Another prominent feature of medicine is the hope and expectation of patients that medicine coupled with training of physicians can help them in their treatment.

The pharmaceutical industry is extremely profitable, and the fantastic financial gains to be made from selling drugs create incentives to engage in some of the practices above.

Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses and flagrant conflicts of interest, science has taken a turn towards darkness.

Still others point to problems with the research methods themselves, arguing that randomised trials and meta-analyses are in fact malleable.