This study found 192 trials in total, either comparing one statin against another, or comparing a statin against a different kind of treatment. In 2007, researchers looked at every published trial that set out to explore the benefit of a statin.2 These are cholesterol-lowering drugs which reduce your risk of having a heart attack, they are prescribed in very large quantities, and they will loom large in this book. We can begin with some recent work: in 2010, three researchers from Harvard and Toronto found all the trials looking at five major classes of drug – antidepressants, ulcer drugs and so on – then measured two key features: were they positive, and were they funded by industry?1 They found over five hundred trials in total: 85 per cent of the industry-funded studies were positive, but only 50 per cent of the government-funded trials were. It has also become much easier to study in recent years, because the rules on declaring industry funding have become a little clearer. This is our core premise, and you're about to read a very short chapter, because this is one of the most well-documented phenomena in the growing field of ‘research about research'. Before we get going, we need to establish one thing beyond any doubt: industry-funded trials are more likely to produce a positive, flattering result than independently funded trials.

Bad pharma goldacre