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Johnson & Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer (www.reuters.com)

submitted 1 year ago by 52fighters@kbin.social to c/news@kbin.social

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Johnson & Johnson has sued four doctors who published studies citing links between talc-based personal care products and cancer, escalating an attack on scientific studies that the company alleges are inaccurate.

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[–] jon@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

There needs to be a distinction between "I did my science badly" and "I knowingly published false information". Wakefield's paper linking vaccines and autism faked its data to imply a causal relationship between the two for the purposes of financial gain. You should absolutely be able to sue that guy if his paper damaged you in any way. Fuck 'em.

On the other hand, if you publish a study in earnest, but that study is full of mistakes and comes to an incorrect conclusion, you should not be able to be sued. If the study is bad, it would be easy enough to publish a response pointing out flaws with the original study. This is especially true since so many papers are published with the caveat of "this requires future study to confirm".

In order to sue, you should be required to show some sort of malicious action behind the bad science, such as faked data.