Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science

I was a little disappointed that there wasn't a greater emphasis placed on what could be done to help curb the bad practices.

I'd really like to see:

1. Any study with public funding is published free of charge.

2. A registry of proposed studies underway prior to results publication. Addressing the issue of companies cherry picking the 1 in 5 study that shows X is effective in treating Y.

3. Some form of standardized results reporting: Drug X did/did not perform better than a placebo.

4. Some form of confidence rating based upon the methodology the study was undertaken with.

Experiments and re-experiments are of course the best way to find out what in reality is, rather than what we think is, but maybe science has become too complex to function effectivley with the tools of the 16th century.

Seeing as the problems extent beyond medicine, certainly to psychology but also physics, maybe the problem lies with the very foundations of science.