I just finished watching a documentary on Netflix "Watch Instantly" called "Under Our Skin", which was about Lyme disease in the Americas (focusing on the USA). In the documentary, it was suggested that the group of doctors involved in the Infectious Diseases Society of America had one or many conflicts of interest when producing their recommended practices for the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease. These same doctors have subsequently been involved in litigation against other doctors who have (apparently successfully) treated supposed sufferers of the disease using methods beyond those recommended in the IDSA paper. The conflicts of interest included having 1) patents on the genetic structure of the bacteria involved in the disease (Borrelia burgdorferi), 2) receiving funds from makers of Lyme disease test kits, 3) receiving money from insurance companies for drawing up said guidelines, 4) citing mostly their own prior work on the topic, and other issues I'm unable to recall at the moment.
Several things bothered me about this. The obvious conflicts of interest, of course, but also the stubborn insistence that, not that "I'm right and the rest of the world is wrong", but more that the rest of the world doesn't even exist in their minds. One IDSA doctor interviewed for the documentary would say something to the effect that the disease can not be congenital, while in a later scene, a woman with (allegedly non-existent) chronic Lyme disease gives birth to a boy who (again allegedly) has tested positive for the antibodies for Lyme disease. One of them is almost certainly wrong.
These doctors apparently often insist that the symptoms presented by the (allegedly non-existent) chronic Lyme disease sufferers is psychosomatic. This reminded me of a similar documentary I listened to from This American Life, called "81 Words". In that particular documentary, it was discussed how the American Psychiatric Association defined homosexuality as a disease, in particular a mental one. One of the particular points that was brought up was that the evidence that led to that conclusion/definition (the 81 words) was a skewed gathering of data. The point being that the psychologically healthy homosexuals weren't actually spending a lot of time associating with the psychiatrists gathering the data, only those with other problems. One might also make the conclusion, as an ENT doctor, that all homosexuals must get a lot of ear infections, though that's not the best analogy.
Here's a better one, and supposedly a true story though I'm too lazy to google it right now. This is one that was relayed to me from someone I knew a few years ago that had worked for Northrup-Grumman (which of course would have been a competitor with McDonnell-Douglas, the contractor responsible for the plane at the center of this anecdote, so take it with a grain of salt). The story (as well as I can remember it) was that in the Vietnam war, the F4 Phantom-II aircraft, used heavily in that conflict, was to be audited by inspectors. The auditors went around inspecting the planes after combat, looking at the damage to the aircraft and so on. The damage on returning planes eventually started to show a pattern, and there was an area of the plane that rarely showed any damage. The auditors came to the conclusion that this part of the plane was well armored against attacks from ground fire (as most of the damage seen to the planes was apparently caused from ground fire, and less so from other aircraft). Unfortunately, the conclusion was completely wrong. The area that rarely showed any damage was in fact a weak spot in the design of the plane - small caliber bullets would be enough, if that spot was hit, to take that plane out of commission. Planes that had taken damage there simply wouldn't make it home.
The auditors had come to precisely the wrong conclusion because they weren't seeing all the data. Just like the psychiatrists had come to the wrong conclusion about the nature of homosexuality based on their decidedly skewed data set. Just like the IDSA authors are making conclusions based on the evidence that they want to see (seemingly not simply failing to see evidence to the contrary of their conclusions, but actively refusing to see it).
My conclusion: things probably aren't going to change anytime soon. In the "81 words" saga, it ultimately required that "secretly" homosexual doctors of the APA to essentially enact a quiet "coup d'etat" among the organization to slowly phase out that, for a while, was the in vogue excuse to brutalize a segment of our population (though make no mistake, there will always be such a segment, though what that segment is will change from time to time).
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