contributions of the western medical system as a whole since its inception, then it probably makes sense to include all vaccines, etc.
The point of your comment isn't clear. Should everyone go home and give up then? This initiative surely alleviates some of your concerns, yes? And while I don't have too much specific knowledge, my general sense is that our medical knowledge has increased enormously in the past 100 years, and that this trend seems primed to continue. But I'm generally pretty optimistic.
